Building More Than a Degree: What Purposeful Leadership Really Looks Like
There is a moment in almost every student’s college experience when things begin to shift. It is not dramatic or obvious, but it is meaningful. College stops being something you attend and starts becoming something you shape.
That idea sat at the center of Episode 17 of The Bulldog Mindset, “Building Purposeful Leaders: Inside GWU’s Searight PACE Program.” What stood out most in the conversation with AJ Leyva and Issa Cogdell was not simply what they had accomplished, but how they approached their time at Gardner-Webb University. They did not just move through their college years. They made deliberate decisions about how to engage them.
Early in the episode, we framed a simple but often overlooked truth: college is an opportunity, but it is not automatic. Too often, the experience becomes transactional. Students attend class, complete assignments, and work toward graduation. That path leads to a degree, but it does not always lead to clarity, confidence, or direction. What AJ and Issa demonstrated is that a different approach is possible when students begin asking better questions about their time, their goals, and their growth.
The PACE program sits squarely in that space. It is easy to think of programs like PACE as “extra,” something layered on top of the academic experience. In reality, it functions more as a bridge. Through professional development courses, community engagement, and leadership opportunities, students begin building what I often describe as a “degree-plus” experience. They leave not only with academic knowledge, but with networks, applied skills, and the ability to articulate what they bring into a room.
That distinction matters. Increasingly, the question facing graduates is not simply whether they have a degree, but whether they can demonstrate value beyond it. Experiences like those provided through PACE help students answer that question before they ever reach graduation.
What also became clear throughout the episode is that leadership is not something students learn through theory alone. It develops through experience, and often through struggle. AJ’s story about overcommitting, burning out, and having to recalibrate is not unusual, but it is instructive. That moment of failure became a turning point. It forced reflection, adjustment, and ultimately growth. Programs like PACE do not remove those challenges. Instead, they provide the structure and support that allow students to learn from them rather than be defined by them.
Mentorship plays a critical role in that process. Both students pointed to faculty and program leaders (Dr. Negbenebor and Rev Searight) who invested in them in meaningful ways. These were not surface-level interactions. They were relationships that provided guidance, accountability, and, at times, intervention. In one case, a mentor quite literally prevented a student from stepping away from the program during a difficult stretch. That kind of engagement changes trajectories. Talent alone is rarely enough. Students also need people who help them see what is possible and push them to keep moving toward it.
Another important dimension of the conversation was the role of community engagement. It would be easy to frame PACE strictly as a career preparation initiative, but that would miss something essential. The program intentionally connects leadership development with service. Students are not just learning how to advance themselves. They are learning how to contribute to the communities around them. Whether through partnerships like Feeding Kids Cleveland County or other service efforts, they begin to understand leadership not as position, but as responsibility.
This is where the broader value of programs like PACE becomes clear. They align closely with the mission-driven nature of institutions like Gardner-Webb, where education is not only about knowledge acquisition, but about formation. Students are shaped not just in what they know, but in how they engage with others and the world around them.
If there is a larger takeaway from this episode, it is that college should not be viewed as something to complete, but as something to construct. Students are building more than a transcript. They are building habits, relationships, skills, and a sense of direction that will carry forward long after graduation. When that process is intentional, the outcomes look very different.
The closing reflections from AJ and Issa reinforced this in a powerful way. One emphasized that failure is inevitable, but response is what defines the outcome. The other spoke about the importance of continuous learning and addressing problems at their root. Both perspectives point to the same underlying idea: growth requires engagement. It requires stepping forward, even when the path is not entirely clear.
That is ultimately what PACE is doing. It is not simply offering additional experiences. It is creating conditions where students learn how to take ownership of their education, connect it to real-world contexts, and build something meaningful from it.
That is the difference between going through college and being intentional about it. And in a moment where higher education is under increasing scrutiny, that distinction matters more than ever.