Lileanna Johnson is a freshman studying human development and family services. She’s lived in Oregon her entire life and in Albany specifically since she was 2 years old. She recently began her first term as LBCC’S president of the Student Leadership Council.
Johnson loves biking, music, art, and cats. She’s very artsy and outgoing and always has either an instrument or an art project in hand. She plays the piano and is currently learning the guitar and autoharp. Her favorite art medium is acrylics. She’s excited to serve as the new SLC president, helping meet the needs of students on campus and better her community.
What brought you to LBCC?
A lot of my family’s gone to LB, but I wasn’t going to go to LB at first. I was planning on going to some big four-year [university]. And then at my high school, we had a table for LBCC and I went over to them and I said, “I’m kind of interested. Can you tell me more?” And so then I got registered and now I’m here.
What classes are you taking this spring term?
I’m taking interpersonal communications, intro to psychology, yoga, and intro to anthropology. I’m really enjoying interpersonal communications, which is a lot about how to talk to people individually. It’s very applicable to the jobs that I work, but also just to talk to people every day.
What was your previous role with the SLC?
So actually I was an intern straight out of high school. Interning is kind of just getting to know the positions in the SLC. We had to plan an event and I took the lead on that event and they were all like, “You should run for president.” And then I did.
So did you hear about the SLC before you were even interested in going to LBCC?
So actually when I got registered for LBCC, it was through early registration where we kind of just got to come on campus, register early, and we got a tour of campus and one of those tour spots was the SLC and they said, “Hey, would you want to be an intern?” And I was like, “Sure, what the heck?”
What do your new roles and responsibilities look like as the president?
The majority of what I’m supposed to do is just kind of keep track of the SLC as a whole. I write agendas for our weekly meetings where everyone catches up with each other; we all talk about what we’re doing and who’s doing what. And it’s just kind of keeping the community within the SLC right now.
I’m working on creating the task reports, which we kind of just respond to what we do every week just to keep us accountable. I also meet with the president of the college and I go to the Board of Education meetings to represent the students every month. So that’s important because I’m often one of the only students they really get to talk to. So just trying to remember that I am often going to people as the face of LBCC and they want to hear about us through me. And so a lot of it’s listening to students too, talking to people and making sure that what the SLC does and how I communicate student needs to the administrators is accurate.
What would you say the team dynamic is like within the SLC?
I think right now with our team, everyone wants to do a million things and we’re all very much trying to build off of each other. Everyone has great ideas and it’s just making sure that we can help each other and just creating a dynamic where we all feel free to express what we want and try to be the best that we can be. We’re all very motivated and passionate people and we’re all just trying to coexist and not interfere with each other.
What are some challenges that the SLC expects to face in this upcoming school year?
I think some challenges that we’re expecting to face are there may be some cut fundings and such, and also we’ve been trying to get a food pantry open for students for a bit, but there’s some difficulties and we can’t do that right now. But just kind of going on that strain in general, trying to figure out what the students need and get them that. But it’s hard if we can’t make that accessible, whether due to the fact that we don’t have the space for it or the money. And also a lot of times we can’t communicate properly to the students. Not many students know who the SLC is, so it’s hard to figure out what every student needs.
How do you hope to overcome these challenges?
I think a lot of it is just trying to keep those open modes of communication. We’ve done classroom presentations, which seem to get the word out a lot. And I think just being on campus, we need to talk to people, be here where they can come to us if they need to and just create those open modes of communication … because a lot of people, I think, are a little bit scared to talk to us too because our office feels very small and official. So just trying to make people feel like, hey, we are the student voice. We are here for students and we’re going to do that.
What influenced you into going into human development and family services?
I think a lot of it is because I’ve always known that I wanted to help people and work with people, and then I think I went on a tour of a jail and just, I don’t know, something about that. I want to help people work to better themselves. I was interested in being a police officer, but I don’t want to be the one arresting people. I want to work probation or corrections, help people get what they need to and help just work out problems that they might be facing.
What are some of your plans for after LBCC?
I’m sort of up in the air right now. I know that I want my human services associate degree, so I’m sort of just trying to think of what I want to do with that because I still know that I want to be in human services. It’s just a matter of what I want to do with it. And also I want to stay in Oregon. I really like Oregon and just the people.
What do you hope to accomplish most while the SLC president?
I think a lot more of trying to spread the word and maintain connections because after the pandemic there were a lot of interests that dropped off and a lot of teachers even who don’t know what the SLC is. I think that the old team did a really good job of trying to fix that. And so just taking that to another level and also kind of just creating more on-campus resources. We did a food drive recently, and I mentioned that we want to start a food pantry, which isn’t an option right now, but if we can find other ways to give students those resources that would be amazing.
Is there anything else that you’d want students to know about the SLC or about the human development and family services program?
I think mostly it’s just to explore and to realize that there’s more to it than what it seems like. There’s far more jobs and professions in human services than people think.
And the SLC is a lot of things that we tell people about that they didn’t even know. We send people to Salem and to Washington, D.C. to talk to legislature. We ran the vote campaign during fall of 2024. We’re on campus and we’re doing things and we’re helping the students. And just, I think there’s a wide variety of stuff that we do that people don’t know about and they don’t take advantage of. And I think that if more people could realize how much we are on campus to help them and how much we do to help them, it could really help students understand, oh, this campus really wants us to succeed and that they have the resources too.
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 edition of The Commuter.