Leadership is the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.

The Heavener Leadership Challenge (HLC) uses principles from the best-selling leadership book “The Student Leadership Challenge” by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. We demonstrate to students that leadership is a learnable skill.

Each semester, about 64 accepted students complete a self-assessment where they evaluate their leadership skills. Students then identify, understand and capitalize on the five ‘practices’ of exemplary leadership listed in “The Student Leadership Challenge.”

Participants focus on learning about one of the practices for one to two weeks, where they learn about the practice through large and small group activities and TED Talk-style presentations by students who have completed the program, called facilitators.

Throughout the program, students engage in an actionable project based on the practices so that they can put into practice the principles they are learning. Each student finds an opportunity where they can increase their personal leadership ability, whether it be at school, work, or other extracurricular program, and implement the leadership teachings from HLC in that place. Students then share the results of their project at a final retreat.

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