Wehle Leadership & Professional Development Certificate

Pursuing a graduate business degree is about far more than taking a series of classes. You’ll also need to develop a set of skills that are critical to success in today’s fast-paced global marketplace.

A Unique Program for All Graduate Business Students

As a Wehle graduate student, you’ll complement your academic coursework by completing a unique program called Leadership and Professional Development (LPD). Practical, non-academic and workshop-oriented, the LPD experience is founded upon leadership theory and Ignatian pedagogy. Graduates will learn to recognize their own resilience and strengths and explore ways to optimize them not only in their professional leader-manager lives but also in their community leadership roles as well.

A Focus on 21st Century Skills

The LPD program focuses on essential skills for every future manager and business leader: assessing your own strengths, collaborating with others, achieving organizational goals, and building a network. 

You’ll benefit from industry-leading assessments of your leadership capacities, individualized career coaching, workshops, webinars and special networking events. As you progress through the program and envision your career path, Wehle alumni will play a key mentoring role and help you build your network.

A Blend of Structured and Self-Guided Learning

The LPD program features both structured and self-guided activities, and is organized into three courses and specific skill modules. All of the courses are experiential and highly self-reflective.

BUS 601: My Personal Brand  — Taken during your first semester, this course will help you define and articulate your personal brand. You’ll learn strategies for strengthening your interview skills. You’ll also learn how to present your unique skills and qualifications in a professional resume and across multiple channels. 

BUS 602: My Personal Leadership Plan — Taken during your second semester, this course will help you discover more about yourself, your leadership skills, and the competencies most critical to achieving your specific career goals. You’ll build self-awareness through personality assessments and gain hands-on experience in actionable goal-setting.

BUS 603: My Path Forward  — Taken during your third semester, this course will give you an opportunity to assess the skills you’ve developed and reflect on how you’ll use them in your career. 

In addition, you’ll complete five skill modules reflecting three areas of critical leadership competencies: Engaging Communications, Empowering Teams and Inspiring Innovation.

Program Outcomes

The LPD experience is an essential and mandatory part of your Wehle graduate business education. You will:

  • Understand yourself more fully and the leadership skills and core competencies essential to your personal success.
  • Set career and leader-manager goals and know how to realize them through actionable experiences and accountable results.
  • Be comfortable and confident in leveraging your unique leader-manager talents in guiding and supporting others.
  • Understand the fundaments of change and how communications, a team-approach and innovation can lead to success when executed with integrity and respect.

Upon completion of your graduate studies from the Wehle School of Business, and in addition to your degree, you also will receive an LPD Certificate of Completion and digital badge.