Facilitating Student Leadership Development

Contacts:  Kerry Fierke, kkfierke@d.umn.edu, Kristin Janke, janke006@umn.edu, Todd Sorensen, soren042@umn.edu

The University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy offers leadership in the core curriculum, as well as a robust leadership elective program, including a 16 credit Leadership Emphasis Area (LEA).  Leadership Bestsellers, Foundations of Leadership, and Developing Adaptive Leadership (w/ Foundations as a prereq) are available to all pharmacy students.  Leading Change Experience 1 and 2, Leadership APPE and Leadership Capstone are additional courses for LEA students. We also offer two leadership retreats and our leadership development work synergizes with the LD work of our Phi Lambda Sigma chapter.  The College is also home to the two year Pharmaceutical Care Leadership Residency.

Student Leadership Development in the Curriculum

Blog Posts

2017 Student Leadership Development as an “Area of Inquiry”

2017 Need to Understand Leadership Tasks

Articles-U of M Courses

2009 Viewpoint on the need for leadership in the curriculum

2009 Article on first leading change and leadership course

2009 Article on a student leadership retreat


Articles-Advancing Leadership Nationally

2013 Article on guiding principles for student leadership development

2013 Article on competencies for student leadership development

2016 Article - Center for Advancement of Pharmacy Education Leadership Paper

2017 Article on Assessing Emotionally Intelligent Leadership


Blog Posts

Pairing Pharmacists and Students for Leadership Development

New Leader Development Electives

Women and Leadership Conversations

Structured leadership instruction was introduced into the curriculum in 2002 as an elective 6-hour seminar series within a Pharmaceutical Care Skills course. In 2007, a series of two 2-credit elective courses titled “Leading Change in Pharmacy” (LCiP) were established and an 18-credit curricular emphasis was approved.

The LCIP course sequence received Honorable Mention in the 2008 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Innovations in Teaching Awards. Since its inception, these courses have reached 20%-35% of all students in a graduating cohort. With the introduction of a new curriculum in the fall of 2013, nearly half of the material originally introduced through these elective courses is now embedded in required courses. Examples of leadership-related content that all students at the College experience include: using the results of Gallup’s “StrengthFinder” assessment for personal and team development, developing and guiding effective teams, and understanding the “Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership”.

To begin to understand the impact of this coursework, we have initiated a series of interviews with Leadership Emphasis graduates and summarized their stories.

Ongoing scholarship includes evaluation of leadership development activities and analysis of trends from the leadership assessments. In addition, members of our team are active in advancing student leadership development among the colleges and schools of pharmacy in the United States.