McCormick Becomes New Academic Home of the Center for Leadership

The Center for Leadership at Northwestern has a new academic home at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. McCormick will host the Center's academic offerings, serve as a springboard for the Center connections with the Northwestern community, and provide faculty appointments to its leadership team.

The Center for Leadership started in 1990 as the Undergraduate Leadership Program. For 20 years, the program provided a popular undergraduate certificate program in leadership. More than 2500 students at Northwestern have participated in the Undergraduate Leadership Program.

In 2009, the Division of Student Affairs, The Graduate School, and the Provost funded a competitive Leadership Fellowship for advanced PhD students and high potential staff. The first cohort of fellows — including three McCormick graduate students — is halfway through the yearlong program. During the year participants learn how to effectively coach and develop undergraduates for leadership positions, participate in workshops and seminars, and are placed in a leadership project.

The addition of the fellowship program allows the program to serve more students through a range of new services. It also led to the establishment of the Center for Leadership which serves as an umbrella for ULP, the Leadership Fellowship, and other programs.

"We're excited to join McCormick because we think that leadership will complement the other offerings at the school," says Adam Goodman, director of the Center. "McCormick students will be called upon to be leaders in their careers, and so it's important for the school to introduce them to the concepts of effective leadership throughout their education."

"The Center for Leadership is an excellent addition to the curricular and extracurricular activities offered to our students," says Dean Julio M. Ottino. "Combined with other new initiatives at McCormick, such as the Segal Design Institute and the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship, we are building offerings to create whole-brain™ engineers. Our students emerge with deep technical knowledge, which is at the heart of engineering, but we must also instill leadership, entrepreneurship, and design skills into their thinking processes in order to prepare them to have maximum impact on the world."

Visit the Center for Leadership web site.