Indiana Wesleyan University kicked off its partnership with the Center for Leadership Development by awarding high school senior Micah Brown a scholarship to attend IWU in the fall.
The Center for Leadership Development is an Indianapolis-based group that work to make young minority youth into professional, business and community leaders by developing them in five areas: character development, educational attainment, leadership effectiveness, community service, and career achievement.
Charleston Sanders, IWU's director of Multicultural Recruitment, has been a driving force behind the partnership. He says that IWU is the first CCCU school to award a scholarship to a CLD student, though several public and private schools already work with the organization.
"I knew that the core values of the Center for Leadership Development directly coincided with the mission statement of IWU: character, scholarship and leadership," said Sanders. "i knew that they offered great students, young leaders that were really interested in making a difference in the world."
Though the CLD's current crop of students offered IWU three excellent candidates for its first scholarship award, Brown's name stood out to the Multicultural Scholarship Committee.
Sanders says that IWU's Christian commitment was a "turning point" for Brown. "He has a great love for God and is a committed Christian," said Sanders. "Even as a teenager, you could see it in his personal statement...we just felt that the combination of his academics, his commitment to Christ, his demonstrated leadership, at home, at his church—at school, and then abroad—that was just a great combination."