Interim University President Kathy Wilbur knows a thing or two about being a leader.

Wilbur spoke to about 70 Alpha Leadership students Thursday in Powers Hall about her experience being a leader.

She explained her experience as chief of staff to former State Sen. William Sederburg, and about her time serving at Michigan State and Central Michigan universities.

Waterford sophomore Brandon Wilmot said Wilbur did a good job with the speech.

“She’s a good speaker,” Wilmot said. “She explained that you have to be well rounded and energized for everything. That’s a pretty good point to make. You have to adjust yourself for every situation.”

Wilbur talked about many different leadership qualities from listening skills to different types of pressures. One of the things she stressed is a high energy level is crucial for a leader.

“I heard someone say that to me many, many years ago in politics,” Wilbur said. “They said, ‘Oh that person is a successful politician because she’s got a very high energy level,’ and I thought, ‘Well how much difference can that make.’ It makes a lot of difference. It allows you to be able to go from one challenge to the next in a given day.”

What students thought

Paw Paw freshman Blake Geschke said Wilbur focused too much on her own achievements.

“I very much felt like she was trying to build her own stature,” Geschke said. “I think she tried her best to apply leadership to her experiences, but she didn’t really succeed. It was a good speech. This probably wasn’t the best audience for it.”

Geschke said even though she focused too much on herself, he got some useful information from the speech.

“I don’t know if I could necessarily apply the information she gave right now in my life, but perhaps down the road,” he said. “She talked about being a leader of like 10 people and then advancing up and being a leader of thousands, so stuff like that really helped.”

Ottawa Lake freshman Alexandra Reischman said Wilbur definitely told students why she is qualified for the position of interim president and she was a good speaker. Reischman said although Wilbur did answer a few questions from the audience, she was still left wondering a few things.

“To be honest, I don’t think she addressed the questions very well,” Reishman said. “But I think she gave some good examples that gave us a lot of insight about what it’s like to be a leader of a lot of different people. I feel like her experience in Lansing gives us something to identify with and it gives us some real life examples.”

E-mail the author: Luke Dimick