Center for Leadership earns high praise for leadership development programs

The Center for Leadership at FIU earned high praise at the 2017 LEAD Awards, which were announced at the annual two-day LEAD Conference held this year in Nashville, TN in early February.

By Joel Delgado ’12 MS ’17 

When it comes to developing leaders, FIU is among the best universities in the country.

In February, the Center for Leadership at FIU received two prestigious distinctions at the 2017 LEAD Awards, which showcase the world’s most effective and esteemed leadership training and development programs.

This is the fourth consecutive year that the Center for Leadership has been ranked among the top providers of executive leadership development programs in the nation, an amazing feat for the Center as it celebrates 10 years of operation.

“I am so very proud that the vision we had for our very first program has served us so well for the past decade,” said Mayra Beers, director of strategy for the Center for Leadership. “We want to provide a valuable experience for leaders from any industry and inspire them to go back and change their organizations and their communities.”

Leadership Excellence, a publication of HR.com, ranked the Center No. 2 in the country in the fiercely competitive Open Enrollment Programs category, which recognizes educational institutions with open enrollment programs with emphasis on leadership and organizational development. FIU outranked Cornell, The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and Harvard while only Carnegie Mellon University ranked higher.

The Center’s Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) Leadership Development Program, which was launched in 2010 with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, was selected as the best of all custom content programming.

This annual year-long program leverages leadership research as well as best practices from business practitioners to equip principals, assistant principals, teacher leaders and administrators to impact learning outcomes of Miami-Dade’s students and families.

“The participants in our programs consistently mention that what they learned was important for how they conduct business and for how they lead their organizations based on the content we have provided,” said Garth Headley, director of research advocacy in the Office of Research and Economic Development.

Headley credits several factors for allowing the program to emerge as one of the top leadership programs in the country in such a short period of time. Among them, a specific focus on leadership development; programs tailored to meeting the needs and challenges of individual participants; and having FIU faculty who are engaged in research and are experts in various topics concerning leadership development.

“We help individuals be better people so they can be better leaders,” Headley said. “We are young, and to be getting it right so early and so consistently is a tremendous accomplishment.”

For more information on the Center for Leadership at FIU, visit their website.