Courses

With an emphasis on contexts characterized by digital technologies making people’s work and life more immediate, connected, convenient, and relevant to their needs, this course investigates the complex world of innovative thinking, customer choice, and shaping potential customers. Students will explore concepts relating to the role of innovation in helping consumers to solve problems, the dynamics generating future jobs, and metrics for understanding innovation and consumer behaviour. Attention will be given to how innovative leaders can act ethically and effectively to help people and organizations identify, analyze, and ultimately solve the world’s deepest problems in inventive and positive ways.

Students will be immersed in the world of innovation, leadership, and global change through personal engagement with leading organizations and leaders in the context of one or more global cities. Led by a faculty mentor, students will visit leading global organizations. Each organization visit will involve a pre-visit study on the organization as well as post-visit debriefing and analysis with the faculty mentor. Emphasis will be given to the analysis of innovative leadership practice at the individual and team levels.

Students are invited to use the discipline of leadership as a mode of inquiry to explore the relation between the leader as a person and the social world where the leader seeks to intervene. Emphasis is given to how a leader's awareness of human uniqueness and interconnectedness is practically expressed in, and informed by, social ways of relating respectfully to all others in order to create positive transformations in the workplace and society, locally, nationally, and globally.

Students are engaged in an experiential learning opportunity within a practical setting to apply knowledge and skills they have gained in their B.A. in Leadership studies. Applied projects are developed within the supervised environment of a business, non-profit agency, social service agency, or other institution related to the student's personal interests and future plans.

Students are engaged in an experiential learning opportunity within a practical setting to apply knowledge and skills they have gained in their B.A. in Leadership studies. Applied projects are developed within the supervised environment of a business, non-profit agency, social service agency, or other institution related to the student's personal interests and future plans.

Students are engaged in an experiential learning opportunity within a practical setting to apply knowledge and skills they have gained in their B.A. in Leadership studies. Applied projects are developed within the supervised environment of a business, non-profit agency, social service agency, or other institution related to the student's personal interests and future plans.

Students are engaged in an experiential learning opportunity within a practical setting to apply knowledge and skills they have gained in their B.A. in Leadership studies. Applied projects are developed within the supervised environment of a business, non-profit agency, social service agency, or other institution related to the student's personal interests and future plans.

The applied leadership project provides students with an opportunity in which to test and apply the skills learned in their practicum placement as well as to reflect on their own personal development as professionals. Students conduct their applied leadership project in a supervised business, nonprofit agency, social service agency, or institution related to their personal interests and future plans (preferably in the same setting as they completed their practicum). This self-directed, but practicum-facilitated project helps the students reflect on and integrate their knowledge with practical experience.

This introductory course provides an understanding of the philosophical and theoretical basis for leadership, including the participant’s stage of development. Major historical models for leadership are examined with special attention to servant leadership. Participants also examine ways of improving their own leadership skills through practical interactive group exercises.