Leadership Studies (Minor)
The 16-unit Minor in Leadership Studies is a multi-disciplinary program providing students the opportunity to study and practice leadership from multiple disciplines, including both theoretical and experiential components, emphasizing active learning and community service. Regardless of one's academic major, this minor seeks to improve a student’s abilities for leadership roles in their chosen field.
The minor in Leadership Studies will prepare students of all majors to study the qualities and skills of effective leaders and apply these concepts to improve their leadership behaviors and ethical decision making that facilitates constructive and effective change. The program seeks to educate students to be prepared to serve as leaders in their professions and in their community. The Leadership Studies Minor emphasizes ethical, cultural, historical, organizational, philosophical, political, psychological, and societal dimensions of leadership. Students will learn the nature of leadership, examine strategies for effecting change and practice ways to become a better leader in multicultural contexts.
The Center for Creative Leadership, a national best practice leadership center, proposes two levels of learning leadership skills from experience. The Leadership Studies Minor includes four components: theoretical, experiential, basic and advanced skill building.
Basic Leadership Skills: Effective communication, listening, assertiveness, providing constructive feedback, effective stress management, building technical competence, building effective relationships with peers and supervisors, setting goals, holding subordinates accountable, conducting meetings.
Advanced Leadership Skills: Delegating, managing conflict; negotiation; problem solving; improving creativity; diagnosing performance problems in individuals, groups and organizations; team building for work teams; building high performance teams; team building at the top; development planning; credibility; coaching; and empowerment.
The program offers many opportunities to practice leadership skills through both 1) Service Learning courses and 2) the Leadership Practice, which are described below:
Service Learning: The Leadership Studies Minor offers courses in Service Learning. The service learning course outcomes promote social responsibility, analysis of root causes and structural issues, respect for diverse backgrounds, cultural perspectives, and community voice. Service Learning courses integrate community engagement fully into the course content and themes.
Leadership Practice: Basic and Advanced Leadership Skills will be practiced in several courses offered in the program. All students will be engaged in a Leadership Practicum Project, which is embedded in the course entitled, “Leadership and Teams in Organizations”, required for all students in the minor. The course includes serving as a team member in a project serving an organization or a community change project. Students practice basic and/or advanced leadership skills as defined by the Center for Creative Leadership. The project-based learning is embedded in this course
Adult Degree Completion (ADC) Program: Students enrolled in the Adult Degree Completion baccalaureate programs may also complete the Minor in Leadership Studies. Adult Degree Completion (ADC) students may take any course approved in the current catalog for the Minor in Leadership Studies offered in the evenings.
The program is composed of courses offered by several of the University’s academic departments. NOTE: Students may use any combination of courses listed in a category to satisfy that category’s 4-unit requirement
Program Learning Outcomes
Students will demonstrate the ability to:
- Category 1: Leadership and Teams in Organizations: Examine and practice the prevailing leadership, followership and organizational behavior theories. Includes participation in a Leadership Practicum team project serving organizations who will serve as clients of the teams.
- Category 2: Planning and Leading Constructive Change: Analyze the tenets of change leadership and transformation of cultures from an historical, organizational, political, or societal perspective.
- Category 3: Effective Interpersonal and Group Communications: Compare the major theoretical and experiential approaches to effective interpersonal and group leadership communication.
- Category 4: Ethical Leadership in Communities and Societies: Analyze the behaviors for, and challenges of, applying ethical leadership principles for socially responsible decision making at a variety of levels and in diverse contexts.
Leadership Studies Minor Requirements
Four units are required in each of the following five categories for a total of 16 units:
| Category 1: Leadership and Teams in Organizations: Theory and Practice |
4 |
| Category 2: Planning and Leading Constructive Change |
4 |
| Category 3: Effective Interpersonal and Group Communication: Leadership and the Self |
4 |
| Category 4: Ethical Leadership in Communities and Societies |
4 |
| Total Leadership Studies Minor |
16 units |
Category 1: Leadership Theory and Teams in Organizations (4 units)
Compare the prevailing leadership, team, followership and organizational behavior theories applied as a leader and team member in a project serving a community or business clients. Consider leadership skills and styles, self-awareness and an orientation toward others, the ethical responsibilities of leadership, managing conflict and facilitating group decision-making, and the importance of vision and initiative to achieving constructive change and productivity in organizations in our global society.
Topics Include:
- Leadership vs Management; Interaction of relationships and tasks and team work
- Leadership Traits vs Behaviors; Leadership Skills; Leadership Styles; Contingency and Situational Leadership, Transformational, Authentic and Servant Leadership
- 360 leadership effectiveness review and reflection
- Ethical influence and power dynamics in effecting change
- Importance of vision and initiative to achieving ethical and constructive organizational change in diverse cultures (ethnic, gender and geographic)
- Organizational structures’ impact on teams and effectiveness; Team and followership theories and applied to team contract in a project
- Facilitating decision-making in teams and organizations
- Job design and organization development techniques and strategies
Take the following course to complete this category: (4 units)
| BUS 4046 | Leadership and Teams in Organizations: Theory and Practice | 4.00 units |
Category 2: Planning and Leading Constructive Change (4 units)
Focusing on the heart of leadership, change leadership considers inspiring and effecting positive change by individuals and/or groups in organizations, governments and society. Examine effective change by leaders and leadership practice from historical, organizational, political and/or social contexts.
