This is a pilot collaboration with ACP in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex due to interest from ACP. Prof. Loh expects to expand it to a wide range of other communities. If you'd like to bring this to your community, and have a community organization with a network that can reach many students, please email hello@poshenloh.com, and we will be happy to include your students too.
Are you a high school student whose life dream is to brighten the lives of as many other people as you can? Do you love learning what makes other people tick, especially those with different backgrounds from you, and finding creative solutions to help them achieve their dreams? Do you dream of using those learnings to design a vision of the future, and then attracting multitudes to the cause? Would you like to have direct access to experienced mentorship, and to connect into a network of like-minded people?
ACP is collaborating with Professor Po-Shen Loh to bring a new type of cross-cultural leadership program to the DFW youth community. Prof. Loh is a world-renowned innovator who brings a breadth of experience, ranging from bringing math stars and professional actors to collaborate in education (covered by CNN), to criss-crossing America giving hundreds of talks per year (covered by the Wall Street Journal), to leading the USA Math Olympiad team for a decade, to mentoring championship-winning students at Carnegie Mellon University, to inventing new ways to control pandemics. He will personally lead this project, which seeks to develop a particular type of leader: one who earns influence by being widely loved.
Our program is completely different from leadership academies which teach “leadership skills”. Our distinctive feature is that our objective is to identify mission-driven high school students who are driven by a purpose of delighting others (with intentionality towards reaching people who are different from them), are fundamentally kind, who love people, and who are deep and curious thinkers. Then, through mentorship and community, our program aims to support and elevate those people to become natural leaders that attract others to their cause.
Prof. Loh mentors students of all backgrounds around the world, and already runs the LIVE program which is similar, but primarily works with people who have a strong affinity for math. This version is for students who are not heavily math-focused (or else they should apply to join LIVE instead). He also already collaborates with many organizations that serve different local communities. This particular collaboration with ACP is therefore focused on students whose families are in the ACP community. In this partnership, we have a particular interest in students who bridge multiple cultures, and whose intention is to build their life in America in harmony with everyone else here.
Our mentorship and community program will select a small number of high schoolers each year, through an intensive application process. There is no charge to apply, and no charge to participate once selected. Students will receive periodic mentorship check-ins with Prof. Loh himself to discuss their progress on their own projects, including multiple in-person meetups each year as he comes by the DFW region to speak. Prof. Loh is investing time into developing this community for the long term, to develop future leaders who are kind and curious, with great emotional and analytical intelligence.
The application process has no deadline, just like Prof. Loh’s other programs. To apply, students must fill out this Google Form to be considered. Selected students will be contacted to supply additional application materials for a second round. Students who are selected after both rounds will have an interview with Prof. Loh. The most important factor in a student’s application is their character. Especially for this program, there is no need to be strong at math or science.
This program is new, and does not yet have its own track record, but Prof. Loh’s other program upon which it is based (LIVE) had 6 out of its ~30 graduating high schoolers receive admission offers from Harvard last year. This program will be run with the same standard of care. The main difference is that LIVE is restricted to math-oriented students, and this program is open to students interested in any subject.