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Pursuing the CALS Leadership Certificate will challenge you to:
The certificate was developed through joint efforts of the CALS Student Council and CALS faculty and staff – they recognized that our world and your profession need good leadership. As you seek this certificate you will gain the skills and knowledge you need to take action on issues that are important to you.
You will be asked to learn about nine leadership competencies. Leadership isn’t just learned inside the classroom – practicing it outside of the classroom is just as important – so you’ll be asked to do a lot of experiential learning. As you make progress in your learning, you’ll provide evidence which will be evaluated by a Leadership Mentor and by a faculty/staff committee. Ultimately, you’ll be issued a certificate by the College to recognize your learning in these nine competencies. This certificate will not appear on your transcript because you won’t receive academic credit for most or all of the experiential learning, and there are no required courses. But you will still be able to “market” what you’ve learned, just like you “market” other aspects of your degree, because you can include the certificate on your resume and it is backed by the authority of the faculty and staff of the College.
You may be surprised to know that there are almost as many definitions and approaches to leadership as there are people who write about it and practice it! Many of these definitions and approaches are different from the leadership we’re exposed to through the media. For example, have you considered that it’s possible to be a great leader without holding any formal power or being in a position of authority? Or did you know that you can be a highly effective leader without being outspoken or highly visible?
CALS faculty and staff, have agreed upon a core set of leadership skills and knowledge that any student can learn. Their consensus about what makes a good leader can be summarized as:
Good leaders know themselves, behave ethically, and work effectively with others to create positive change.
Most importantly, the faculty and staff agreed that all students have the capacity to learn the skills and knowledge necessary for effective leadership. This means that YOU (yes, you!) have the potential to become an effective leader!
You might be wondering whether you can be an effective leader without formally studying leadership. The answer can be yes—in fact, many great leaders did not have the opportunity to pursue a certificate like this one and learned about leadership only from experience. Clearly, experience is an excellent teacher, and that’s why there is a strong experiential component to this certificate. We can’t guarantee you will learn everything a leader needs to know by earning this certificate (in fact, learning about leadership is really a lifelong process), but we’re confident you’ll have a serious head start among your peers.