April 14, 2011 — Fifty-three civic-minded students from Baltimore-area colleges and universities are nearing completion of the first year of Baltimore Collegetown  LeaderShape. By participating in the program, students develop visions, learn to be visionary and discover how to apply their skills and passions to Baltimore through practical, hands-on projects.

Baltimore Collegetown Network launched LeaderShape in August with an intensive, six-day residential retreat at MICA. Each student formulated a vision and chose from one of five areas—education, sustainability, health care, neighborhood revitalization and healthy families—to focus their individual visions and plan for next steps.

Follow-up events, including a daylong retreat in the fall, a spring semester service day and lunch check-ins witheach campus’ members, kept the students’ visions and projects moving forward. A graduation ceremony for the inaugural class takes place Friday, April 8, from 3 to 5 p.m. at College of Notre Dame of Maryland’s Doyle Formal Lounge.

Student projects have varied from a robotics mentoring program to ending animal abuse in Baltimore.

Victor Ekanem, a junior biomedical engineering major at Johns Hopkins University, is organizing a robotics mentoring program. The program is for middle and high school students in partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools, Hopkins and FIRST (For the Inspiration of Science and Technology Organization).

Victor’s program teaches student participants how to work as a team, develop effective public speaking skills and value the importance of community service. The program’s goal is to encourage Baltimore students to attend college and give back to their communities, just like Victor.

Victor is a Baltimore native who graduated from Digital Harbor High School and then received a full scholarship to Hopkins. “Baltimore can only be as much as we put into it,” he said.

“This experience was not all application or all theory. It was a combination of community activism and leadership skills that complete the big picture,” he explained.

As a result of his LeaderShape experience, Victor plans to pursue a career in education and social enterprises, starting as a teacher, preferably at his high school alma mater.