As part of a foundational leadership course on cultural proficiency doctoral students enrolled in Le Moyne College’s Executive Leadership Ed.D. Program are required to develop a community outreach project. This project is designed to test each cohort’s ability to creatively meet the needs of the community and develop a plan for supporting local organizations with action research. Each cohort in this new interdisciplinary leadership program, the first doctoral study program ever at this institution, has satisfied this requirement by conducting research to support local organizations after being presented with predetermined options for collaboration by program faculty and administration. However, in 2023 students from Cohort IV reported a strong desire to select an organization of their choosing after the completion of their project. In this session, we will explore lessons learned from collaborations between community organizations and post-traditional students enrolled in leadership development programs. This discussion has implications for curriculum design for leadership developers, educational leaders, doctoral study, and interdisciplinary programming, and will serve as a critical analysis on project design for publicly engaged scholars. This session contributes to the conference’s focus on global issues in education and research with a review of public scholarship towards cultural organizing and collaboration in higher education. Further, this session will produce an enhanced creativity for imagining new possibilities and a higher level of commitment leading to long-term sustainable efforts of collaboration for leadership students and all programs invested in promoting these types of efforts. Implications of this project will lead to a more profound impact on the organizations we serve, and an increased sense of individual and collective agency for graduate students.

Speaker: Jonathan Damiani

Published in: London International Conference on Education (LICE-2024)

• Date of Conference: 4-6 November 2024
• DOI: 10.20533/LICE.2024.0001
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-74-7
• Conference Location: St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK