CPA CAN is an innovative collegiate leadership program that provides opportunities for college students to develop new skills and engage their peers around stimulant and opioid misuse prevention and positive mental health across Pennsylvania. This program encourages powerful, thoughtful, and strategic collaboration among student participants to create a lasting impact on their campuses and communities.
The program is designed to leverage the passion, lived experiences, and talents of students who are passionate about solving problems, connecting them to their peers across many disciplines, building strategic high-trust relationships, and offering practical skills for enhancing their own lives, their schools, and their communities. Working in partnership with a wide variety of local partners, CPA launched CPA CAN to connect a diverse cohort of students committed to peer-to-peer leadership engagement around opioid and stimulant misuse prevention and mental health issues.
Expectations and Benefits of Participation
CPA CAN participants work with other students to engage in experiences designed around their interests and Pennsylvania’s opioid and stimulant misuse prevention and mental health needs. They help create messages to be used on PA campus by utilizing PA’s PaStart and PaStop campaigns, expanding the way prevention is defined and addressed on college campuses. They fully explore problems and propose bold solutions with achievable implementation strategies. They also develop and implement a signature project, regularly sharing ideas and outputs with CPA and advocating for resources to help implement effective prevention in PA.
Curriculum & Faculty
CPA provides the tools for participants to carry out a project and will be with them throughout the entire process. The curriculum focuses on how to bring about strategic change and how to bring a group of people through that change process. CPA CAN recognizes the natural tension that exists between individual development and community development and focuses on four key concepts and six core principles to stimulate and cultivate each participant’s unique leadership profile, while simultaneously supporting them as they work together to expand the definition of prevention in PA and address the issues important to them. Participants engage in discussions led by local, national, and international experts from government, the academic community, and the social profit and private sectors.
Qualifications
CPA CAN applicants should be outstanding student leaders who are in a position to bring about strategic change within their school communities. A CPA CAN candidate will usually be a student who has some decision-making authority in a collegiate organization. Candidates should be committed to prevention and to working in a diverse environment. Applicants should be eager to take on broader responsibilities with the goal of leading prevention efforts on their campus. Priority will be given to students of color, women, younger students, and students with untapped leadership potential. Applicants must be currently enrolled students at an accredited PA college or university.
If you are a college student in Pennsylvania who is passionate about solving problems and creating change, join our mailing list and look for our next call for participants. Together, we can make a difference in our communities and work towards a brighter future.