As I briefly mentioned before, the McNulty Leadership Program, and more specifically, the MGMT 100 aspect of it is in the process of changing. Everything that has been discussed in this chapter has been a part of the Wharton Undergraduate leadership initiatives for the last twenty years or so, but starting with first year students entering Wharton in the fall of 2017, leadership education within the Wharton undergrad curriculum is going to look a bit different. Although this new program has not officially rolled out yet, Dr. Greenhalgh provided me with some insight as to how it is going to work moving forward. Additionally, there is some basic information
provided on the Wharton website which discusses this new program for perspective students and their families.
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Dr. Greenhalgh informed me that Wharton has undergone a curriculum review in recent years and one thing that came out of that review was that Wharton professors wanted their students to gain more from the leadership program. In other words, there was a desire to expand leadership development within the core Wharton curriculum to become more than just one course MGMT-100. As Greenhalgh puts it, “MGMT-100 is a casualty of its own success.” So,
considering this need and desire, the core parts of MGMT-100 have been unpacked and separated into four new, and further developed parts, which will be incorporated in the Wharton educational experience over the course of the four undergraduate years. This new leadership education
initiative is being called The Leadership Journey, and includes four, half-credit courses. As an aside, most UPenn/Wharton courses are given one credit or course unit as they call them. So, over the course of their four undergraduate years, Wharton students will receive two full course units for their Leadership Journey coursework.188
It is important to note that the first three years of The Leadership Journey are involved required courses, and the fourth year is marked by a senior capstone or project. The first-year course, entitled Wharton 101- First Year Gateway/Business Pathways, serves as an introduction to the Leadership Journey and also to life as a Wharton Student. Some of the course objectives include; “introduce students to the wide range of curricular opportunities available at Wharton, make students more aware of their strengths and leadership potential, and orient students to the Wharton experience and empower them to become engaged members of the scholarly and co- curricular community.”189 Greenhalgh informed me that Wharton 101 would be collaboratively taught by several different faculty members and administrators at Wharton, including herself. In following the three objectives of the course, there are three different main ideas which make up
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the full course. The first is introducing students to the support and resources that the Wharton faculty can specifically provide for their students. The second emphasizes the general resources that UPenn students have and particularly, the resources that Wharton students have. In this section, things resources like mental health management and career counseling, etc., will be explored and discussed. And finally, the third section focuses on the development of Wharton students as leaders. This is the section that Dr. Greenhalgh is most deeply involved in and the component, which she will be teaching. In essence, this section of Wharton 101 is all about the opportunities and experiences to develop one’s self a leader that a Wharton education provides its students. Essentially, this section is all about the McNulty Program.190
The next course in The Leadership Journey is Wharton 201- Oral and Written
Communications. This course, intended for Wharton sophomores focuses on all things
communication. That is, both the written and verbal communication skills necessary to perform as leader in the business world. The Junior year leadership course in entitled Teamwork and
Interpersonal Dynamics. As the course title suggest, this portion of the journey is centered around
working as part of a team, more specifically, how to maximize team performance and
productivity. Lastly, the senior capstone course or project rounds out The Leadership Journey. There is an intended range of courses which should fulfill this requirement, but integral to the capstone experience is involvement and work on a group project or projects. Students should be practicing and applying past coursework and experiences towards projects and work for actual clients or simulated ones. Furthermore, students should be utilizing the critical thinking,
analytical, problem solving and communication skills acquired throughout their four years. The capstone should have a group or team aspect to it, and within that, students should reflect both on
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their contributions individually and also the dynamic of the team as a whole.191 The fact that this new leadership initiative is being integrated into the curriculum for Wharton undergrads reaffirms my argument that there is indeed a growing emphasis on developing leaders and leadership skills, especially in the business world. The McNulty program believes that leadership is developed through experience and that leaders exercise their leadership by acting. This perspectives and conceptualization of leadership suggests that leadership education is continuous and is integral to successful development as a business person throughout an individual’s career. Although I do not have enough in-depth, comparative research on other business schools and businesses to
confidently say that this experiential approach to leadership is ubiquitous throughout business; I would not be surprised if it was in fact commonplace as a general leadership philosophy in the business world. The more an individual has opportunities to experience and apply the skills necessary to succeed as a leader, particularly in business, the logical outcome is a stronger, more developed and confident leader. This experiential learning idea may also help to explain why leadership development programs, for all employees, is trending with more and more corporations and companies. Just as the McNulty program believes in the need to create opportunities for leadership skills to be practiced so that growth and learning can occur, so too do these large corporations and companies.