by: Cylia Baggett, Reporter

There is a cult at Berry College.

Or at least that is the joke about the Winshape College Program found tucked away at the back of Berry College’s Mountain Campus.

The highly selective and tightly-knit Winshape College Program has been located at Berry College since 1984. Truett and Jeannette Cathy, founders of Chick-fil-A, created the scholarship program to be a place to “shape winners.” They planned to do this by giving the students service and leadership opportunities while being intentionally mentored in a Christian community.

By 2021, the program had grown to include residential programs at several other universities. These programs were discontinued in 2024, when Winshape decided to return to focusing exclusively on the residential program on Berry College’s campus.

Amber Cornett, a junior in the program, explains its appeal. “I was looking for other ways [to] make Berry cheaper, and [it was] a Christian scholarship program, so it was right up my alley.”

The Winshape College Program offers a $16,000 scholarship to the Berry students it accepts.

Life on Mountain Campus

Winshape College Program (WSCP) students do not live on Berry’s main campus but on the college’s Mountain Campus, in Friendship and Pilgrim Hall residences. This distance separates the WSCP students from their non-WSCP peers and allows them to form a close community with each other.

Alongside being neighbors and fellow program members, they’re also placed into “core groups.” These are Bible studies of three to four underclassmen paired with an upperclassman who is dedicated to mentoring them both communally and individually.

In combination with their mentorship, students also attend “catalytic events.” These Winshape-sponsored trips where participants learn their strengths, grow their spiritual gifts, and discover their life purposes through team-building activities and introspection.

Community Impact Teams

During their third year in the program, students transition to being a involved in a Community Impact Team. Community Impact Teams or CITs are meant to focus on volunteering with specific non-profits, churches, and faith organizations.

While the list varies between sources, there are several places where WSCP students are serving:

• Young Lives is a program where volunteers provide childcare for teen and young moms while the mothers are supported through a Bible study and offered free diapers or wipes.
• In the “Take and Eat” CIT group, students prepare and share a home-cooked meal with the homeless.
• Vintage Evangelism works with widows, sending volunteers to share a coffee, meal, board game, or hobby with them and spend time with them during a time when they may not have many family members remaining.
• Young Life is a club dedicated to supporting high school students through Bible studies and one-on-one discipleship throughout the week.
• Similarly, the students who have partnered with the Boys and Girls Club provide childcare and community to at-risk children.
• While there are even more groups, in the case that there is not a team already working with a community partner, students can also volunteer with their local church through the Alternative Ministries CIT group.

What Serving Looks Like

Amber Cornett, a CIT group leader, has been working with Young Lives since her freshman year.

She volunteers once a month with her team to provide childcare for young moms- preparing the rooms they use, caring for the children, and ensuring that the check-in and out process goes smoothly.

She describes her service as so, “We were serving the moms by holding their babies and playing with them, but it just doesn’t feel like work at all.”

Ellie Davenport is also a CIT group leader. She works with Young Life, the high school version of Young Lives, where she supports high school students. Ellie leads bi-weekly events like Bible studies and hangouts, helping teenagers build community.

As well as leading large group activities, she disciples and mentors students personally. She not only works with Young Life but also leads the Alternative Ministries CIT group. Her responsibilities there include checking in with and organizing WSCP students who are serving in their local churches.

2024 Changes

The Winshape College Program is only one of several programs funded by the Winshape Foundation, Chick-fil-A’s nonprofit organization. The College Program was downsized by Winshape executives in 2024. During this transition, the residential programs on other college campuses were shut down, and Berry’s WSCP staff were let go.

Students’ explanation of why this change happened is that the larger Winshape Foundation didn’t want to continue spending the amount of funds that they currently were on the College Program.

The program, which previously had a considerably large staff, was run by one man last year. A smaller staff slowly began being integrated late last summer.

This school year was the first year the new staff were fully assembled to begin running the program.

Audra Donnell, a current junior in the program, described the experience, “When the change happened, it was abrupt. And it blindsided literally everyone. It even blindsided the leaders. And so, a lot of people were hurt in the process, and I mean, I was hurt in a way, too, because I loved those people so much already. But everyone was hurt in [being] disappointed as well, because there was so much promised to us that we no longer got, that we were no longer being given, and we weren’t being poured into like we were promised, or that we had been already.”

According to Donnell, there were previously eight people doing the work of two current staff members.

The scaling down of the program’s staff has had some effects. All three of the students interviewed commented on the lack of support CIT groups have had over the past two years.

Previously, staff worked with CIT groups in a variety of ways:

• supporting them one-on-one
• helping them develop leadership skills
• providing funding or supplies
• leading support groups of underclassmen.

Now there is no specific staff member to guide CIT leaders. CIT groups have been left to run and organize themselves without supervision.

As a CIT leader herself, Cornett spoke about her experience with the new staff. “They dropped the ball, and kind of forgot CITs even existed, basically, this year.”

Main issues include the lack of responsibility and structure for upperclassmen with service requirements. “There’s a quote where guidelines and rules allow you to live in freedom. With no guidelines, everyone within goes into chaos, because there’s nothing upholding people to what they’ve said they were gonna live by.”

What Comes Next for the Program

Ray Millsap is a member of the updated Winshape staff. His role is to personally disciple and mentor the boys in the program, as well as teach and lead. He was recently assigned to head CIT groups.

When talking about the changes that the program had undergone recently, he shared how he wants to improve the way the staff supports upperclassmen as they volunteer.

“What’s cool about next semester is that we will do two things: one, we’re gonna increase our partnerships. I’m hoping to, at minimum, double the number of people that we’re with, and then also introduce small groups of students, and recruit our first and second years to be support groups. So, we’ll probably be going from a thirty-person total to what I hope is close to eighty or ninety.”

CIT leaders are currently partnering with a staff mentor from the broader Winshape Foundation, but those meetings are self-led. In the future, Millsap has several ways he wants to update how CIT groups are run.

He will bring back support teams of underclassmen, who he expects to volunteer twice a month. CIT leaders will keep a Winshape Foundation mentor but also will have weekly one-on-one check-ins with him.

He also plans to start training CIT groups in meetings called the CIT Initiative.

“What that’ll look like is the leader will have been equipped with some basic leadership principles, and then [the CIT groups] go through this initiative as a team, and that team’s leader will bring forth their vision [for the group]. They’ll identify some goals that are measurable, that they want to accomplish through that school year.”

Despite the challenges and upheavals in the program over the past three years, Davenport shared how her service had impacted her during her time at Berry.

“The main thing it’s emphasized is the importance of sacrifice. I’ve been sacrificed for so much [by] the other leaders that I got to know, and it’s urged me to […] think of myself less and be willing to serve in whatever ways. Even if it’s costly to me, it’s ultimately so rewarding.”