“I find refuge in helping people, and I kind of help myself by helping others because I get to learn how to interact with different types of people. By being a leader, you also gain the respect of many people and that’s a really great feeling.”
Abdul Sanz, junior dance and civil engineering double major, holds various student leadership positions at Hofstra University. One of these positions includes being the president of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) chapter here at Hofstra.
“ASCE is a pre-professional civil engineering chapter where we do speaker events, events about the [Fundamentals of Engineering] and BE exams, visit companies, take field trips and attend technical lectures to help us to have professional development while we are in college,” Sanz said. “As the president of an organization, you have to lead an executive board and have the ability to delegate tasks accordingly and appropriately. It’s also being a person that your chapter can look up to and use as a resource.”
Sanz has been in this position since Oct. 2024.
In addition to being the president of an organization on campus this semester, Sanz assumed the position of Senior Resident Assistant for the Netherlands Complex after being a Resident Assistant (RA) for three semesters.
“I am a Senior Resident Assistant, where I not only do everything an RA does, but I supervise the RAs and am a resource for them,” Sanz said. “I process all of the mail in the Netherlands and work with the Resident Directors to relay information to the RAs to help the complex function.”
Sanz said he knew he wanted to be an RA since he started attending Hofstra.
“The RAs were the first leaders I made interactions with when I started here. I knew that was something I wanted to do, to be that first welcoming voice to residents when they come here and be a resource for them,” Sanz said. “As an international student, I entered college with the desire to be a leader.”
Sanz is a first-generation international student from Haiti who initially had to adjust to attending college in a new country.
“There was a culture shock because people here behave differently than back home,” Sanz said. “It was also kind of hard to move away from my family and start living by myself all of a sudden. As a first-generation student, I felt very lost because I didn’t know what was going on; I just knew I came for higher education.”
Despite initial difficulty with adjusting to college, Sanz said being a leader at Hofstra was not a hard adjustment for him because he grew up being a leader to his peers in Haiti.
“I was class president in high school, a leader at my dance school in Haiti and I used to own a summer camp,” Sanz said. “I already spoke English, and I feel that because I already spoke the language and had the ability to guide a group of people, stepping into leadership positions was not as hard as adjusting to making new friends.”
Sanz said his leadership positions make him feel complete.
“Because I have these positions, I get to see people and their growth, and that’s something I find myself wanting to do,” Sanz said.
Sanz is also the social media student aid for Hofstra’s Office of Equity and Inclusion. Prior to Sanz working there, the office had no social media presence. His job as a content creator is incredibly important to him.
“It’s a job that’s really close to my heart because especially in a predominantly white institution, it’s an office that’s very important,” Sanz said. “We get to create an environment that makes people feel they belong here which is really important. I have fun creating content and the office has a lot of resources available to students, so my job is to spread the word about what students have access to.”
Sanz expressed the importance of having students of color like himself in leadership positions at Hofstra.
“I think having people of color in leadership positions at Hofstra is important because of its representation,” Sanz said. “When you don’t have that representation, you are just quietly oppressing a group of people. When you have a Black person in a leadership position you not only create a safe space for Black people to have someone to confide in, but you also give them someone that looks like them that they can look up to.”
Sanz said his leadership positions have not only allowed him to be a resource for students, but has improved him as a person.
“I feel like layering the education I’m getting here with my leadership positions is really investing in my future,” Sanz said. “I can see myself improving as a person, and I discover a little bit more of myself every day through these experiences.”
