Collegiate Leadership Vanderbilt Capstone Trip
This past weekend I went to Austin with Collegiate Leadership Vanderbilt for the program’s capstone trip. Collegiate Leadership Vanderbilt (CLV) is a great program that I applied to last year. Every month we listen to a local Nashville leader and have a nice meal. At the end of every year, CLV picks a city and theme to go to and listen to leaders. This year, the city was Austin and the theme was sustainability – Austin’s new mission is to make it the most livable city.
The trip was a blast! First, when we arrived, we immediately went to a nice luncheon with some Vandy alumni, living in Austin. I saw one of the seniors I had known from my twentieth century art class there – she was attending graduate art school at the University of Texas at Austin. Then, we dropped off our bags at our hotel, called aLoft. This hotel was SUPER modern, chic – european style sinks, big screen t.v. on your wall, nice open shades, cute little turquoise alarm clock – it was awesome! The first thing I did was jump on my nice comfy bed :-).
Our hotel was situated next to a nice outdoor shopping mall called The Domain. I went cruising in the mall for a while. It had the BIGGEST forever21 that I’ve ever seen in my life. Then we went on a BAT cruise and saw thousands of bats fly out from their homes under this giant bridge – that was quite fun!
On Friday, we heard from four speakers:
First, we went to the Khabele School and heard from its leadership how it was formed and what kind of principles it runs its school on.
Then we stopped at Whole Foods (which is headquartered in Austin) for lunch; I’m pretty sure it is the BIGGEST Whole Foods I’ve ever seen and had every kind of food imaginable!
In the afternoon, we hit up three places: Austin Energy Corp., Balcones Resources, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation Headquarters. At each of these places, either the CEO or VP or a head executive talked to us! It was super cool to hear how these people got started and how they ran their organizations.
Friday night, we had off to explore Austin, but I spent it with my family, who drove up from San Antonio. It was a great night! Then on Saturday, we went to Lyndon B. Johnson Library Museum, which was really cool. It really opened my eyes to see him for his numerous accomplishments; if not for the Vietnam War, he would have been known as the education president (he was the one who started the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Higher Education Act, and all of these other programs!).
Wow! Amazing trip – and the best thing is, there’s NUMEROUS programs at Vanderbilt that allows you to travel around the country and do awesome things!