Leadership for All at Cleveland State

Abstract

In an educational landscape where leadership skills are increasingly vital, Cleveland State University (CSU) is ensuring that all students have an opportunity to develop these skills by integrating leadership theory into its new Core Curriculum. This case study examines the university’s innovative approach to cultivating essential leadership traits among all students. By embedding leadership principles into the Core Courses, the university ensures that every student encounters these concepts, regardless of their major. These courses are not mere electives but are central to the completion of the students’ core requirements, providing multiple touchpoints for leadership development. Leadership principles will be integrated into the Core Courses by way of the Core Competencies, which will help students to build and develop key leadership skills such as critical thinking, effective communication, and ethical decision-making. Students can also embark on the Transformative Leadership Pathway which will include a series of leadership-focused courses. The result is a comprehensive educational experience that equips all students with the tools to lead effectively in diverse professional and personal contexts, preparing them to meet the challenges of the future. 

Introduction 

Cleveland State University (CSU) has recently been undergoing a major curricular change aimed at improving the general education experience for all students, including helping them to develop key leadership skills. The new “Core Curriculum,” which has been in development over the past two years and will launch in Fall 2025, was thoughtfully designed around the 21^st century skills and “Core Competencies” that students need to be successful in their careers and communities. These “Core Competencies” include collaboration, communication, quantitative reasoning, information literacy, digital literacy, intercultural knowledge, and critical thinking. In this case study, I will discuss how these and other features of the new Core Curriculum align with the key skills and competencies that the Beth E. Mooney Center for Transformative Leadership at Cleveland State University identifies as being key for future leaders: “To thrive in the 21st century, our region needs leaders who are collaborative, innovative, technologically savvy, adaptable and committed to a more equitable and just world.”

Building Leadership into the Core Curriculum 

To ensure that all students are equipped with the skills and competencies needed to become future leaders, a focus on Transformative Leadership has been built into CSU’s new Core Curriculum in three distinct ways: through the course requirements, through the Core Competencies attached to the course requirement, and through the “Transformative Leadership Pathway” that connects courses from multiple course requirements. Below I will discuss each element of the Core Curriculum design, and the synergies between them that help to embed skills associated with Transformative Leadership. 

a) Course Requirements & Leadership 

A constraining feature of the new Core Curriculum design is Ohio Transfer 36 (OT36) which requires that a general education system must include 36 credit hours spread amongst distinct disciplinary categories. Specifically, each student must complete at least two courses in arts & humanities, two courses in social science, two course in natural science, a quantitative reasoning course, and a writing-focused course. Students can also complete courses centered around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Rather than providing student a long list of all possible courses and saying “pick two from each category,” as was the case with the previous general education model at CSU, the new Core Curriculum has re-imagined these requirements into a set of 12 unique course requirements centered broken into two course categories (see Figure 1). The goal of creating these unique course requirements is to stop the disciplinary category requirements from being viewed as “hoops to jump through” and to help more clearly differentiate the focus of the different courses within the same disciplinary category. For example, rather than telling students to “pick two courses from arts & humanities,” students must complete one course from “Human Culture & Creativity” and another from “Global Human Perspectives,” both of which are in the arts & humanities disciplinary category. 

In designing the Core Curriculum, we decided on these course requirements help to ensure that students engage with a variety of important topics, many of which are fundamental for leadership. For example, we thought it was important for students to have an understanding of “African-American History & Culture” given that Cleveland is a majority-minority city and the majority of CSU graduates will remain in the region. Hence, future leaders in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio will need to be familiar with the challenges faced by African-American communities and have a high degree of cultural competency. Yet it is also important that future leaders have understanding of issues and common practices outside their community, demonstrating the importance of the “Diversity in Society” and “Global Human Perspectives” course requirements for ensuring that students are “adaptable and committed to a more equitable and just world.” And insofar as future leaders also need to be technologically savvy to keep pace with innovative technologies, the “Data & Digital Literacy” course requirement will provide students with skills in digital literacy. And the courses within each course requirement can also have a more narrow focus on leadership, such as a course focused on “Gender & Leadership” in the “Diversity in Society” requirement. 

