Twenty-five rising high school seniors will develop leadership skills and devise community-service projects at Wartburg College’s High School Leadership Institute, June 9-15.
The ninth annual HSLI program will have participants from six states — Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado and Oklahoma — mentored by eight Wartburg students as well as college faculty and staff.
Participants will hone team-building and leadership skills on campus and during a trip to Chicago to work with children at Holy Family Lutheran School.
The HSLI students also will design blueprints for community service projects to implement when they return to their hometowns. Some of the proposals include:
- Developing a youth center, youth football camp and a youth volunteer program.
- Establishing a course about drunken driving for high school seniors.
- Creating an animal-therapy program for the homeless.
- Establishing bilingual reading and music programs for elementary school students.
- Starting a landscaping and gardening program for people with special needs.
- Giving musical performances to seniors.
The students will construct a reflective portfolio on service and leadership after the completion of their project. HSLI will conclude with a poster session in which students present their projects.
Participants successfully completing their projects and portfolios will receive 3.5 semester hours of transferable college credit for Wartburg’s “Elements of Leadership” course and will be eligible for a $1,000 renewable scholarship to Wartburg.
During the past eight years, more than 130 students have participated in the program and many matriculated to Wartburg, including more than a dozen who later served as HSLI program mentors while at Wartburg.
“HSLI participants are forward-looking people from whom we can all learn something,” said Dr. Fred Waldstein, the director of Wartburg’s Institute for Leadership Education, Irving R. Burling Chair in Leadership, and professor of political science.