Preparation for Leadership: Summer Residential Program

The Museum’s 2014 Summer Residential Program emphasizes leadership skills as high school and college students explore the strategies and decisions that led to Allied victory in Europe and the Pacific. The students will achieve these goals through their immersive experience at the Museum July 13-19, 2014 and through a rigorous preparatory program taking place in the spring.

The preparatory program features some of the top books on WWII. Students will analyze these readings with support from the Museum’s staff and the history department at Nicholls State University. The program opens with a study of the Great Depression and reactions to Pearl Harbor. The first readings will include selections from David Kennedy’s Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945. The shock of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor will be viewed through selections from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt–The Home Front in World War II.

A Short History of World War II by James Stokesbury will guide the students through the overview of the battles and political decisions. Two individual stories will bring the war down to a more personal level. The Air War and the war against Japan will be viewed through the eyes of Louis Zamperini in Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. The War in Europe and the liberation of concentration camps will be viewed through the eyes of General Felix Sparks in Alex Kershaw’s The Liberator.

These readings, combined with the Museum’s oral history collection, form the backbone of the preparatory program. The immersive one-week experience at the Museum from July 13-19 will be more rewarding as the students have read and analyzed works from the top scholars of World War II.

Registration for the 2014 Summer Residential Program is ongoing. To register or receive more information, call 1-877-813-3329, ext. 514 or visit us here.