Leadership Framework
LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY
Leadership is a process through which students can develop their capacity to become ethical and effective agents of change. Students move through this process building competencies and practicing skills to create positive social change. This process takes place within one’s community guided by self-knowledge, relationships, vision, and action. Every student has the potential to be a leader. Leadership development emphasizes the following tenets:
A SENSE OF POSSIBILITY
Ethical and effective leadership requires a commitment to living in a state of possibility, where there is a healthy sense of one's personal power to effect positive change.
SELF-AWARENESS
Ethical and effective leadership requires an awareness of one's self, one's identities, one's values, and one's place in the world.
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND CIVIC MINDEDNESS
Ethical and effective leadership requires a commitment to the welfare of others and an understanding of how power, privilege, and structural inequality operate in local and global contexts.
EMPATHIC AND RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIPS
Ethical and effective leadership requires a commitment to fostering empathy in one's self and others as a means of developing meaningful, inclusive, and reciprocal relationships in one's sphere of influence.
VISION
Ethical and effective leadership requires a commitment to fostering creative, collaborative, and synergistic visions that will promote positive social change.
ACTIONABLE PLANS
Ethical and effective leadership requires a commitment to collaboratively developing action-plans that are thoughtfully carried out in community.
REFLECTION AND ASSESSMENT
Ethical and effective leadership requires a commitment to engaging in both self-reflection of one's growth and assessment of one's progress and work. Evolution occurs through the application of self-reflection and assessment to enhancing and further developing one's leadership capacity.
RESOURCES
Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (2015). CAS professional standards for higher education (9th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Komives, S. R. & Wagner, W. (Eds.). (2009). Leadership for a better world: Understanding the social change model of leadership development (2nd Ed). San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass