The Power of Leadership in Learning

By Ed Finn, Executive Director, CITAL

I was fortunate to attend the 26th Annual International Leadership Association (ILA) Global Conference in Chicago, November 7-10. The impact of leadership in higher education cannot be overstated. In this article, I will mention just a few takeaways and implications that struck me as particularly timely.

The title of the conference was appropriately “Architects of Change: Leaders, Followers, & Communities,” which is very much in line with everyday leadership challenges. Before listing some of my other highlights, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the truly global nature of the conference and just how impactful engaging with other perspectives was. Some attendees took over 18 hours to travel, many coming from all over Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. 

With so many scholars and practitioners in one place, it was amazing how much of the conference spoke to infusing leadership into the colleges and universities, not just in curriculum but also organizationally. Here, I only highlight two sessions, but encourage you to review the full agenda linked above:

Building Access and Knowledge: The Role of Open Educational Resource (OER) Textbooks and Leadership   

This was a great session where authors of an open-source textbook Developing Human Potential: A Personal Approach to Leadership walked through the benefits and challenges of creating an OER:

• Benefits
  • Substantial savings to students (estimated at $310 million to date)
  • Written in community
  • Access is not only a financial consideration (PDF available)
  • Remixing (re-use of content with proper citation)
  • Increased representation and autonomy
• Challenges
  • Time Consuming
  • Copyright issues
  • Lack of some publisher resources (quiz banks, presentations)
  • Costs of setup and maintenance
  • Lack of compensation

In all of this, the presenters were well aware that being able to work with OER’s might not be for everyone. A primary suggestion was to engage with libraries to help with coordination of resources, as well as potential funding opportunities. Here at Valpo, the CCLIR has a whole library guide dedicated to Open Educational Resources, including specific OER Awards. These are tremendous opportunities to help kickstart a project. 

Carnegie Elective Classification for Leadership for a Public Purpose: Advancing DEIB in Higher Ed

Although I was well aware of Valpo receiving this grant, I learned a lot from this session. This was a presentation by Dean Karen Allen (College of Nursing and Health Professions) and Michael Chikeleze (Richard C. and Francelia A. Gozon University Chair in Values-Based Leadership) discussing the journey of how Valpo earned the classification (currently only comprising 25 institutions nationwide). Not only is leadership part of the Uplift Valpo strategic plan, but it is highly ingrained in our programs. One of the largest outcomes from this session, which was sharing with interested institutions how to successfully apply for the classification, was to answer the “why” question when submitting the application. At Valpo we model this by infusing leadership into the following programs:

• Majors & Graduate Programs
  • Healthcare Leadership
  • Master of Business Administration
  • Master of Healthcare Administration
• Minors
  • Leadership Development
  • Philanthropic Leadership & Service
  • Healthcare Leadership

It is worth noting that Valpo has taken an even more important step by incorporating leadership in the Valparaiso University Experience (VUE). Replacing Valpo CORE, this program provides the following learning objectives:

• Explore how values inform discourse
• Engage is respectful dialogue that both supports and challenges one’s ideas
• Use information effectively and ethically
• Exercise writing and reading as interconnected, multi-stage processes for evaluating and producing rhetorical discourse
• Examine how values, leadership, and service interconnect through small group or team based experiential learning

Although there were many other sessions that I personally attended, the overall tone of the conference was about the impact of leadership in learning, regardless of the context. Whether formal institutions like here at Valpo or in small group interactions, everyone has the ability and responsibility to be an active participant in the learning process. With the foundation that has been created through the curriculum, it is exciting to see what comes next.