TOPICS INCLUDE:
- Systemic change systems in organizational and/or societal change
- Effective, ineffective and innovative change movements
- Change theories from a variety of disciplinary perspectives
- Processes of planning from vision to action steps, and/or leadership actions supporting implementation of organizational and/or societal change
- How individuals and groups vary in their reaction to change
- Communication strategies in the change planning process
- Examine how individuals and groups vary in their reaction to change
- Constructive aspects of power in facilitating change
Select one 4-unit course below to satisfy completion of this category:
| ART 3812 | Art + Community | 4.00 units |
| ART 3814 | Art + Environment | 4.00 units |
| BUS 4070 | Advanced Management Practices and Negotiations | 4.00 units |
| BUS 4073 | Managing Not-For-Profit Organizations | 4.00 units |
| BUS 4080 | Socially and Environmentally Responsible Management | 4.00 units |
| CASC 3400 | Theory and Practice for Community Action and Social Change | 4.00 units |
| ENSC 3300 | Advanced Environmental Science | 3.00 units |
| ENSC 4000 | Conservation Biology | 3.00 units |
| NURS 4200 | Leadership and Nursing Care Management | 5.00 units |
| PHIL 2101 | The Power of Words: Culture, Conditioning | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2124 | Othering and Belonging | 4.00 units |
| POL 3012 | Religion and Politics | 4.00 units |
| POL 3300 | State and Local Politics and Policy | 4.00 units |
| POL 3304 | Political Parties and Interest Groups | 4.00 units |
| POL 3310 | Campaigns, Elections and Political Behavior | 4.00 units |
| POL 3430 | Environmental History and Law | 4.00 units |
| PSY 3048 | Cross Cultural Psychology | 4.00 units |
| PSY 3160 | Social Psychology | 4.00 units |
| PSY 4039 | Political Psychology | 4.00 units |
| RLGN 3012 | Religion and Politics | 4.00 units |
| PSY 4072 | Psychological Issues of Social Work | 4.00 units |
| RLGN 3076 | Religion & Social Movements | 4.00 units |
| RLGN 3381 | Religion and Globalization | 4.00 units |
| SOC 2004 | Latino Families in the United States | 4.00 units |
| SOC 3001 | Racial and Ethnic Issues | 4.00 units |
GPH 4210: Also applies to Category 4, but only applied in one category
Category 3: Effective Interpersonal and Group Communications (4 units)
Featuring theories of the self, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, communication patterns, human interactions and skill building to communicate your leadership message. Psychological and interpersonal approaches to leadership and behaviors in dyads, groups and teams in organizations and society leading to ethical goal achievement.
TOPICS INCLUDE:
- Critical thinking and written and oral l communication skills, persuasive public speaking and presentation skills, and active listening
- Cultural humility across race, age, gender, sexualities, disability, SES, and differences among local and global cultures
- Mediation, coaching and/negotiation skills
- Conflict resolution and prevention
- Self-awareness and self-management, relationship awareness and relationship management for effective interpersonal communication
- Motivation, persuasion, social influence, conformity
- Empowerment, group process, group-think and decision making
Select one 4-unit course below to satisfy completion of this category:
Category 4: Ethical Leadership in Communities and Societies (4 units)
Examines the impact of leadership in communities, cultures, governments, societies, and their institutional structures. Analyzes the challenges facing individuals, groups and organizations in pursuit of ethical behavior and socially responsible decision-making to effect social change at the individual, governmental, nonprofit and corporate level. Considers motivations, roles, conflicting values, and spheres of influence by individuals and groups on others. Analysis of the diversity of political structures and practices around the world are considered. The impact of ethical behaviors and actions related to various local and/or global organizational domains are examined.
TOPICS INCLUDE:
- Motivation, persuasion, social influence, conformity and obedience, small group dynamics, group process and decision making
- Social movements, empowerment, risk taking, roles, group think, political structures and practices
- Ethical and/or social justice considerations of contemporary political and socioeconomic dimensions of social change
- Civic engagement
- Stakeholder impacts
- Environmental sustainability and/or interrelationships between economic development and the environment
- Diversity of political structures and practices around the world
Select one 4-unit course below to satisfy completion of this category:
| BUS 3923 | Leadership in Action | 4.00 units |
| BUS 4073 | Managing Not-For-Profit Organizations | 4.00 units |
| BUS 4080 | Socially and Environmentally Responsible Management | 4.00 units |
| BUS 4406 | ADC: Corporate Social Responsibility, Law, Ethics | 3.00 units |
| CMS 3201 | Environmental Communication | 4.00 units |
| CMS 3601 | Public Relations & Marketing 1 | 4.00 units |
| ENGL 3016 | Performance Studies | 4.00 units |
| GPH 3500 | Global Environmental Health | 4.00 units |
| HONO 3505 | SL: Ethics from the Margins | 4.00 units |
| HONO 3109 | Healthcare Ethics and Equity | 4.00 units |
| HONO 3206 | Social Justice and Ethical Action | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2104 | Ethics from the Margins | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2105 | Ethics of Housing and Homelessness | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2106 | Ethics of Citizenship and Immigration | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2109 | Healthcare Ethics and Equity | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2110 | Environmental Ethics | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2114 | Ethics of New Technologies | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2123 | Ethical Being, Being Ethical | 4.00 units |
| PHIL 2520 | Self, Community and Ethical Action | 4.00 units |
| POL 3300 | State and Local Politics and Policy | 4.00 units |
| PSY 3160 | Social Psychology | 4.00 units |
| RLGN 3170 | Ecology and Religion | 4.00 units |
Courses designated as meeting Examined Life core will also meet Category 4
BUS 3923, CMS 3600: Also applies to Category 3, but only in one category
GPH 4210: Also applies to Category 2, but only applied in one category