Our Story

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has indicated that leadership is one of the key competencies identified by employers to help students succeed in the workplace. Our faculty in the school are uniquely qualified to address the leadership development of students and alumni. The core focus of the School of Labor and Employment Relations is employer/employee relations, viewed from many different perspectives, including organizational leadership. A core group of faculty in the school have joined together to provide comprehensive support to students entering and advancing their careers in the workplace. One of our guiding thoughts is “How can we provide leadership development services to students in our school; the type of services that are typically only reserved for a few high potential employees in the workplace?”.  

Our response is the LER Leadership Readiness Initiative (LRI) and the key services of coaching, webinars, and mentoring, made available to all students in the school. We believe that when students can more widely build their capacity to succeed and the leadership competencies to be effective, they will be better able to contribute to their organization’s success. To that end we provide unparalleled services. We are one of the few schools in the country that provide coaching services by International Coaching Federal (ICF) and other trained coaches to undergraduate and graduate students. 

We also seek to support students throughout their careers. After graduation, we continue to partner with alumni to support their growth and development. We offer best practices and evidence-based solutions as well as a flexible program format to meet alumni needs. For example, alumni are invited to suggest topics to be incorporated in program offerings as well as choose from a variety of other leading-edge webinar topics.  

We want to be the place where alumni go to have a conversation about important emerging topics and where they can seek the continuing education credits they need.    

LRI faculty provide a variety of services to support leadership development of students and alumni, capitalize on their leadership strengths (see reciprocal mentoring) and engage with them in an ongoing dialogue about leadership development