The Ivy Council

is the Student Consortium of the Ivy League.

... I WANT IN!

I was just checking out their website, and they have all these amazinggg programs that I just want to be a part of.

"The great aim and end of all learning," proclaimed Benjamin Franklin, is to foster an " inclination, joined with an ability , to serve mankind, one's country, friends, and family" – namely, the common good.

Ivy CORPS (Community Outreach & Public Service) is an Ivy Council enterprise devoted to realizing Franklin's vision of service within the Ivy League. Through Ivy league-wide community assistance initiatives and the passage of substantive policy-based resolutions, Ivy CORPS strives to engage student leaders to promote public service and social responsibility nationwide.

The Ivy Leadership Summit (ILS) is an annual two-day conference hosted by the Ivy Council to bring together students from the eight Ivy League universities along with leaders from the business, government, academic, and humanitarian sectors. The Ivy Leadership Summit was originally created to promote the exchange of ideas between students of the Ivy League and today’s leaders on subjects of public policy such as globalization, health care, and ethics. The first Summit was held at Yale University in 2000 on the topic of “Integrity and Ethics.” 80 participants were selected from a pool of applicants throughout the Ivy League. The main activities of the conference were keynote speakers, panels, and roundtable discussions. Since then, the Ivy Council has held six conferences each focusing on a differing policy topic. Past speakers have included Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO of Forbes magazine; Nasreen Berwari, Iraqi Minister of Municipalities and General Works; Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the UN’s Millennium Development; Theodore Roosevelt IV, Managing Director at Lehman Brothers and prominent environmentalist; and Dov Zakheim, US Undersecretary of Defense.

The list of past Summits is below according to year, topic, and school:

2008 - "Leadership: Theory, Practice and Action" at the University of Pennsylvania

2007 - “The Future of Energy: Analyzing the Problem and Debating Solutions” at Columbia University
2006 - “Free Trade, Free Press, Free Society: Leadership in the Age of Globalization” at Columbia University
2005 - “Health, Economy, and the International Community” at Princeton University
2004 - “Responsibilities in a Globalized World” at Columbia University
2003 - “American Ethics in Science & Medicine, Politics & Law, Media, and Business” at the University of Pennsylvania
2001 - “Sharing the Torch: Leadership in the New Millennium” at Harvard University
2000 - “Integrity and Ethics” at Yale University

This year's summit is going to be at Brown, and theme of the summit is Leadership in the Global Community. I really, really, really want to go. I have to be involved in student government at Penn to do so, though. Haha I was going to wait a year before trying to join the UA (Undergraduate Assembly), but now I think I'll go for it. Woohoo for involvement in student activities!