The Professional Teamwork and Leadership minor is an interdisciplinary program that aims to better prepare students for a competitive job market by instilling interpersonal, teamwork, and communication skills for use in their field. Employers of today seek job candidates who possess a strong set of technical skills, but strongly prefer someone who can also work in a team environment. Ninety percent of employers believe that team skills are equally, or even more important, than technical skills when hiring. This minor provides students with ways to stand out from the crowd.
The minor is open to all IUP students and provides three pathways to best acquire the necessary team and leadership skills:
Applications of Teamwork and Leadership: Links the theory of teamwork and leadership to applications within your chosen field. Employers seek graduates who pursue opportunities to develop and apply their team and leadership skills through current, real-world problems that graduates will face during employment.
Business Leadership Theory: Explores top leadership theories and models, the motivation of teams, cooperate social responsibility, foundations of commercial sustainability, and corporate ethics in the regional and global marketplaces.
Community and Civic Leadership Theory: Explores the team and leadership theories regarding the evaluation and planning of services, managing, and motivating teams of volunteers while building intergovernmental and intraorganizational relationships.
Successful leaders have confidence in their abilities, are passionate, possess strong values, are excellent planners and organizers as well as effective communicators. These attributes are imperative to solving key problems. The minor will build students’ identities as team members and leaders, transform and enhance their thought processes, and provide an expanded toolkit to cultivate effective teams.
The addition of the minor is practical for all majors, particularly those programs with few free electives looking to add more value and marketability. This minor will expose students to understanding how their beliefs, attitudes, and actions affect the team as well as how the diversity of the team adds strength and additional perspective to solve complex problems facing society. Students will learn how to engage audiences with nontechnical and technically rich content, frame and present arguments, and develop the ability to speak about their work and its significance. Traits of good team members and leaders will be examined and applied through case studies or by solving current, real-world problems in in-major projects within their required coursework. The capstone course, coupled with the teamwork intensive course, provides direct opportunities for students to develop and apply their team and leadership skills within their chosen field. Students will reflect on the personal qualities and attributes they bring to a team and prepare materials that best illustrate these skills to future employers.