26 Kentucky high schoolers participate in Young Leaders Academy
YLA participants with Tom Block, center, a guest speaker (click to enlarge)
Is disobedience a good thing? Sometimes. That's one of the lessons 26Kentucky high school students have explored this week at the McConnell Center's 2015 Young Leaders Academy on "Civil Disobedience: The Impact of Protest in the U.S."
YLA is a summer residential leadership conference at UofL. The McConnell Center offers this annual program to outstanding high school students to help hone their leadership skills and further their understanding of American history.
Students have attended daily seminars, discussions and activities, ranging from "The Role of the Citizen in Public Discourse" to "The American Response to the Stamp Act," all of which have been centered on the theme of civil disobedience. They took part in field trips to Bernheim Forest, as well as to the Muhammad Ali Center. They also spent the week preparing for a debate competition.
The program was featured in a story by WAVE 3 News.
The 26 students who participated in the 2015 Young Leaders Academy were:
- Chandler Albright
- Emma Baker
- Eric Bush
- Jackson Campbell
- Alex Cochran
- Matthew Denny
- Ahmaad Edmund
- Isabelle Elwood
- Abigail Erckenbrack
- Cameron Fontes
- Grayson Ford
- Avalon Gupta VerWiebe
- Zamirah Hussain
- Lilly Jones
- Jacob Keisling
- Sarah Kelley
- Sanjana Mahesh
- Ryan Martin
- Connor McDonough
- Luke McKinney
- Kirsten Parker
- Christine Pourheydarian
- Maya Pierce
- Bernadette Sommer
- Reagan Taylor
- Heather Whitlock
By Chloe Zoeller, a 2016 McConnell Scholar