Freshmen eager to take an active part in leadership and service on campus now have that chance.

The Student Association’s Orange Seeds Student Leadership Empowerment program will give freshmen the chance to work with peer mentors, faculty, staff and other student leaders in order to create new community service opportunities around campus.

Orange Seeds will be composed of 22 freshman members and 22 upperclassmen peer mentors, said Jessie Cordova, co-executive director of Orange Seeds and chairwoman of the SA Board of Elections and Membership Committee. Each first-year member will be paired with a mentor who will help with the freshman’s transition into college leadership.

‘The peer mentors will be like freshman peer advisers, but better,’ Cordova said. ‘They will be there for anything the freshmen need, whether school-related or not.’

The Orange Seeds will meet biweekly with their mentors and members of the faculty and staff in order to come up with new community service ideas. Cordova said the freshman Orange Seeds will fill out interest sheets in order for their mentors to gauge which areas of service to concentrate on during the fall semester.

Travis Mason, co-executive director of Orange Seeds and SA vice president, said the work of the Orange Seeds will culminate on March 24, National Orange Day, when the Seeds put together a university-wide community service project along with the Alumni Relations Office.

‘Our goal with Orange Seeds is not to create ‘test tube’ leaders; we are setting out to empower our students to get involved,’ Mason said.

Mason said the Orange Seeds program will be the first time students have developed and run a leadership program on campus.

Freshmen interested in Orange Seeds can download an application from the group’s Web site at http://students.syr.edu/orientation/orangeseeds/orangeseeds.html. Any upperclassmen that are interested in becoming a peer mentor for the program can e-mail Jessie Cordova for information.

Published on September 13, 2004 at 12:00 pm