From Greek life to academic organizations to clubs for just about everything, Wichita State has over 200 student organizations with varying levels of activity. 

Each active club has a leadership team that runs meetings, organizes events and recruits students.

Donovan McClellan, the president of WSU’s Black Student Union (BSU), said it’s a “dream job” because of the possibility to “change people’s lives.”

“BSU just gave me that platform to do that because I’ve always wanted to help people who look like me and really anybody in general,” he said.

While leaders of other Registered Student Organizations (RSO) echoed their passion for making positive change through their organizations, they said there are also challenges. On Sept. 27, club presidents and other executives gathered to discuss the ins and outs of running student organizations. 

The annual event, previously called “Nuts and Bolts,” was renamed as the RSO Summit, a change that student organizations coordinator Clarence Albury said was strategic.

“We decided to call it a summit because really, it’s supposed to be a working style meeting,” Albury said. “It’s supposed to be a meeting where all these different people are coming together, (where) these different groups are coming together. It’s supposed to be a collaborative session.”

Albury, who works within the Office of Student Engagement and Belonging (SEB), said his office wants to help RSO leaders keep their organizations running. The summit is one way they can do that. 

Planning and recruiting

RSO leaders did two activities designed to challenge skills they might use in leading their organizations.

One activity was an exercise in planning events. Groups, many made up of members of different organizations, were given a budget and two prompts with which they had to plan an event. They were asked to consider things like venue, food, activities and how to handle potential problems. 

“We had some fun with it, like we were saying we could do skywriting for marketing, just stuff like that,” Vincent Farwell, an ambassador for Spectrum: LGBTQ & Allies, said. “But then there’s some, like, some real ones that, you know, really reflect the processes (of planning events).”

According to Jillian Belden, the student activities coordinator, event planning begins with passive planning, which is the brainstorming phase in which RSOs figure out where the event will be, who the desired audience is and if no other events are happening at the same time. Passive planning is important to ensure events can have the best possible turnout, and hopefully recruit new members to the organization.

“We do have some groups who have challenges with recruitment, and so for them, we’ve tried to help them, and we also, because of this, we’ve also created trainings for them each month in the semester to go over stuff like … how do you recruit?” Albury said. “How do you, you know, grow your organization? How do you keep your organization in active status?” 

RSOs that have executive leaders, more than five members, update their information on ShockerSync and hold monthly meetings are considered active. If they fail to recruit enough members, they can eventually lose this status and some opportunities for funding from student government.

Another challenge is increasing engagement with the student body at large. 

“And so it’s really trying to get them to see the benefits of planning and events and giving enough notice,” Albury said. “And so we have some groups that have just been slow to adapt those kinds of practices in their groups.”

Meeting the needs of RSOs 

As in past years, another summit will be held in the spring, Albury said, to accommodate RSO leaders that weren’t able to attend. 

Albury said the summit will continue to evolve to meet the needs of RSOs in the coming years. This might include guest speakers and breakout sessions where people with the same leadership positions in their organizations can connect and brainstorm. 

“The goal is for us to try to curate an event that RSOs will be excited to come to,” he said.   “Because it’s new information that they’re getting every time they come.”