Shaping the Student Experience
Star Bacon
Major, Community and Regional Development
Director of Leadership Development, Afrikan Black Coalition
2013-14 Student Assistant to the Chancellor, Division of Student Affairs
Impact: Improving the Aggie experience and giving all students a voice at the table
When you need to bring people together in a room to effect change, you need Star Bacon.
As the head of her own event production business, Star Productions, Bacon knows a lot about bringing people together. But it’s her leadership roles as a UC Davis student that are giving her the ability to advance student-initiated programs and make lasting, positive change to the student experience.
“Students come first,” said Bacon. “You can’t just make change for yourself. It has to be for the collective group.”
Bacon recently completed a yearlong term as student assistant to the chancellor. She helped establish a student leadership board representing communities that don’t typically get a voice in decision making. Modeled after SALT — the Division of Student Affairs’ administrative leadership team — the student board will start meeting in 2015 and hopes to collaborate often with campus leaders.
“To have people who are fully immersed in different areas of campus all at one table — that is UC Davis,” said Bacon. “That’s our representation of Davis as students.”
The Bay Area native is also pleased to see two projects that she initiated — a diversity training program for teaching assistants and a student discount program — launch soon.
Now director of leadership development for Afrikan Black Coalition, Bacon coordinates statewide student leadership conferences and creates leadership programs, particularly among the UC campuses.
Navigating bureaucracy is becoming more routine for her, and she’s developing political savvy in the process. Bacon is more strategic about the way she presents her ideas and listens to responses. She’s also learned how to understand a variety of people and approach them, which she considers “priceless skills.”
“UC Davis is raising leaders, and I’m getting the resources I need to go out and prosper in the world.”
