Leadership Studies in Popular Film aims at enhancing students' understanding and application of leadership in three primary ways. First, using the films as case studies, students will critically analyze, evaluate, and discuss the moral, ethical, and administrative challenges, decisions, and behaviors portrayed in the films. Second, these challenges, decisions, and behaviors will serve to highlight and illustrate important leadership concepts and how they might be applied to authentic situations in schools and other organizational settings. Finally, the films will challenge and spark students' imagination and inspire them to consider new possibilities for practice and research. During the course, students will view 10-12 classic popular films, each revealing a set of key leadership concepts and problems. Students are expected to rigorously participate in whole class and on-line discussions about the meanings expressed in the films. These discussions will be coupled with and enhanced by the instructor's presentation of relevant concepts of leadership and organizational theory. Students are also expected to maintain a continuing reflective log of each film's plots and characters, the practical and theoretical problems presented, and their own reactions to and ideas about each film. Using these logs as a starting point, students will be expected to write three short (3-4 pp.) essays and one more substantial final essay (10-12 pp.). Rather than simple plot narratives, it is expected that these essays will thoughtfully analyze and synthesize actions and concepts from the films, and attempt to apply them to school or other organizational settings. Students' grades will be based on the completeness of their logs, the analytic quality of their papers, and the frequency and quality of their contribution to on-line and in-class discussions. The course is intended for graduate, undergraduate, and certification students. Indeed, the course has benefited in the past from having students with diverse backgrounds and levels of professional experience. The course effectively complements and reinforces other EDLDR courses, such as Introduction to Educational Leadership (EDLDR 480), The Principalship (EDLDR 568), Leadership in Today's Schools (EDLDR 597), and Schools as Organizations (EDLDR 580).
This course is a fifth semester UG Penn State course, but MBA students are permitted to take 400 level courses such as this as electives.
This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.
History
Subject Area
Business
Geographic Region
Middle Atlantic
University or College
Pennsylvania State University, Erie, The Behrend College (Black)
Funding Status
Public
Endowment (according to NACUBO's U.S. and Canadian Institutions Listed by Fiscal Year 2020 Endowment Market Value and Change* in Endowment Market Value from FY19 to FY20) ($1,000)