Program Overview
Are you hoping to strengthen your leadership capacity and skill set in a way that allows you to be a more dynamic communicator, a more compassionate and ethical role model, a more confident and goal-directed team member, and a culturally sensitive, informed individual who is a source of meaningful change? Are you seeking to get training outside of a conventional business-led model? Apply to the Honors College IMPACT Leadership program!
We'll be inviting a select group of applicants to receive mindful coaching, meet community leaders, and think carefully about what kind of leader you are and strive to be in any given life journey and context during the Spring 2025 semester!
Eligibility and Requirements
To be eligible:
- Honors College students must be in good academic standing.
- Preference will go to 2nd and 3rd year students.
- All sessions will be held on Fridays from 2-3:30pm starting January 31st, 2025 and ending April 11th, 2025.
- Applicants must be able to attend all 6 sessions.
Application
Biographies of Speakers for Spring 2025 Events
February 7, 2025 | High IMPACT Leadership Program Session
Mayor Brad Cohen was elected to office in November of 2016. The mayor began his public career in 2010 when he was elected to the East Brunswick Board of Education. Working with his fellow Board members, he helped to navigate the schools through difficult economic times in the wake of the Great Recession and the draconian cuts in state aid. He was named Board President in 2014 and helped to select the new Superintendent of Schools. By 2016, the future mayor chose to use his skills to improve the quality of life for all the residents of East Brunswick. The mayor is a 30-year resident of East Brunswick. He is a practicing gynecologist and is part of St. Peter’s Physician Associates with an office in East Brunswick and Somerset.
February 21, 2025 | High IMPACT Leadership Program Session
Dr. Brittney Cooper is a Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies. Prof. Cooper is also the Principal Investigator and Founding Director of the Race and Gender Equity (RAGE) Lab at Rutgers. Her books include Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women, winner of the 2018 Merle Curti Prize for Best Book in U.S. Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians; the New York Times bestseller Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower; Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood (co-authored with Susana Morris and Chanel Craft Tanner) a Kirkus top Young Adult Book of 2021 and a nominee for the Garden State Teen Book Award from the New Jersey Library Association; Stand Up!: 10 Mighty Women Who Made a Change; and The Crunk Feminist Collection (co-edited with Susana Morris and Robin Boylorn). Cooper co-founded the Crunk Feminist Collective, a Hip Hop Generation Feminist Collective of Women of Color Activists and Scholars. They ran the highly successful Crunk Feminist Collective Blog which was named a top blog by New York Magazine in 2011. Today, they co-edit The Remix, a weekly substack newsletter.
March 7, 2025 | High IMPACT Leadership Program Session
Dr. Afia Ofori-Mensa serves as the Director of Equitable Postgraduate Academic Opportunity in the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access & Opportunity, and a Lecturer in Humanistic Studies, at Princeton University. In her role, she designs and directs programming that supports undergraduates at Princeton and other institutions – especially first-generation college students and low-income students – in pursuing future careers in higher education. She earned her PhD and MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan, where her doctoral research examined relationships among race, gender, and national identity in U.S. beauty pageantry. She is also a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her BA summa cum laude with distinction in English, with a concentration in African American Literature and Culture. Dr. Ofori-Mensa has been a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow and a Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellow (MMUF).
April 4, 2025 | High IMPACT Leadership Program Session
Dr. Julia Baumanis is Assistant Professor and Associate Director of Bands at Rutgers University and is the first female conductor at Rutgers University in its 259-year history. She serves as the Conductor of the Rutgers Symphony Band, Associate Director of the Marching Scarlet Knights, Director of Pep Bands, and teaches all Undergraduate and Graduate Instrumental Conducting courses. She leads within the music community on the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) repertoire committee, as Co-Chair of the Mentorship Committee of Women Band Directors International (WBDI) and is the co-Author of GO ON, Tell Your Story! Voices of Women Band Directors, a book that features the shared experiences of over 100 women conductors. In January 2023, she was appointed Artistic Director and Conductor of the New Brunswick Chamber Orchestra, a professional orchestra serving the New Brunswick, NJ area for the past 65 years.
Questions
If you have any questions, please contact Andrea Rydel, Assistant Dean.