A.K.A. Leadership | 2026 U-LEAD CONFERENCE

Presenter: Shane Bowyer, Associate Professor of Management & Entrepreneurship

Leadership means something different to everyone. Ask ten students to
Define it, and you'll get ten different answers. AKA Leadership takes that.
ambiguity and turns it into a framework students can actually use. The title
carries a double meaning. AKA is shorthand for "also known as," and
leadership genuinely goes by many names: influence, initiative, strategic
thinking, delegation. But in this session, AKA also stands for Awareness.
Knowledge and Action, a three-stage development model drawn from the
PH&D Skills Framework, a research-based approach to workplace
competencies. The session opens with a short survey covering several PH&D
skills tied directly to leadership, including influence, delegation, strategic
thinking, and self-motivation. Students see their own results in real time, and
Those results become the backbone of the interactive discussion that follows.
Thus, rather than talking about leadership in the abstract, students reflect on
where their own leadership skills currently stand, reclaim confidence in skills
they may have discounted as "just soft skills," and reimagine a concrete next
step for building the skills that matter most to them. Students leave with a
personal leadership skill snapshot, a simple model for developing any
leadership skill going forward, and one specific action they choose for
themselves before they walk out the door.


Students will identify their current strengths and gaps across key PH&D
leadership skills, using their own survey results as a baseline rather than a
guess. 2) Students will apply the Awareness-Knowledge-Action method to
build one specific, personal action step for developing a leadership skill,
regardless of whether they hold a formal leadership title

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Co-hosted with: CSU & Student Activities, Student Events Team, Maverick Involvement Team, Delta Sigma Pi, Honors Student Body, Interfraternity Council (IFC), International Student Association, Panhellenic Council, Residence Hall Association (RHA), Student Government, Fraternity & Sorority Life, Residential Life