Auburn’s Emerge, an organization formed to develop leaders throughout students' time on The Plains, is taking its program to the next level for the 2018-2019 school year.
Emerge made its debut last August to the class of 2021. It’s a leadership organization with approximately 1,000 students, who participate in weekly meetings and monthly speaker series. After the first year, or phase one, students have the opportunity to either apply for a team leader position or continue with a phase two program.
Trevor Spengeman, senior in mechanical engineering, is the current president of Emerge. Spengeman described a vision for Emerge that included a focus on the future, not just focusing on leadership amongst freshmen.
“This is my second year part of the organization,” Spengeman said. “Last year, I was the vice president, and as the president, I oversee the direction that Emerge is taking and kind of make the decisions as we go through our second year that will kind of set the course of where we’re going for the next five to 10 years down the road.”
Bri Thomas, senior in political science, is the vice president of curriculum for Emerge. For her first year in an executive position, she has been working specifically with the curriculum and making sure it was ready for this new round of developing leaders.
“In my role, I oversee the layout of the curriculum,” Thomas said. “ I work with our advisors really closely to take the topics that they give us and flesh them out and make sure they’re the best fit for the curriculum, and I also work very closely with our vice president of teams and our team coordinators to make sure that team leaders are prepared to deliver the curriculum.”
Emerge hosted their kick-off for the 2018-2019 school year on Aug. 26, 2018, in the Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum. Spengeman described the experience from the perspective of a leader in the organization.
“Kick-off was great. We really love working with the company that we work with that hosts the event, Elevate,” Spengeman said. “We think it’s not like any other on-campus organization’s event just because it is such a big event that we host. It’s really just to get the participants, the team leaders and everyone really excited about the year ahead and hopefully keep that excitement throughout the year.”
Over the summer, Emerge executives worked on bettering the program using feedback given to them from last year’s participants. Thomas mentioned how this year, Emerge switched away from the company that they worked with last year, and Spengeman elaborated on how this change affected the students.
“The reason we kind of went away from that company is to focus more on Auburn,” Spengeman said. “Because they were a company out of Atlanta, there was sometimes a disconnect from what Auburn students wanted, so we really heard that, and that was pretty good feedback that we really needed to focus on what Auburn students specifically wanted in a program.”
The two also mentioned how Emerge leaders have focused on finding the purpose of Emerge, which will make a difference not only on campus but also the entire community of Auburn.
After the kick-off wrapped up, Emerge meetings immediately began the next day. Thomas provided feedback from the team leaders on the student’s responses.
“[The team leaders] keep telling us that they have been amazing, they love their first year students, and they are so, so, so happy, and that really does my heart some good,” Thomas said.
Clarification: This piece was updated to be clear that Emerge is not a program just for freshmen. Its purpose is to develop leaders throughout students' time at Auburn. Also in the previous version of the piece, Trevor Spendgeman was stated to be a junior. He is a senior. We regret the error.
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