Throughout history, and certainly during the history of the United States and Rutgers University, progress has been synonymous with leadership. The contemporary understanding of leadership is evolutionary—that it emerged the first time a group of humans or pre-humans came together in response to a problem or concern and, after sitting around for a bit, someone decided to start taking action. Those who have been recognized as leaders have a lot to share with us about leadership and how it is everywhere and in everyone's capacity. It's not something one waits for. Yet, both great good and tremendous harm have been fueled by leadership. To understands this, we will look at the developmental ecology of leadership and its connection to followership and context.
Because of the extraordinary influence of the Bible, and of biblical personalities, we will begin with a look at the concept of leadership that emerged in that document, particularly its connections to service. Other topics include leadership in academic, corporate, and nonprofit career contexts and gender and leadership perception and style. These will be illustrated through case examples, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, R. Sargent Shriver, and Cesar Chavez. We also will draw from the leadership writing and research of Michael Fullan, Cary Cherniss, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Daniel Goleman, Howard Gardner, Jonathan Sacks, Jill Lepore, and Vincent Harding.
The ultimate goal of the course is to guide students in developing their own theory of leadership. We also will explore students’ capacities to be leaders in all aspects of life, including college, career, and community. The course includes readings and discussion, debate, role-play scenarios, and real-world exposure to leadership with distinguished guest speakers from a variety of leadership contexts, within and outside of the university. Your theory of leadership will eventually be applied to the leadership stories and actions of an emerging leaders.
About Professor Elias
The unifying themes in my action-research, clinical work, and policy/advocacy are the development of positive, constructive life paths for children and youth and the organization of opportunities to allow this to happen in equitable ways. This has brought me into areas such as social-emotional learning (SEL), its more recent variation, social-emotional and character development (SECD), emotional intelligence, social competence promotion, character education, primary prevention, school-based, evidence-based intervention, and socialization of identity. It has also brought my work increasingly into the areas of implementation and sustainability of interventions, and cutting edge issues such as the link of SECD and academics and the distinguishing features of sustainable, versus well-implemented, empirically supported innovations.
https://psych.rutgers.edu/faculty-profiles-a-contacts/93-maurice-elias