TABLE 1
Course Requirements	OT36 Alignment	Core Competencies
Category 1: Foundations of Inquiry
Inquiry Launch	Any	First Year Seminar, Collaboration
Finding Your Voice	First Writing	Written Communication
Research & Professional Writing	Second Writing	Written Communication, Information Literacy
Quantitative & Formal Reasoning	Mathematics, Statistics, and Logic	Collaboration, Quantitative Reasoning
African-American History & Culture	Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Arts & Humanities or Social and Behavioral Science	Intercultural Knowledge
Category 2: Methods of Inquiry
Human Culture & Creativity	Arts & Humanities	Collaboration, Written or Oral Communication
Global Human Perspectives	Arts & Humanities	Intercultural Knowledge, Written or Oral Communication
Scientific Investigations	Natural Science + lab	Collaboration, Quantitative Reasoning
Nature & Technology	Natural Science	Quantitative Reasoning, Information Literacy
Society & Human Behavior	Social and Behavioral Science	Collaboration, Information Literacy
Diversity in Society	Diversity, Equity, Inclusion	Intercultural Knowledge, Written or Oral Communication
Data & Digital Literacy	Mathematics, Statistics, & Logic or Social and Behavioral Sciences	Digital Literacy and/or Quantitative Reasoning, Collaboration

b) Leadership through Core Competencies 

Because the course sections within each course requirement category can be quite distinct so long as they speak to the broad emphasis of the requirement, each course requirement has between one and three Core Competencies associated with it. This was done to help ensure that regardless of the unique focus of a course section in the “Society and Human Behavior” requirement, all students completing a course in that requirement category develop skills associated with collaboration, information literacy, and critical thinking. These Core Competencies help students practice and develop key leadership traits identified by the Beth E. Mooney Center for Transformative Leadership, such as being innovative and able to work collaboratively with others. Five of the courses also include the Core Competency of written or oral communication, helping students to develop effective communication skills which are also undisputably essential for leadership. 

c) The “Transformative Leadership” Inquiry Pathway 

The final piece to the Core Curriculum design is an emphasis on Inquiry Pathways, helping to tie courses from distinct category requirements together around big questions or themes. The aim is to help students draw connections between distinct disciplinary areas and to learn how the methodologies of various disciplines can work synergistically in examining complex real-world problems.  One such theme will itself be a focus on “Transformative Leadership.” Students completing this pathway will be required to complete at least three courses from distinct requirement categories that each have a clear emphasis on developing skills and competencies associated with Transformative Leadership. For example, this might include a social science course on “Gender & Leadership,” a DEI course on “Leadership in Diverse Communities,” and an ethics course in arts & humanities focused on “Leadership in Healthcare.” Courses that qualify as a part of the “Transformative Leadership” pathway will have a strong focus on leadership theory and/or the development of leadership skills alongside learning about the methodologies and content related to the course topic. Students who complete the Transformative Leadership pathways will receive a credential on their transcript and will be able to demonstrate the skills and knowledge necessary for effective leadership in their communities and beyond. 

Leadership for All at CSU 

Now that it is clear how the course requirements, core competencies, and Transformative Leadership Pathway) embed leadership into the new Core Curriculum at CSU, we can also see how they combine to ensure that all students receive a comprehensive educational experience that equips them with the tools to lead effectively in diverse professional and personal contexts. The core requirements help to ensure that students engage with leadership principles in different contexts while the core competencies then provide students with numerous opportunities to practice leadership-focused skills such as collaboration and communication. The Transformative Leadership Pathway then encourages students to engage even more robustly with leadership theory and to understand the importance of leadership in their careers and communities. These seemingly distinct elements of CSU’s new Core Curriculum thus combine to help ensure that every student encounters leadership concepts and develops leadership skills, regardless of their major. 

References

The Beth E. Mooney Center for Transformative Leadership. (n.d.). Igniting the power to transform. https://www.csuohio.edu/mooney-center/mooney-center