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From the perspective of emergence, professors can facilitate and shape a class as a complex, adaptive, and living system. A case study illustrates phases of emergence in the classroom by tracing how a professor may use this perspective to empower students to share in the leadership of the classroom. Instead of presenting lessons, the professor facilitates emergent activity, creating a classroom structure where students practice leadership behaviors. In this classroom structure, the professor assumes the leadership roles of coach and facilitator. As a result students building the classroom culture together they connect with each other: they develop strong relationships, take initiative, and learn important lessons about leadership. This article concludes with design principles for establishing a classroom of shared leadership in any teaching environment in any subject.

This manuscript presents a process for students to identify, articulate, and refine their intrinsic assumptions and beliefs about leadership character virtues. A leadership virtue is a deep property of leadership character encompassing habituated thoughts, emotions, motivations, and intentions. Increasingly, scholars are calling for an exploration of character in leadership development. Accordingly, this exercise aims to help students develop greater self-awareness and deepen their intentions about the dimensions of character that are important to them, fostering a sense of introspection and personal growth.

This activity invites students to explore and practice virtues they may want to be known for as leaders. Specifically, this activity introduces students to the essential elements of any human virtue: benefits, behaviors, mindset, emotions and balance.

Students who complete this exercise feel a stronger sense of purpose in whom they strive to become leaders.

The most important value of this exercise is the holistic framework for unpacking the different dimensions of character virtue. The exploration of virtues in leadership education needs to account for the complexity of character virtues.

This approach is consistent with calls from scholars in virtue ethics and positive social science for more robust theories of virtues. Every student will benefit from the opportunity to reflect on their assumptions about beliefs about how to develop and exercise leadership character. Leaders may repeat this exercise as they mature and their character is tested.

In conducting a multi-disciplinary, multi-degree study of all 83 higher education accrediting organizations in the United States and the 605 academic programs associated with them, our goal was to uncover patterns in the presence of leadership and general workforce competencies identified within the stated learning outcomes employed by these accrediting organizations. Our findings suggest strong variability across categories of leadership competence related to workforce competencies, where skills related to reasoning and communication were emphasized much more heavily than others such as intrapersonal development. These findings emerged across all postsecondary degree levels, from pre-baccalaureate to graduate programs, raising important questions for the leadership development of post-secondary students. Keywords: outcomes assessment, student leadership, professional development, leadership education, workforce development, competencies.

While colleges and universities often make the case that preparing students for future career success is critical, studies that examine the empirical support for the assertion curiously lag behind the advanced rhetoric. This paper will showcase research findings based on an analysis of 36,327 learning outcomes addressed within all 83 higher education accrediting organizations in the United States, representing 605 distinct postsecondary academic programs. Our goal was to uncover any patterns of emphasis in particular workforce and leadership competencies embedded within those learning outcomes and examine the extent to which those competencies are represented similarly across postsecondary degree levels.