Curriculum

Students first learn how to understand and develop themselves as leaders. Grounded in understanding various leadership concepts (e.g., authentic leadership, strengths-based leadership, inclusive leadership), students engage in dialogue, reflection, and feedback to develop their own personal leadership abilities. Students also learn how to conduct leadership coaching with others with whom they work, mentor, advise, supervise, or teach. Students apply their understanding to create a personal leadership development plan and design leadership initiatives they could use as professionals.

Students explore history, theory, and administrative frameworks of internationalization in higher education organizations. Through case studies, briefings and other practical exercises, students realize the role of administrators and institutional leaders in creating internationalization agendas and partnerships with offices inside and outside of the university. Institutional strategy will be considered in the context of external forces—for example, world/regional crises or the priorities of non-university actors. Transformative partnership models and new approaches to internationalization will be studied, and students will become more prepared to successfully lead within the university or other organizations by gaining familiarity with their own intercultural communication skills.

Students learn how to lead initiatives that advance the mission of higher education organizations and support the diverse identities of stakeholders (e.g., students, faculty, staff, alumni). We begin by reflecting on the intersection of our identities and how this affects our positionality. We apply this understanding to how we recognize U.S.-based racism (e.g., bias, power, privilege, marginalization) and its impact on individuals and higher education organizations. With insight from higher education professionals who promote diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice in their work, students assimilate this knowledge to propose initiatives (e.g., college access, student and employee orientation, classroom teaching and learning, mentoring, policy). Students will gain reflective tools and critical analysis skills to address other systems of oppression (e.g., sexism, ableism, classism, xenophobia, homophobia) in organizations.

Students develop foundational knowledge of how to understand U.S. laws and ethical principles commonly associated with higher education. We explore, reflect, and critique current and emerging legal issues that higher education professionals navigate, such as duty of care, constitutional and civil rights, athletics and Title IX compliance, discrimination, student records and discipline, campus safety, and study abroad. We learn how to work with legal professionals and other colleagues to address and resolve legal matters. We also critically analyze common ethical dilemmas (e.g., academic freedom, conflicts of interest, fairness and equity) that higher education professionals face.

Students are introduced to the financial structure of colleges and universities and the impact of budget activities on areas of planning and operations within an institution. We explore developing institutional and departmental financial plans and designing budgets to implement those plans. Through a pragmatic approach, our focus is on long-term finance strategies, budgetary approaches, budget-making, and resource allocation. We assess how environmental factors (e.g., enrollment trends, government funding, geographical need for jobs) impact colleges and universities by institution type (e.g., community college, liberal arts college, university). We also enhance our ability to communicate about issues related to budget and finance in higher education. In this course we use introductory Excel to add, subtract, multiply, and divide when calculating budgets.

Students examine ways that administrators perform effective, high-quality program assessments in a variety of higher education-related environments. We develop a foundational understanding of the scholarship of assessment and a framework for thinking about how professionals conduct assessment successfully to promote educational quality. Students explore data uses and discuss analysis methods. We also explore the larger public policy context that brings assessment to the forefront of the U.S. higher education agenda. Students apply their understanding through developing an assessment plan (e.g., program curriculum, student orientation, faculty initiatives, international partnerships), which could be used to improve effectiveness of a program, department, institution, or higher education-related organization.