NEWS

UNC hosts summer institute to attract minority high school students to careers in business

CHAPEL HILL -- Radina Russell, an alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wasn’t sure what to expect when she was accepted into a challenging summer business program after her junior year at a Georgia high school. The Leadership Education And Development (LEAD) Summer Business Institute is held at top business schools around the country to encourage talented African-American, Hispanic-American and Native-American high school students to pursue careers in business.

Six years after attending the Summer Business Institute at the University of Virginia, Russell says LEAD was truly a life-changing experience.

"I discovered that business wasn’t only about accounting and finance. I learned about marketing, organizational behavior and how technology is tied into business," said Russell, who went on to enroll as an undergraduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, from which she graduated in 2002. Today, she is a business analyst with Deloitte Consulting in Philadelphia.

On June 22, Kenan-Flagler joined the list of 13 business schools who are sponsoring a LEAD Summer Business Institute. Through July 12, 30 rising high school seniors from 14 states and Puerto Rico are immersing themselves in three weeks of rigorous classes at Kenan-Flagler. They are delving into topics such as ethics, business history, entrepreneurship, organizational strategies for the global economy, leadership and teamwork, and improving negotiation skills. They are participating in visits with corporate executives at the business school and making site visits to Triangle-area companies. They are developing a business plan, becoming familiar with case studies and learning about different careers in business. The summer curriculum also includes competitive team-building activities such as ropes courses, and the students are learning how to "read" The Wall Street Journal.

"I thought it would be a great experience, because no matter what field I go into, business will play a role in what I do," said Whitney Marshall of Greensboro. "I thought it would be exciting to be around other minority students interested in the same goals."

Priscilla Matos of Plantation, Fla., said working with a team to come up with a business plan will be a challenging, but rewarding experience.

"When you work in a group, you have to accept people for who they are and recognize people’s strengths," she said.

The program began in 1980 at the University of Pennsylvania, when a group of business executives approached the university about encouraging more minority students to enter business. Today, the national partnership of U.S. corporations and graduate business schools has more than 6,000 alumni. More than two-thirds are working or pursuing degrees in economics, accounting, finance, management and other business fields. LEAD follows its young scholars beyond the summer program and throughout their university lives, opening doors through partner organizations to graduate training, internships and full-time careers.

Kenan-Flagler hopes to use LEAD to encourage talented minority students to consider a business degree at UNC-Chapel Hill.

"The LEAD program will give the university an opportunity to target high-potential minority students and lure them toward pursuit of a business degree," said management professor James H. Johnson Jr., who is teaching in the summer institute. "Our goal is to recruit and train the next generation of minority business leaders who will play a pivotal role in enhancing the state’s and the nation’s competitiveness in the highly integrated world economy."

Corporate sponsors are key to LEAD’s success. Sponsors for Kenan-Flagler’s LEAD Summer Business Institute include GlaxoSmithKline, Duke Energy, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, BB&T, Aon, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, BellSouth and Johnson & Johnson.

Marshall said the opportunity to interact with business executives has been very beneficial.

"We are getting a lot of exposure to the corporate environment and learning what it takes to be at the top of your game," she said.

For more information, visit www.leadnational.org.

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Contacts: Kim Weaver Spurr, Kenan-Flagler Business School, (919) 962-8951, spurrk@unc.edu

News Services: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593 , mike_mcfarland@unc.edu