Graduate Studies in Leadership
The graduate studies programs in leadership are designed for working professionals and provide a deep foundation of problem-based learning about leadership from many different perspectives.
Wartburg offers two graduate programs in leadership:
- Graduate Leadership Certificate (complete in one year)
- Master of Arts in Leadership (complete in two years)
These programs can be applied to any field and are designed to help you explore how you are called to lead and can enhance your own ability to navigate personal leadership challenges. You will be mentored and receive a high level of faculty support as you progress through your program.
Program Benefits
- Advance your career
- Earn a professional credential
- Create a summative portfolio of work
- Grow leadership abilities
- Sharpen professional skills
- Collaborate with a faculty mentor
- Complete the certificate in one year or the M.A. in two years
- M.A. students implement a project within an organizational context
Leadership for Public Purpose
Wartburg College is one of only 25 schools nationwide and the only one in Iowa to earn a Carnegie Elective Classification for Leadership for Public Purpose.
Questions about the program?
Contact Dr. Michael Gleason, director of the Institute for Leadership Education.
Make your community better.
Wartburg College defines leadership as “taking responsibility for our communities and making them better through public action.” Community, in this context, can be broadly defined to include employment community, a spiritual community, and a geographic community, etc. Understanding the relationship of your role in various communities is critical for personal satisfaction and effective leadership.
Program Details
Faculty Mentoring
The programs are designed to help individuals explore how they are called to lead and how they can enhance their own ability to navigate personal leadership challenges. The programs place a strong emphasis on application of the material in an applied setting (for example, the learner’s place of employment), starting with identifying and sharing a leadership challenge they are facing. Various course assignments and portfolio artifacts will be developed pertinent to the applied setting. The programs offer mentoring and a high level of support for individuals as they progress through the program.
The Portfolio
The construction of a portfolio throughout the course offerings serves as formative and summative documentation, which provides an integrative framework to the program as a whole. Each course contains assignments that comprise parts of the overall portfolio. Each learner builds a summative portfolio over the course of the program with advising from instructors.
The culmination of the master’s degree is a capstone experience in which students enhance their leadership portfolios, implement (or further implement) a project within an organizational context, and demonstrate learning through a written product that integrates knowledge with courses.
Upon completion of the master’s degree, the learner will have demonstrated the following abilities and attributes:
- Express a personal leadership identity, maximizing on personal effectiveness.
- Analyze complex environments and the need for change.
- Evaluate the role innovation and entrepreneurship play in organizational effectiveness within economic, social and political environments.
- Develop knowledge, skills and commitments that foster stewardship of human and material resources.
- Translate the leadership development process through the creation of a portfolio reflective of the leadership journey.
- Articulate reflective analyses on what it means to live a life of purpose, distinguishing a life of success and a life of significance.
| Course Sequence |
| Leadership Intensive Seminar: Integrating Mind, Body, Spirit |
| Communication Theory and Ethics |
| Leadership History and Theory |
| Inclusive Leadership |
| Leadership Resource Management |
| Portfolio Summary and Leadership Intensive |
| Understanding Adaptive Issues |
| Leadership Organizational Change and Innovation |
| Applied Leadership Project |
| Leadership Capstone |
Courses are developed in a condensed/accelerated format that allows students to take one course at a time.
I have enjoyed learning and working with the other members in our cohort. They have helped me not only with assignments for school, but also in my personal life by celebrating things and giving advice.“
Allison K.
Teacher
Ready for more?