Cardinal Points

Issue date: 4/13/07 Section: News

Dean of the School of Business and Economics Colin Read said the focus of MALS is to help prepare students to be effective leaders.

The Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program at Plattsburgh State is beginning to emphasize leadership as one of the main skills it seeks to develop in its students.

"We define leader as really anybody whose job is to motivate other people," Dean of the School of Business and Economics Colin Read said.

The MALS program used to include leadership very generally, he said. Now, they aim to narrow the focus in hopes of "preparing those who will be in some sort of leadership capacity and really honing in on all the various skills they will need to be effective."

These future leaders may be pursuing careers in business, non-profit or government work, he said.

"We're adding a few courses to focus on leadership and we also looked everywhere in the curriculum for courses essential for a leader and made them mandatory," Read said. "It's much more highly structured than before."

These courses will teach graduate students necessary skills and ideas such as ethics, effective communication, group dynamics, data analysis and negotiating. Some courses will also focus on more technical areas for specific career paths, like public policy and accounting, Read said.

But these courses don't teach someone how to be a leader, communications professor Justin Gustainis said.

Gustainis, who teaches a course in the MALS program, said his class examines theories and research on effective leadership.

"With any luck they can go from there and develop their own effective leadership style," he said.

MALS was once open to students from a broader range of academic disciplines following a variety of career paths, but will now be more strictly reserved for those on the leadership track, Read said.

"There's other options now. Other areas have been spun off into their own individual programs," he said. "For instance, a few students would take (MALS) in biology or natural science, so now they're starting up their own masters."

The change will not affect students already in the MALS program.

"The people in this program can continue on as they planned, but the people being admitted in now are focusing on leadership," Read said.

Continued...

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