Skills Development

Impact. Relationships. Legacy.

Momentum isn’t just about speed: it’s about leveraging ways to accelerate your progress. The Momentum program helps you make sure your community-engaged project has what it needs to move forward.

In this six-week program, you’ll meet like-minded students who want to develop a community project that will make a positive impact, build relationships and leave a legacy. In six working meetings, you’ll test each other’s ideas, link your plans to the principles of community engagement and work through challenges in a low-risk environment. You’ll leave each meeting with a better plan than you came in with.

Momentum welcomes McMaster students who are not registered in a community engagement course, as well as those who are planning to apply for project-based awards, like the Wilson Leadership Scholar Award and the Renaissance Award. Complete all six sessions to receive a certificate of attendance.

Be a leader without being overwhelmed

Being in a leadership role doesn’t always mean that you feel prepared, even if you’ve completed mandatory training. The Mac Leaders Peer Community complements your leadership training with a focus on supercognitive skills. These are the skills you most need when:

• Managing conflict
• Giving and receiving feedback, and holding others accountable
• Applying equity, diversity, and anti-racism in your leadership role
• Communicating effectively
• Managing imposter syndrome
• Getting buy-in at the university or other organizations

The Mac Leaders Peer Community works in three ways:

1. It gets you to focus. You’ll complete no more than two or three workshops. One of these workshops will focus on a strength you can further hone and another on a skill which, if strengthened, would make you more confident as a leader.
2. It lets you practice. After the workshop, you’ll meet three times to discuss cases (synchronously or asynchronously) and work out how to apply your skills.
3. It builds your network of student leaders from across campus.

There is also an optional capstone event: a casual employer panel, in which employers share how they learned to distinguish between the activities that they actually want to do and those they felt obligated to try to enjoy.