Eleven Clark students attended the Character and Ethics Project’s 30th Annual Youth, Leadership, and the Future Conference held at Glendale Community College on Jan. 23.  The conference was meant to open up doorways between Glendale’s youth and current leaders.

Glendale News-Press editor and Character and Ethics Project board member Dan Evans said that program serves an important purpose. “It allows students to see how leaders make decisions in their day-to-day lives,” he said.

Clark attendees consisted of five juniors (Lauren Alparaz, Talish Babaian, Timothy Cruz, Levon Gevorkian and Mika Stanghill) and five seniors (David Agajanian, Alec Kellzi, Nicolas Ochoa, Maya Ramamurthy and Ericka Shin). Senior Matthew Davidian attended as part of the student planning team for the event.

“My role on the day of the conference was to give a speech to everyone before they headed off to their stations,” Davidian said. “During the day, I oversaw many of the classes and made sure everyone knew where they were going.”

All of the students were chosen by Associate Principal Lena Kortoshian. “I chose a range of students with GPA’s over 2.0,” Kortoshian said. “I wanted to include all types of students, from Publications, ASB and robotics. I was trying to look at the bigger picture.”

After waiting for a month and a half, the Clark students, Kortoshian and Turdjian, along with students and adult representatives from Burbank High School, John Burroughs High School, Crescenta Valley High School, Glendale High School, Hoover High School, Allan F. Daily High School and La Cañada High School, flocked to GCC early in the morning.

They were greeted with a name tag designating them to a group, a program and a book by Barbara A. Lewis titled What Do You Stand For? For Teens.

Participants sat through lectures and collaborative projects such as drawing through communication and a discussion of the Ray Rice case. Each activity was headed by influential people of the Glendale community.

“The best part of the day for me was being able to personally talk to Supt. Dr. Richard Sheehan and Glendale Police Chief Robert Castro,” said Junior Class Vice President Levon Gevorkian. “I was thankful to talk to people of such high caliber, and they congratulated me on my accomplishments and said that we are the future leaders of Glendale.”

The day concluded amid the sounds of excited students talking about all they had learned.

“The event was a great experience — both in networking with leaders in the community and gaining a broader perspective of what leadership is about,” Ramamurthy said. “I am very grateful to have been given the opportunity to attend the event.”