Last week, representatives from multiple organizations on campus attended three different conferences across the country including the National Association for Campus Activities Live, Tri Delta’s Collegiate Leadership Conference and the Active Minds National Conference. 

NACA Live

From Feb. 21 to 26 student representatives from Campus Activities Board, Black Student Union, Religious Life Community, Student Government Association and Multicultural Student Alliance attended the National Association for Campus Activities Convention located in Denver, CO. 

This conference is a national conference that occurs each year. At the conference, colleges are able to view numerous performances including comedians or bands. Aside from viewing performances, students had the opportunity to attend a Campus Activities Marketplace where they mingled with various organizations that have performers or activity ideas to bring back to campus.

By attending this conference, organizations on campus are able to get new ideas and avoid bringing back the same people and ideas to campus. 

“It’s where we are able to do a lot of the booking we do for CAB,” said CAB president Mackenzie Ritscher. “So every time we have a comedian on campus, we typically see them at one of the conferences.”

In addition to the national conference, NACA also has a regional conference that Simpson students will attend April 2 to 5 in St Paul, MN.

Collegiate Leadership Conference

Officers and members from Simpson College Tri Delta attended the Collegiate Leadership Conference in Dallas, TX from Feb. 21 to 23. The conference offered a keynote speaker, workshops, various educational tracks and learning sessions.

Officers and members attended tracks specific to their positions where they received training on enhancing their officer position and developing action plans to take back to their chapter.

“This is an amazing opportunity to meet and talk with over 800 sisters from all across North America, from colleges big and small,” said Tri Delta Member Ling Rudicil.“We discussed a wide range of ideas, experiences, and hopes around leading and inspiring others, creating a vision and more.” 

The conference helps provide resources and skills for officers and members to thrive in their positions as well as assist them with personal development. 

“New changes specifically around our officer structure will be implemented next year and attending this conference taught us the logistics around it and how to prepare our chapter for these upcoming changes,” Rudicil said.

Active Minds National Conference

Simpson Active Minds members traveled to Washington, D.C. for the Active Minds National Conference on Feb. 21 to 22. This year’s theme for the conference was “Bridging gaps and Changing Culture in the Everyday.” 

The conference included keynote speakers and breakout sessions on a wide variety of topics such as mental health and government policy, mental health and sexual assault on college campuses and how sleeping is tied to mental health. 

“I feel like at Simpson, because we’re so small and because we’re a private college, I feel like sometimes our workload gets really, really hectic compared to public universities,” said Active Minds member Tatum Clayburn. “In a way, it’s eye-opening because I feel like a lot of people, statistically speaking, everyone has mental health, but not everyone has mental illness. But a good chunk of college students do.”  

After attending the conference last year, the active minds members were eager to learn more about mental health and new ideas they could bring back to campus.

Something that Active Minds members learned about this year and wanted to bring back to campus was Validate-Appreciate-Refer training. This training is Active Minds’ everyday guide for everyday challenges and looks to V-A-R to validate someone’s feelings, appreciate their courage to talk about their feelings and refer them to skills and support. 

“We wanted to bring that back and integrate that into more classrooms and educate the staff and faculty on mental health and how to deal with those situations,” Clayburn said. “Bringing back all these different things, it can hopefully impact the campus in a good way and say ‘hey, mental health is okay.”