PROGRAM
OVERVIEW
The Emerging Leaders Program is a transformative leadership formation experience designed to cultivate rooted leaders who integrate liberty and human dignity by choosing the Good.
Unlike traditional internships that often reduce students to administrative tasks or résumé-building exercises, ELP combines intellectual formation, professional development, civic engagement, and real responsibility into a holistic experience of leadership development. Participants are not merely taught about leadership—they are formed through its daily practice.
PROGRAM
OVERVIEW
The Emerging Leaders Program is a transformative leadership formation experience designed to cultivate rooted leaders who integrate liberty and human dignity by choosing the Good.
Unlike traditional internships that often reduce students to administrative tasks or résumé-building exercises, ELP combines intellectual formation, professional development, civic engagement, and real responsibility into a holistic experience of leadership development. Participants are not merely taught about leadership—they are formed through its daily practice.
Through guided discussion, mentorship, professional work, and civic immersion, interns are strengthened in both intellect and character, preparing them to serve their communities and influence their generation with clarity, conviction, and courage.
A holistic Formation Experience
The program is intentionally structured to unite contemplation and action.
The goal is not simply knowledge acquisition, but the cultivation of prudence, judgment, civic friendship, and servant leadership.
A Holistic Formation Experience
The program is intentionally structured to unite contemplation and action.
The goal is not simply knowledge acquisition, but the cultivation of prudence, judgment, civic friendship, and servant leadership.
Interns will engage in the following:
Socratic
discussion and
guided readings
Professional development and workplace responsibility
Leadership Formation and Mentorship
Civic Engagement and Constitutional Study
Collaborative projects and
real-world application
Interns will engage in the following:
Socratic
discussion and
guided readings
Professional development and workplace responsibility
Leadership Formation and Mentorship
Civic Engagement and Constitutional Study
Collaborative projects and
real-world application
CURRICULUM OVERVIEW
Servant Leadership: Foundational Principles of Self-Governance
A discussion-based course examining the key principles of servant leadership through Dave Kuhnert’s Servant Leadership. Led by intern instructors, these discussions challenge students to integrate the principles of servant leadership into their everyday lives.
Servant leadership is the bedrock of the Emerging Leaders Program and serves as the foundation for everything else interns encounter throughout the year.
Western Heritage: Roots of American Constitutionalism
Through guided readings and facilitated discussion, students explore foundational questions concerning justice, law, liberty, duty, virtue, and human nature. Engaging thinkers such as Aristotle, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, interns learn how the Western tradition developed and why it remains essential for understanding and defending American self-government today.
Western Heritage serves as the intellectual foundation of the program and provides the historical and philosophical context necessary for understanding American Constitutionalism as its telos.
American Constitutionalism: The Fruit of Western Heritage
A discussion-based course exploring the American constitutional tradition as the political fruit of the broader Western intellectual and moral inheritance.
Through engagement with primary sources such as the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, selections from The Federalist Papers, and writings from the American Founding, interns examine the Founders’ understanding of human nature, liberty, political authority, virtue, and self-government.
The course challenges students to consider not only how constitutional government functions, but why it depends upon a morally serious and self-governing citizenry. By tracing the continuity between the Western tradition and the American experiment, interns gain a deeper understanding of the principles necessary for preserving ordered liberty in the modern age.
Statesmanship: The Expression of Constitutional Leadership
Through the study of figures such as James Madison, John Marshall, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, students explore the relationship between prudence, constitutional order, virtue, and leadership.
Rather than treating leadership as charisma or influence alone, this course presents statesmanship as the disciplined exercise of moral judgment in service to the common good. Interns are challenged to reflect on the responsibilities of leadership within a constitutional republic and the personal formation necessary to bear those responsibilities faithfully.
Professional Formation
The program emphasizes mentorship and responsibility over passive observation. Interns are entrusted with real work because leadership is cultivated through practice.
American Legacy Experience
At the conclusion of the program, interns gather in Washington, D.C. for the American Legacy Experience.
After months of studying the Western tradition, constitutional government, and the practice of statesmanship, students encounter firsthand the institutions, leaders, and civic realities that those ideas produced. The experience reinforces the connection between principle and practice while reminding interns that the study of statesmanship incurs a debt of service.
The aim of the program is not merely career preparation, but the formation of young men and women capable of leading with prudence, courage, conviction, and integrity.
Interns Leave the Program with:
Intellectual Formation
Professional Development
Leadership Training
Engagement
Mentorship and Accountability
Real-world Responsibility