Center for Leadership

Building a Better Future, One Leader at a Time
Leadership is learned. The Center for Leadership guides, engages, and teaches students to achieve true leadership abilities. We use mentors, teachers, and community leaders to help students develop this lifelong skill. It is a skill our students use today in their classrooms, in student organizations, and in the community. It is a skill that becomes a part of who they are and who they will become.

Through workshops, classes, and special programs, we take students through every facet of leadership. They learn to lead with integrity and get others excited about getting involved. They learn the real meaning of group dynamics and how to create a team that works as one to achieve its goals. Students learn how to engage others and how to settle conflicts. We give them direction on how to network, broaden their reach, and excel in their missions. We teach them that leaders never stop learning.

Making the Connection
No matter what their major is, Bowling Green State University ensures that its students make fundamental and lifelong connections in learning. Whether they plan to teach music, market the latest technology, or focus on international relations, we immerse our students in programs that embrace intellectual skills, general and specialized knowledge, and personal and social responsibility.

The Center for Leadership plays a critical role in helping students achieve these outcomes, especially in learning how to engage others in action. Our programs help students understand that leadership is their ability to influence, show mutual respect, and develop a spirit of compromise and goal setting.

The Center for Leadership encourages all students to explore and enhance their personal leadership skills and earn the BGSU Leadership Certificate.

Vision Statement
The Center for Leadership aspires to graduate leaders who, by knowing themselves and through active engagement at BGSU, serve their community and the world in ethical ways that promote collaboration and social change.

Mission Statement
The Center for Leadership is Leadership in Action.  In alignment with BGSU’s academic mission and learning outcomes, the Center unites campus programs and services to teach students comprehensive leadership development.  As students actively engage in leadership they will practice and demonstrate the skills, knowledge and attitudes required of ethical and life-long leaders.

Values
The Center for Leadership is guided by the principles of the Social Change Model of Leadership Development.  This theory purports that leaders address root causes of social problems with the goal of making social change that impacts individuals and society.  The Center for Leadership uses this philosophy to guide its programs and services by teaching the associated elements of self-awareness, congruent actions, committed behaviors, establishing common purpose, collaboration, addressing conflict in a civil manner, and building active citizenship.

Competencies
Leadership programming at Bowling Green State University seeks to develop the following competencies in student leaders. 

• Inclusion: Creating broad and safe environments that engage and support diversity.
• Purpose: Understanding personal and organizational values and establishing a sense of purpose that contributes to the development of others.
•  Integrity: Acting in an ethical and legal manner that is harmonious with personal and organizational values.
• Group Development: The ability to manage and lead individuals in the establishment and execution of group goals.
• Global Citizenship: Versatility in leadership and communication style that is respectful of cultural context and implications.