Leadership Isn’t Minor—But It Can Be

Abstract

Leadership educators looking to successfully create and implement an interdisciplinary leadership minor can often find themselves overwhelmed and apprehensive. Little exists to help guide our way as we attempt what often is an initial academic beachhead on campus. This paper explores the creation, implementation, and outcomes of a highly-successful leadership minor on a small, private, urban campus. Reflections are offered concerning the difficulties faced in gaining approval of the minor, the problems created if you are too successful, the importance and cost of mentoring, issues of gender and race, the importance of evaluation, and the necessity of constant collaboration. A practical step-by-step guide is offered as a possible exemplar for leadership educators plucky enough to bring a new leadership minor to campus.

TEACHING LEADERSHIP IN ‘MAJOR’ CONTEXTS: A ‘Minor’ Application

“…To this end, one best practice is making course content personally relevant to students and transferable to their lives and goals (McKim et al, 2015). Creating opportunities for students to explore and forge their identities (DiPaolo, 2016;Sorensen et al, 2016) such as via the Leadership Identity Model (Komives, Longerbeam, Owen, Mainella, & Osteen, 2006) is one such approach where a student ultimately aligns their leadership skills with future goals and integrates their leadership with their personal identity. The NLERA (Andenoro et al, 2013) challenges educators to draw more often upon such psychosocial, identity, and cognitive student development theories when creating leadership curricula.…”