BRANDON HOOK | staff writer
This spring’s High Sierra students welcome a revamped student leadership system modeling the four cornerstones of APU: scholarship, community, Christ and service.
In years past, student leadership roles consisted of two resident advisors and two spiritual accountability resources (SARs). Two new positions have been added this year—academic mentor, filled by Chad Richard and service mentor Zach Brown—to complement two community advisors and one spiritual mentor. Sophomores Micah Garret and Lily McGuire are the current community advisors and Maurie Speed filled the spiritual mentor role.
The High Sierra program stresses leadership. According to Graduate Assistant Katie Burns, the reason the new positions were created was to allow students to demonstrate leadership in more areas.
Sophomore community advisor Lily McGuire, who was at High Sierra last fall and chose to continue her studies at Bass Lake this semester, has confidence in the new roles and what they mean for the program.
“We strongly emphasize community with family dinners and getting out of your comfort zone,” McGuire said. “But after being here for one semester, I realize that High Sierra is not only about community, but also academics, service to others and, above all else, service to God. It’s exciting for me to see them have a leadership role in each of those areas.”
With the addition of the new roles comes an unprecedented coalescence of the positions.
“High Sierra is about integration—humanities classes in plenary sessions, professors in their families,” McGuire said. “It’s the de-compartmentalization of life. It’s an amazing opportunity to be part of something new that reflects each of the cornerstones of our university.”
This integration has affected the spiritual mentor position, held by sophomore theater major Maurie Speed.
“Before, the spiritual mentor was a separate job where you would hold weekly spiritual-type meetings,” Speed said. “You were completely separate from the RAs. Now all the positions come together to get a more full and well-rounded community.”
Speed’s job is to maintain a healthy spiritual climate that allows room for growth throughout the semester in each person.
“Basically what I’m supposed to do is figure out what the spiritual climate is and address those needs,” Speed said. “Not just responding to what the mood is, but if there’s a mood of apathy or frustration or fatigue, it’s my job to bring people opportunities to get closer to God. It’s important to do it in a way that’s refreshing and not a chore.”
Freshman academic mentor Chad Richard treads new waters in inaugurating his position.
“It’s definitely unmarked territory,” Richard said. “It’s never been done before, you know. I feel like a large part of my job is to define the position as much as to fulfill it. My job is largely just to take class outside of class. I’m here just to encourage people to be scholars.”
To get more information on applying for any of these positions you can visit the study abroad office or email highsierra@apu.edu.
