MBA 560 Stewardship, Innovation, and Social Entrepreneurship (3 SH)
Organizations, and people who manage them, shape our world. Those who understand and master innovation, stewardship and social entrepreneurship increase their effectiveness as civic leaders and as leaders in their own chosen field. This multidisciplinary theory and practice course provides students with a deeper appreciation for how we as individuals can make a difference as organizational stewards in co-creating the future for ourselves and for others.
MOL 541-542 Mentorship Program (2 SH)
Students will be paired with mentors from the business community to meet at least every other month during each semester. The pairs will be provided with questions to guide their discussions, but pairs are encouraged to discuss any leadership-related topic that students are experiencing at work or with regard to the program material. Students will collaborate with their mentors to develop a final project that summarizes their mentoring experience, or an aspect of the experience
MOL 600 Developing Healthy Organizations: Team Building & Collaboration (3 SH)
The focus of this course is skill development for working with others in the organization and outside the organization to accomplish shared goals. Topics include effective non-violent communication, the formation and development of teams, working with boards, appreciative inquiry, and interest-based negotiation.
MOL 620 Transformative Leadership in Dynamic Contexts (3 SH)
This course explores the newest dimensions and challenges of leadership that strengthen and extend leadership skills through practice in rapidly changing and complex, diverse, multi- generational, multi-cultural and multi-dimensional systems, such as health care, government, education, non-governmental organizations and multi-national for-profit organizations.
MOL 680 Sustainable Organizations for the Common Good (3 SH)
This course integrates the three pillars of the MAOL program; management, leadership and stewardship for organizational effectiveness and serving the common good. It includes an eight-day residency designed to engage students as reflective practitioners and invite them to develop an openness to new ways of experiencing and thinking about the world through interactions and learning in a different setting and culture. A core value of the program is global citizenship, recognizing that organizations are interdependent and mutually accountable to local, national, and global communities; this suggests that a global perspective is important for today’s business and organizational leaders.
OLS 510 Leadership and Management for the Common Good (3 SH)
Students will study contemporary and forecasted societal stresses—from community level to global—and learn of the critical role of organizations in both contributing toward, and helping to mitigate, these stresses broadly classified as ecological, social, and economic. Students will then learn a broad range of organizational leadership and management theories, styles, and practices to identify approaches to leading people, systems, and organizations in ways that bring restoration, that offer hope, and that work toward promoting the common good.
OLS 515 Introduction to Leadership Studies (3 SH)
The course is an overview of various leadership theories, examining models of leadership, philosophies of leadership and different leadership styles. The advantages and disadvantages of various approaches will be studied.
OLS 530 Organizational Behavior (3 SH)
All organizations are organic, interconnected systems that take on a life of their own regardless of the individuals that occupy various roles in the system. Leaders need to understand their organizational systems and the behavior of those systems if they hope to effectively lead or change them. This course will explore organizational behavior and organizational development from a systems perspective, including concepts of change and conflict. It will rely heavily on case studies and student participation.
OLS 540 Managerial Finance and Accounting I (3 SH)
Managers and executives carry fiduciary responsibility for their organizations; it is therefore imperative that they know how to read financial statements, analyze financial health, assess financial risks, and communicate this knowledge effectively to others. The course emphasizes the role of the manager relating to finance and accounting through the analysis of quantitative information largely at the conceptual level. Topics include financial governance, understanding and reading financial statements, financial statement analysis, cost behavior, breakeven analysis, budgeting, balanced scorecard, working capital management, and the use of short-term cash planning. The overall aim is to improve organizational decision-making based on financial, social, and ecological metrics.
OLS 560 Leadership Seminar (3 SH)
This course provides students with exposure to writings (both contemporary and classical) that address a wide variety of issues in leadership. The primary aim of the course is to offer students opportunities to engage in thought provoking and critical discussion of leadership issues.
OLS 665/670 Project Management and Grant Writing/Intrapreneurship (3 SH)
Most organizations manage their work and accomplish their missions through a multitude of projects. Organizational success takes effective management skills to not only manage individual projects but also direct the web of complex programs of multiple, interrelated projects, skillfully working with diverse stakeholders, demanding deadlines, and available resources. Focusing on the promotion of leadership for the common good as a project manager adds another level of complexity.
Course participants will improve their capacity to balance the art and science of managing projects by building technical competencies, adopting practices of leadership and self-management, and focusing on leadership for the common good competencies.
During the last full class period each student will be expected to present their project plan to the class Presentations will likely be time-limited and as such will focus on knowledge of the material and delivery of the “elevator pitch” more than on the depth of plan presented.
PAX 615 Leading Organizational Change (3 SH)
Using a case study approach, this course engages students in role playing and teams to explore the challenges of leading organizational change through a variety of scenarios in for-profit, not-for-profit, and NGO settings. Students will focus on their own case studies as well as those provided by the instructor. (Prerequisite: Organizational Behavior)