Leadership’s Future: Leadership Through Initiative

Last summer I coined a term to describe those who are chronologically, but not psychologically, Millennials; I called them aMillennials and there are more around then you might think.

Today I saw a great story about two aMillennials who showed their leadership by taking the initiative and convincing their university to provide comparable classes at a prison.

Four years ago, in fact, Wesleyan balked at a proposal to install such a program.

Two students, Russell Perkins and Molly Birnbaum, who had volunteered in prisons as students, revived the idea last year when they were seniors and figured out a way to finance it.

…a privately financed experiment in higher education that takes murderers and drug dealers and other inmates with histories of serious crime and gives them an opportunity to get an elite college education inside their high-security prison, the Cheshire Correctional Institution.

The professors involved say that the classes are just as tough as on campus.

These aren’t prisoners preparing for a return to society, in fact, some of them may never return. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want to learn—120 inmates applied 19 spots.

Skipping the debate as to whether this is a good program or not, the initiative shown is a large lesson for all those who spend their time reading and studying leadership instead of doing it.

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Image credit: Rennett Stowe on flickr