Illinois Leadership Seminars Postpones 2020 Seminar to 2021

CHICAGO, IL — Every year since 1978, students going into their junior year of high school pack up to spend a weekend learning about leadership. The weekend-long seminar has been held at North Park University for nearly 20 years and generally takes place at the beginning of June.

But not this year. This year, there will be no Illinois Leadership Seminar.

“As far as the quarantine affecting Illinois Leadership Seminar goes, early on we had a number of conversations,” Hopper Oehler, Illinois Leadership Seminars Corporate board president, said. “Our first message was we are still planning on having a seminar in June, but stay tuned because that plan can change.”

The organization — Illinois Leadership Seminars — offers a yearly seminar for students who have been selected from their school. Each participating high school selects one student. The annual event is referred to as the Illinois Leadership Seminar. The name of the organization is plural.

Eventually, as the world adjusted to coronavirus and stay-at-home orders were made and extended, the board made a difficult decision.

“The correct decision was to postpone the seminar to 2021,” Oehler said.

On April 6 the corporate board made that decision and announced it to students and volunteers.

Originally, the seminar was attached to the Hugh O’Brian Youth Foundation. In the early 2000s, that foundation told state chapters they needed to charge each attending students $200. In order to continue to offer an all-volunteer, no-cost seminar, the Northern Illinois Chapter decided to leave the national organization. It was rebranded a couple of years later to be Illinois Leadership Seminars.

Oehler attended as a student in the 1990s.

“The high school I went to when I went to it was a Chicago public high school,” Oehler said about his experience. “It was at the same time when we were called the worst schools in the nation.”

Back then, his high school experience was one where mediocrity was the norm. So leadership was not something he spent a lot of time thinking about. That all changed after he attended a seminar weekend.

“I was surrounded by people who not only wanted to make a difference but were making a difference, people who were leading in their own way,” he said.

The annual Illinois Leadership Seminar brings together students going into their junior year who have been nominated by their school. Staff who are between 16 and 20 are junior staff and those 21 and above in the organization are senior staff. The entire organization is volunteer.

“The total number of people who are going to go to a weekend (is) between 170 and 200,” Oehler said.

At a typical seminar, students arrive to North Park University on Friday and the sophomores going into junior year, which ILS volunteers call leaders, are put into small groups facilitated by a senior staff and two junior staff. Junior staffers are volunteers who have attended seminar before and have come back to help lead the student attendees.

Throughout the weekend, leaders attend presentations, panel discussions, activities and social events all designed to help them experience and become transformational leaders.

Students and volunteers live in on-campus housing, eat meals together in dining halls and attend events in small and large groups. So, planning for the possibility of seminar during the early days of coronavirus meant keeping all those things in mind.

Ixtel Viramontes, the 2020 ILS seminar planning committee chair said the decision to postpone the 2020 seminar was one that was difficult but necessary. And like Oehler, she said the decision came in stages.

“A big difference is that at first we started talking about how to keep up with the CDC and Department of Health recommendations,” she said.

This was going to mean that the planning committee needed to look at how they were cleaning areas, possibly adding hand sanitation stations, breaks for handwashing, etc.

But as the recommendations changed, so did the discussions. Oehler said the corporate board discussed about a dozen different possibilities. On April 6, they decided to move the 2020 Illinois Leadership Seminar to 2021. They are still examining whether to hold it at the same time as the 2021 seminar, which would possibly mean having both sophomores going into their junior year and juniors going into their senior year at the same seminar.

“Whether we have them at the same time or not, the host site is also still up in the air," Oehler said. "Can they have us two separate times, can they accommodate a double-sized seminar, those are things we are still discussing."

The 2020 seminar already had 85 student participants that had confirmed their attendance for the original June dates.

“Everyone was very clear that they did not want to not serve one whole year of students,” Oehler said. “There’s a lot of high school students that have had their lives disrupted in ways that we are not thinking about.
“It was really important to us that we not say, sorry 2020 kids you are not going to have a seminar.”

The logistics of planning a seminar with two age groups for the first time in history is something that will be the topic of ongoing discussion over the next 15 months.

ILS is a completely volunteer organization. No one collects a paycheck for their time or work. ILS raises funds for the seminar itself, and as they plan for a double seminar in 2021, they have to think through how they may fundraise while we are under a stay-at-home order.

“Knowing that we are going to have a double seminar next year, that means we are going to have to have double the money,” Oehler said.

The last fundraiser was in February at Revolution Brewing, and while Oehler said it was successful, at that point they were not expecting to fund a double seminar just over a year later.

In the meantime, while organizers plan for fundraising and logistics, Kristin Nickels, ILS
co-alumni advisor said those already involved in the organization are using technology to continue to connect. They are independently connecting on social media and Nickels said the organization is working to connect individuals through a kind of pen pal program called shelter pals.

ILS uses a tagline that has been in place for years - You’re Not Alone. It is incorporated into seminar and Nickels said that while there has not been a specific activity attached to the tagline while we are under stay-at-home orders, people in ILS make sure to check on one another.

“I’m endlessly impressed by how these young adults stay connected and are a support for one another,” Nickels said.

If anyone would like more information, would like to make a donation or get more information on how to nominate a student, visit the Illinois Leadership Seminars website.

Edited to correct a typographical error.