The 2025-2026 academic year brings with it eleven new Bonner students and thirteen new Canale students eager to learn best practices for community collaboration and social impact, and to apply that knowledge with community partners in our county of Franklin and in the three surrounding counties of Grundy, Marion, and Coffee.
Similar to the previous spring, the Bonner applicant pool for the class of 2029 Bonner Leaders elicited twice the number of applicants while also offering the most experience seen yet as servant and campus leaders in high school.
“While I never want to say no to a student interested in service, I feel a real sense of hope for the future having such a large cohort of passionate and committed service leaders applying to Bonner. They will be the next generation of civic leaders catalyzing change around community challenges,” reports Robin Hille Michaels, Director of Service Internships.
The Class of 2029 Bonner Leaders hail from small towns in Tennessee to much further locales in Bangladesh, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates. They are Eagle Scouts, pilots, college athletes, and first generation college students, who completed hundreds of hours of service, and won culinary awards in high school.
Our newest additions to the Canale cohort are almost entirely sophomores having applied during the spring of their freshmen year. As current Sewanee students, they bring to the program a rich and varied background on campus as researchers, Hippocrates Fellows, POSSE students, themed house directors, journal editors, SOP trip leaders, presidents of student organizations, SGA members, and Carey Fellows.
Together, these Bonner and Canale students join the larger cohort of 67 Bonner/Canale Leaders, students who represent an incredible cross-section of the many kinds of diversity one finds in Sewanee’s student body. Yet, they are all united by the shared value of service and a desire to lead others in this work.
They build community, an identity as servant leaders, a sense of purpose and belonging, and confidence in their effectiveness as civic agents through weekly training and reflection. Working with thirty-eight partners and projects, Bonners and Canales collaborate with a wide range of service opportunities, reinforcing the lesson that any student, in any major, can find a way to serve.
Visit our website to find out more about the Bonner Leader program, its application process, and hear reflections from graduating Bonners and Canales.
