The Women for RSU initiative will be hosting a workshop 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26 in Conference Room B of the Dr. Carolyn Taylor Center on RSU’s Claremore campus to help students promote practical pathways towards achieving their goals in the coming year and beyond.
“We understand people set resolutions at the first of the year, whether those resolutions are to make good grades, pay off debt, make more money, get better grades, etc.,” said Olivia Woody, RSU Foundation liaison for Women for RSU. “This workshop isn’t just about making goals, it’s about defining how to obtain them, and seeing them through.”
Launched in April 2022, Women for RSU is an initiative with the vision of building and sustaining a group of leaders to provide mentoring and networking opportunities, to engage students through unique programming, and to provide annual scholarships to students participating in the program.
With more than 60 percent of RSU’s student population being female – half of whom are first generation college students – Women for RSU seeks to provide these young women with a strong female influence in their lives, serving as mentors or role models.
“Women for RSU exists to help advise and empower young women, to help them to have advanced opportunities once they go out into the professional world,” Woody said. “One of the biggest things we hope to accomplish with this initiative is to open doors for these young women that they may not necessarily be able to open on their own, whether that involves helping them to make the right connections, creating internship opportunities and networking opportunities, or simply giving them the opportunity to interact with and draw on the experiences and wisdom of the mentors.”
Participation in Women for RSU’s various programs is open to any female student at Rogers State University.
Membership is available to alumni and other adult professional women with a desire to make a positive impact on the lives of the young women by becoming mentors. For this, an annual minimum financial contribution of $250 is suggested. Alumni within five years of graduation may join for an annual suggested gift of $150. These contributions are then used to fund programming and scholarships. Corporate support levels are also available. Financial donations to Women for RSU are tax-deductible.
Women for RSU has three executive committees: mentoring, which develops guidelines for all mentoring activities and leads efforts to recruit student mentees; programming, which coordinates all non-mentoring programming for the initiative, including seminars, guest speakers, career development and networking activities and an annual banquet/reception; and outreach and development, which leads efforts to recruit new individual members to the initiative and secure corporate funding.
“The program itself is still relatively new and taking shape, but our hope is that students will take advantage of it and take advantage of everything that this (program) can do for them,” Woody said.
Women for RSU’s Goal Setting and Vision Board Workshop will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, in Conference Room B of DCTC at RSU. This event will be open to both female and male students at Rogers State University. Light refreshments will be provided, and admission is free.
For more information about Women for RSU, contact Woody at 918-343-8357, by email at [email protected], or visit www.rsu.edu/WomenForRSU
Women for RSU executive committee members include, left to right: Bridgette Nichols, programming chair; Janet Valencia, outreach and development chair; Ginny Morgan, president; Terri May-Peters, vice president; and Lindsey Martin, treasurer. Not pictured: Misty Choat, mentoring chair.