Coca-Cola Pre-College Leadership Program
2009 Coca-Cola
Pre-College Leadership Program Application (pdf)
June 20-26, 2009
For more information contact Laketha Hudson @ 404.215.2731
For seven days each summer, the Leadership Center introduces high school students from across the United States to the traits, skills and behaviors necessary for effective 21st century leadership. Each day the program accentuates a leadership principle: love, integrity, courage, wisdom and hope. The curriculum builds personal and interpersonal leadership skills through group activities ranging from Tai Chi, a ropes team-building course and historical tours, to rituals and ceremonies such as mask-making and a “Cave of the Heart Ritual” derived from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Activities emphasize self-awareness as a basis for better understanding the world.
 Which Way is North? |
 Truth Telling Ritual |
 Mask Making Activity |
 Truth Telling Ritual |
Since 1997, the Coca-Cola Pre-College Program at the Leadership Center at Morehouse College, the first of its kind at a historically black college and university (HCBU), has been a beacon in providing leadership training to high school students and college pre-freshmen.
In the inaugural session, 105 African-American males were exposed to the art and science of positive leadership. The overarching objective of this unique program was to provide an opportunity for pre-college students to broaden their understanding of leadership, open their minds to the need for positive leadership in the 21st century and develop their sense of leading through service in a global society. This highly interactive program met two hours a week for six weeks providing students with hands-on opportunities to study leadership through lectures, exercises and workshops on personal leadership, management and interpersonal leadership.
Over the next three years, the program evolved as it expanded its scope and vision. In June 2000, the Coca-Cola Pre-College Leadership Program began offering a seven-day, residential leadership training experience. The participants were required to live on campus and to participate in all scheduled activities.
This in-depth experience is built around ethical leadership development with its focus on character, civility and community. For many, the experience is life altering. “My participation in the program was part of the overall process to becoming a Rhodes Scholar,” recalls 2000 program participant and 2004 Rhodes Scholar recipient Tope Oluwadusayo. “We were taught to succeed here and abroad regardless of the differences in venues.” More than 450 college-bound men have successfully completed this training since its inception in 1997.
 Leaders Learning to be Followers |
|
 Self-expression through the African Talking Stick |
 John Lewis, Jr. Senior Managing Litigation Counsel The Coca-Cola Company |
Developed by VisionQuest Association, International™, the curriculum is focused on personal and interpersonal leadership skills emphasizing the development of character, civility and community. Training sessions are highly interactive and diverse, including lectures, workshops, rituals, journaling and outdoor leadership focused activities.
During the week long experience, each day accentuates a leadership principle (love, integrity, courage, wisdom, and hope), and the curriculum builds personal and interpersonal leadership skills using indoor and outdoor group activities: from Tai Chi, a ropes team-building course and historical tours, to rituals and ceremonies such as truth-telling sessions, mask-making, and a “Cave of the Heart Ritual” derived from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The activities emphasize self-awareness as a basis for better understanding of ethical leadership practices in the 21st century.
 Coca-Coca Pre-College Leadership Program Class of 2008 |
“Dr. Fluker helped me to see that we wear false masks all the time to hide our true selves. So I felt that if the universe ended up seeing the actual Mark Anthony Hill I wouldn’t mind.” -Mark Anthony Hill, 2008 Participant “Tai Chi training during the Pre-College Program was my first experience at finding a “center.” Actually finding the core of my body, my energy, and turning that into action was pretty cool.” -Tony Larkin, 2008 Participant |
