Shaping High School Asian Pacific Islanders for the Next Generation
Shaping High School Asian Pacific Islanders for the Next Generation (SHAPING) is a leadership conference that specifically targets junior and senior high school level students of Asian-American/Pacific Islander descent. This annual event on the Pullman campus intends to foster and address the needs of higher education among the Asian-American/Pacific Islander community while fostering leadership development for current Washington State University Students.
SHAPING was created as an outreaching network to the greater Asian-American/Pacific Islander community in the state of Washington. All students that attended this conference participated in activities such as mock class lectures, awareness/leadership workshops, and student panel discussions. Below is the historical timeline of how SHAPING started.
- In its inaugural year in 2000, Benson Kim, Sylvia Mendez and Sokun Meng, the creators of SHAPING, hosted about 23 high school students from the Spokane area on WSU’s Pullman campus.
- In 2001, SHAPING outreached to schools in the greater Seattle area. About 60 students attended this leadership conference in hopes of creating an awareness for students achieving higher education
- In 2002, SHAPING did not happen due to lack of funding
- In 2003, Keomany Southichack, a former SHAPING conference student in 2001, wanted to restart the conference in hopes of outreaching to more students in the Seattle area. Keomany teamed up with Tyler Urlacher to help outreach the conference to even more students in the Tacoma and Yakima areas, in hopes of networking students to a realistic college experience.
- In 2004, with the conference being a success, the Seattle, Tacoma, and Yakima areas were targeted again in the 2004 SHAPING conference with 70 students in attendance.
- In 2005, SHAPING targeted the Vancouver area with high hopes of making the conference larger in numbers. We successfully reached our goal by hosting 110 students in this conference.
- In 2006, SHAPING had another successful year with bringing in 123 students. And have high hopes of bringing in 150 for SHAPING 2007.
Within the multicultural communities at WSU, leadership conference programs are made with intentions of encouraging leadership development and higher education to people of color. The success of this conference relies heavily on our student volunteers who give up their time to gain leadership experience. Many will go through extensive leadership training to ensure that the quality of our conference is invaluable for any participant attending SHAPING. Though our purpose is to not recruit for Washington State University, we hope that the experience many students gain through this leadership conference can help them achieve higher education and provide a memorable and educational experience for students planning to enhance their educational needs.