The lake sits quietly reflecting mountain ridgelines like a polished mirror, inviting students and educators to tell the truth about what they care about. Each fall, they arrive at Lake Junaluska carrying notebooks and questions, and they leave carrying hopeful plans with answers. Sullivan Weekend gathers three streams into one current – the Ignite Retreat, the Faculty Forum, and the Fellows Summit – so that purpose has a place to take root and grow.

Ignite Retreat — learn to move from spark to stewardship

By Friday night, you can hear the sound of rolling bags and introductions in the lobby. Ignite Retreat is a three-day immersion for students who want their lives to mean more than routine. The weekend favors the practical over the performative: small groups, working sessions, and coach-guided experiments that turn a good intention into a first prototype, a first conversation, a first next step.

Ignite asks three questions that sound simple until you try to answer them honestly: What calls to you? Who is already doing good work to learn from and join? What is the smallest courageous step you can take this month? Across the weekend, you’ll test answers in workshops that help you find language for your values, interview stakeholders, map allies, and build momentum without the drama. It isn’t about grand gestures; it’s about the ordinary craft of changemaking: done with care, done together.

Logistics: Fall Ignite runs October 24–26, 2025 at Lake Junaluska. Registration closes September 26; tickets are $575 and include meals and housing for the weekend (students share doubles; faculty/staff get private rooms). Many partner campuses cover all or part of the cost for their students—ask your campus representative early.

2) Faculty Forum — a weekend for the craft of teaching

Faculty arrive with the same hope as their students: to align what they teach with what the world actually needs. The Faculty Forum (our faculty/staff retreat) is not a conference of distant panels; it treats teaching as a craft to be shared: lesson ideas passed down, rubrics traded, cautions offered.

Friday begins with arrivals and a shared table before a welcome from Jody Holland, Director of Sullivan Fellows & Faculty, who frames the weekend around Community, Content, and Care. The tone is relational, not performative; the conversation stretches past the hour and into the optional fire-and-s’mores gathering with students outdoors, where colleagues meet the young people they’ll be rooting for all year.

Saturday morning, Dr. Keith Boyd (Brenau University) offers a simple grammar for learning resilience, the DEFEAT Plan, so first-years and seniors alike can practice reflective adaptability when a draft, an exam, or a pitch falls short. After a short break, Dr. David Harkins (Belmont University) turns the lens toward self-awareness and social impact, with prompts that draw out the “changemaker within” and anchor it to disciplinary outcomes.

After lunch, Natalie Sweet (Lincoln Memorial University) walks faculty from vision to impact, mentoring students through grant proposals for community-engaged projects inside a single semester. The afternoon becomes a design-thinking lab led by Wendy Seligmann (Warren Wilson College), whose Backpack Challenge shows how to introduce creative problem-solving in a single class meeting without sacrificing rigor. Dinner resets the pace before an evening keynote by followed by a campus liaison meeting with Jody Holland for those coordinating Sullivan programming back home.

Sunday turns toward models you can bring home. Dr. Tim Durham (Ferrum College) shares how Controlled Environment Agriculture can become a living classroom and a habit of self-sufficiency. Dr. J. Ian Norris (Berea College) closes with practical ways to cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset across disciplines and into the community. By late morning, bags are packed and syllabi marked up; the weekend’s best outcomes are quiet: clearer scaffolding for assignments, a new colleague to call, a renewed patience for the work.

Logistics: The Forum runs October 24–26, 2025 alongside Ignite at Lake Junaluska. Registration is $575 and the deadline is September 29. Sponsored tickets are often available for faculty and staff from Sullivan schools so check with your liaison.

3) Fellows Summit — practicing Agency, Relationships, and Contribution

If Ignite is the spark, the Fellows Summit is the steady flame. It is intentionally distinct from Ignite, built for current and incoming Sullivan Fellows committed to practicing leadership as a craft in their communities. Across the weekend, Fellows explore and apply the ARC Leadership Model, a framework for developing changemakers who are self-aware, collaborative, and action-oriented.

What Fellows Gain

  • Agency — the ability to make intentional choices, reflect on growth, embrace challenge, and name a compelling vision for the future. Fellows draft a short leadership manifesto and map a month of small, testable commitments tied to real campus needs.
  • Relationships — skills to communicate with clarity, listen actively, work across cultures, and integrate diverse perspectives. Fellows practice coalition-building with stakeholder maps and peer-coaching circles that make accountability feel like friendship.
  • Contribution — the capacity to co-create solutions, manage resources creatively, take ownership of results, and remain resilient when the work is hard and slow. Fellows prototype toward measurable outcomes, document progress, and assemble artifacts for an e-portfolio that travels into internships and first roles.

Fellows leave with a plan they can read on Monday, a cohort they can count on, and a renewed sense that leadership is less a title than a way of moving through the world. (For the broader Fellows program overview, including the multi-year arc and annual gatherings, see the Fellows page at Sullivan Fellows – Sullivan Foundation.)

Making the weekend affordable

We want cost to be the least interesting part of your decision. Many university partners cover the ticket price for students to attend the Ignite Retreat; start with your campus Sullivan representative. Faculty and staff at Sullivan schools are often eligible for sponsored tickets as well so ask even at this late date.

Why this weekend matters

During Sullivan Weekend students find their footing, faculty sharpen their tools, Fellows compose their commitments to a community that holds them to their best selves. The mountains do their work; so does Sullivan and its team. And on Sunday, the mountain and lake are unchanged perhaps, but plans begin to move and change is underway!

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