Mississippi State administrators recently approved the addition of a minor in leadership to the university’s curriculum. The minor will be available to freshmen and transfer students and is part of a larger leadership continuum established by Mississippi State President Robert “Doc” Foglesong.”We’ve drawn on a number of areas that have leadership as a common quality and created a minor,” said associate provost Jerry Gilbert.
According to Gilbert, each student will select one course in each of three core categories: ethics, social science and communication.
The next three classes will come from a list covering the areas of agriculture, arts and sciences, business, education, engineering and forest resources.
All three classes can be taken from one area to give the minor an individual approach, Gilbert said.
The last hour of the minor consists of “experiential learning” through an internship in which students will provide services while getting hands-on experience, Gilbert said. By using existing courses, the costs will be kept relatively low for the leadership minor program.
The other parts of the leadership continuum are the Appalachian Leadership Honors Program for sophomore and junior MSU students, “Day One” leadership experience for freshmen and a “Young Guns” program for students between their junior and senior years of high school.
“The focus [of the leadership continuum] is on the experience of changing the way students view their role in the world,” said Cade Smith, director of the Appalachian Leadership Honors Program.
Students will focus on speech, writing, ethics and values during the first year of the minor, Smith said. The focus of the second year is applied leadership.
“The ‘Day One’ leadership learning community will consist of about 200 freshmen students who will all live in the new co-residential Cresswell [Hall],” Cade said. “All students will be taking a two-hour leadership forum that will be taught by Grisham master teachers Tom Carskadon, Allison Pearson and Melissa Moore.”
The students will also be divided into pods and then further into action teams, Smith said.
Each action team will participate in a service learning project, similar to a community service project but lasting longer and applying basic calculations that will promote community awareness.
Because the continuum is in its beginning stages, Smith describes the process as challenging.
“We’re continuously reassessing and looking at how to do things differently and how to do them more efficiently,” Smith said.
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Administration adds leadership minor
Rebekah Goolsby
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February 23, 2007
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