Rebuilding curriculum for an interdisciplinary restructure

Elizabeth Halpin

Vice Dean, Continuing Education and Professional Studies and Undergraduate Director, Buccino Leadership Institute, Seton Hall University

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of EAB.

A new strategic direction for the Buccino Leadership Institute required a new curriculum. As the new director of the institute’s programming for upperclassmen, developing a new curriculum that aligns with the strategic vision and meets current student expectations was my number one priority coming in in May.

The Buccino Leadership Institute is an award-winning, selective, four-year, extracurricular, experiential learning program for undergraduates at Seton Hall University. In its first five years as an interdisciplinary Institute, the Buccino Leadership Institute operated its LEAD 3000 to 4050 courses for juniors and seniors within their colleges. While this structure was meant to give them disciplinary-specific content to help them prepare for the next step in their careers, because the program was not set by the Institute, students had disparate experiences across disciplines.

After the graduation of the first class of students to go through the program, the Institute assessed the merits of the program. Based on student feedback, the Institute’s leadership developed a new strategic plan. The strategic plan called for a standard curriculum template across disciplines to ensure students across disciplines have the same learning objectives and receive content in the same format with the same frequency.

To meet student expectations, the content of the curriculum needed to remain tailored to the disciplines so that the outcomes improve discipline-specific career development for students in the program. Our strategic goal was to improve the student experience in the Institute and strengthen its reputation for the University as a robust and comprehensive four-year leadership development program.

Throughout the summer, I identified best practices and problem areas of prior curricula in each of the six colleges, interviewing each of the course instructors. I benchmarked competitors using EAB research and attended industry conferences (including the Association of Leadership Educators and the International Leadership Association).

In August, I did a student intake survey to assess their expectations, their personal goals, and intended career fields. I asked my colleagues in the Institute as well as leadership development experts on campus to review the syllabus and enrolled in an ACUE effective teaching course to enhance my techniques in providing content.

The rebuilt curriculum provides students with a standard set of learning objectives and outcomes to benefit all. The new curriculum focuses on effective communication; executive presence; teamwork and collaboration; critical thinking; diversity, equity and inclusion, and innovation and disruption.

Each student is committing the same amount of time and effort to their leadership development across campus. During the semester, students engaged in several experiential learning opportunities including interviewing experts in their field, developing leadership case studies, presenting persuasive speeches, developing interviewing skills and collateral, and have recently started on projects oriented toward their personal and professional goals. The activities are aligned with the intake form identified student professional and personal goals.

Our efforts were successful in bringing together six curricula into a cohesive program that will benefit all students and provide a comprehensive, grade-level appropriate, experiential learning leadership development program. When a student graduates from the program, their certificate will now have the same meaning and implication for a business major and an education major.

From the mid-semester and end-of-semester student evaluations, we have identified several areas for improvement in the spring semester curriculum including better communication sharing the purpose, rationale, and intended benefits of the changes from prior years’ curriculum; a focus on the quality of the interaction and lessen the overall time commitment; creating additional discipline-specific networking opportunities; variation of content based on the cohort to ensure that some do not have overlap from prior years; and lastly more internal community building events.