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ACADEMICS: Leadership Studies

Home > Academics > Majors > Leadership Studies > A Word from the Department

{ A Word from the Department }

Learning about Leading

For centuries, American liberal arts colleges have claimed to prepare graduates for positions of leadership. Yet when we launched the Leadership Studies Program at Ripon College in 1980, we found that undergraduate institutions had been paying little or no attention to the systematic study of leadership behavior within their academic courses. Since then, the field of leadership studies has grown significantly nationwide, and scholars in a broad variety of disciplines now are contributing to this exciting new field.

What good is leadership study? What do students take with them into their futures after contemplating the issues considered in leadership studies classes and participating in projects sponsored by the Program? One refrain echoed repeatedly by returning graduates is that the Leadership Studies Program provides both a broad framework for understanding a range of problems and issues that leaders face, and opportunities to work with team members on group projects. Courses and projects in leadership studies combine intellectual learning with measured experience in sensible risk-taking, interpersonal relationship-building and practical decision-making.

Another important aspect of both course work and team projects has to do with role-modeling and example setting. Our students not only study the lives and achievements of great, not-so-great, and disastrous figures throughout human history, they also have opportunities to interview practicing or retired leaders from virtually all walks of life and at all levels of public prominence. Finally, a primary goal of the Leadership Studies Program is to provide a focus for other disciplines within the Ripon curriculum, in the hope that our students will understand more fully how all the elements of a liberal-arts education complement each other.

Jack M. Christ
Director