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Vessels, Upchurch to teach Leadership students

Ed Vessels and Dr. Rick Upchurch will teach the Huntington County Leadership Academy for the second consecutive year.

The academy is currently registering students for the 2010 session, which begins in January.

Classes take place every other Wednesday morning from Jan. 6, 2010, through May 12, 2010. The classes are being held at the Habecker Dining Commons at Huntington University. Instruction time is from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., except the first class, which will be held from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. A light breakfast will be available starting at 8 a.m. for all of the classes.

Vessels is a former operational executive and general manager for Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC, a member of the Knorr-Bremse Group. After retiring from Bendix after 31 years of service, he founded HiValu Leadership with the goal of developing future leaders and providing strategic consulting services to organizations and individuals.

Vessels teaches leadership courses at the university level and is a requested speaker at professional and civic events. He holds an undergraduate degree from Bowling Green State University and a master's degree in business administration from Ohio State University.

Upchurch is the director of the Huntington University EXCEL Program for Adults. Before being appointed to this position in 2008, he served as associate vice president for adult and online education at Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio. He held this position for more than nine years and during that time won the university's administrator of the year award. He has taught college courses in leadership, teaching and preaching, Old Testament, computers in ministry and online education.

Upchurch has been the senior pastor at four churches as well as a Christian school chief administrator and a youth pastor. He holds a doctor of ministry degree from Drew University, a master of arts degree in religion and a bachelor of arts degree in biblical literature from Olivet Nazarene University. He completed post-graduate work at Nazarene Theological Seminary.

Huntington County Leadership hosts an academy once a year from January through May. The academy has been holding classes to help build leaders in the workplace and in the community since 1994.

The application for the 2010 academy is available via the Web site www.huntingtoncountyleadership.org or by calling Jason Parsons at 359-1559. Applications should be completed and sent to PO Box 562, Huntington, IN 46750. If there are not 13 students registered for the 2010 academy by Dec. 31, the class will be canceled.