Chelsea Shipley shines as student leader

Instead, Shipley captains the ship, and those efforts have earned her significant spoils. She has received two of the most prestigious honors on campus: the William A. Kirkpatrick Leadership Award in 2024 and the J. Gilbert Reese Next Generation Community Leadership Award in 2025. She has garnered thousands of dollars in scholarships. She has twice represented Ohio State Newark on Ohio State’s Homecoming court. 

Quite the haul on the heels of failing her College Credit Plus courses and failing to find a community to call her own in high school. 

Growing up, no public or private school provided the right fit. Homeschool didn’t serve her either. “None of it seemed to work for me,” she said.

Ohio State Newark, on the other hand, supplied a “fresh start.” To make it work for her, she got to work right away. 

“You have to take initiative to make a good experience for yourself,” Shipley said. “You have to get involved, and I did that.”

Shipley started with Diversity Through Artistry, a volunteer program that guides local elementary school students through introspective art projects. She found a job in the Office of Student Life and developed into a peer mentor in the Office of Academic Advising. As soon as she learned her way around, she became a Buckeye guide. 

But her “baby” on campus is an organization whose leadership she stumbled into her second year. Shipley joined Active Minds as a freshman, immediately connecting with the club’s approach to mental health advocacy. After that year, though, she was the only member left. The rest had transitioned to Columbus. “I ended up being the president by default,” she said.

Thus began Shipley’s flagship journey: changing the conversation about mental health on Ohio State Newark’s campus. She’s ensured students have access to crisis counseling. She’s devised events for Suicide Prevention Month each September. She’s started creating a guidebook to help continue the conversation after she graduates. 

So inspired by this work, Shipley even changed her major from psychology to social work, a degree program she will complete next spring.

Her own active mind has helped her navigate and thrive throughout these last three years. 

“I've hit milestones and done things that I honestly never thought were possible for someone like me,” Shipley said. “I've blossomed here, and I feel like if I'd gone anywhere else, I wouldn’t have had the same personal growth.”

Also growing is an endless list of goals for her fourth and final year at Ohio State Newark. One goal — punch a ticket to grad school — eclipses them all. And she won’t be going far. “I'm still going to be a Buckeye after I graduate from here.”

When she does, Shipley thinks she’ll “come out on the other side as a completely different person.” 

In many ways, she’s already there. She’s transformed herself from a hesitant high schooler to an eloquent leader. She’s no longer someone satisfied standing on the sidelines. 

Unless she’s being honored in front of 100,000 fans on a Buckeye football Saturday, of course.