Dyke and Terry Rogers’ leadership can play a huge role in the growth of future Buffaloes, teaching different skills focusing on the leadership and education aspect that fits right in at West Texas A&M University.

“It is a leadership education and development program. It’s two years, it’s an academic certificate program. So after these students are selected, they have two years to complete the program. And then when they graduate, they have a leadership certificate that is listed on their transcript. And they so we take 25 students every year, they and it’s usually about this time of year, where they apply late fall early spring, and we interview as many as we can. And then we select up to 25 students, for each new class of students of Lead scholars,” said Program Director of Rogers LEAD WT, Missy Macon.

This program focuses on three key points (leadership, education and development) seeing many past and future buffs onto success but with this comes many responsibilities one must follow in order to obtain the Leadership Certificate.

According to https://www.wtamu.edu/student-life “The Rogers LEAD WT (Leadership Education And Development) Program was created to challenge high achieving students to further develop their leadership potential. The first cohort of LEAD Scholars began the program in August of 2012, thanks to a generous grant from the Texas Pioneer Foundation.This program takes two years to complete, and includes three main areas: academic, student service, and real world application.”
This being a very prestigious and honorable group of individuals to be a part of, the question is presented , what do the students receive from all of the hard work and dedication put into this program?
“The main benefit of LEAD in one word is growth. The students grow because again, the seminars are not lecture based their discussion based, so it gives them the format and the in setting where they can voice their thoughts, ideas, opinions, on different various leadership theories, very leadership, various leadership principles, you know, and how they will actually apply them in our life, we’re very much an application based program, we want them to be discussing things in our seminars that they will then go on apply immediately into their life,” said Faculty Director of Rogers LEAD WT, Dr. Rick Haasl.
Ushering in a new group of scholars while others are getting ready to graduate and move forward can be a big change. However, perhaps the constant change and growth of individuals in this program can be seen as a good thing, changing their lives and building them up with core LEADvalues they will carry on forever.
“We’re super, super excited about our new class of students. And every year, it’s kind of it’s especially at this time, it’s a little bittersweet, because we’re losing one class of students, but we’re also gaining another so it’s like all this happy and sad all at the same time. But when we get a new group of students that are so excited, you know, it’s really reinvigorating, for both Rick and I, and we’re just excited to welcome them to the program and the lead” Macon said