The Center for Leadership and Service (CLS) is a student affairs hub where students can find resources in Greek affairs, campus involvement, community service, the Co-Curricular Transcript (CCT), leadership and campus news. The CLS' mission is to promote and encourage student involvement, participation and organization in campus events and organizations.

CLS works toward goals of providing student opportunities in leadership development training, community service involvement, service learning and campus organizational development and serves to connect students with volunteer activities. Each of the following departments are under the Center for Leadership and Service:

• Leadership Institute
• Involvement Center
• Jumpstart
• Community and Volunteer Services
• Co-Curricular Transcript
• The Cougar's Byte
• Greek Life

The Leadership Institute is known to train, mentor and provide resources to student leaders on campus. They take in underclassmen and, throughout their four-year program, create the university's best student leaders, who reach great heights. The Leadership Institute is a program that educates students on skills they will need to succeed as a student leader on campus. This four-year program offers a leadership certification to a select group of students who apply. The program works in levels from T2K Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum as well as the L.E.A.D. program.

The Involvement Center is a central place for information and resources for all campus involvement. It is to the Involvement Center that student organizations report for assistance, guidance and resources. For a student that is not a part of any specific organizations, the center can be used to learn about all of the different kinds of involvement opportunities, from campus employment to attending events, joining organizations or even starting new organizations.

Jumpstart is an organization dedicated to facilitating the growth and development of children in their early years of life. In addition to this dedication to children, they support college students who are interested by helping them complete their organization's goals by recruiting and training students to lead preschool children. Jumpstart specialists work with young students to complete an overarching mission to have every student prepared to succeed in kindergarten.

The Community and Volunteer Services department under CLS frequently holds community service opportunities for students to gain hours serving the community while making a difference, networking themselves and broadening their horizons.The list of different service projects that Kean students frequently participate in is long and full of a wide range of outreach to different communities. Through the service department, students can track and log their community service hours and apply them to their Cougar Link accounts, thus adding to their Co-Curricular Transcripts.

The Co-Curricular Transcript (CCT) highlights all of a student's involvement and activities. Oftentimes employers look past just the academic transcript and want to see what else a student did while in school. Having a loaded involvement list shows time management, personality and what a student can handle beyond their academics. The CCT can be used by students as a resource throughout their time at Kean. If kept updated, it is one place that has exact dates and time frames of all of their involvement. Many times on applications it will ask for dates of participation so this feature is beneficial to students as the CCT lists dates when students join organizations and how many hours they have documented service with groups.

The Cougar's Byte is a campus wide newsletter produced from the Center for Leadership and Service that serves as a place for students and faculty to learn about student life at Kean. The Cougar's Byte covers campus events, campus news, information and features the spectacular students and student groups on campus. With a strong emphasis on students and student life, The Cougar's Byte is a resource for students to learn about all of the exciting things happening on the Kean campus and the people in it.

The Greek Life department oversees the variety of sororities and fraternities at Kean. The Greek Senate at Kean is produced from the Center for Leadership and Service. The goal of the Greek Senate and the Greek Life department is to promote and advise the cooperation between Greek organizations on campus through various activities and programs. They work with Kean University's 14 sororities, 15 fraternities and one co-ed Greek organization to promote diversity, togetherness and service to the community.

A common theme throughout each department within the Center for Leadership and Service is helping and connecting students. Given all of this emphasis on engaging with students and growing their skills, it is no wonder the CLS was once called the Office of Student Life and Leadership Development. For more information on any of the departments or about CLS as a whole, feel free to contact them at (908) 737-5170, or stop by their main office located in the Miron Student Center, Room 219..