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Methodology to Achieve Program Vision, Mission, and Goals

Cohort

The Key Executive Leadership Programs uses the cohort model, in which students matriculate, advance, and graduate together. This trusting environment created during, orientation, enables knowledge transfer, honed teaching skills, honest feedback, the confidence to recreate the same environment with those led, and a career-long support group. Learn more about the cohort experience.

Professors

To lead and engage students, the Key Executive Leadership Programs uses professors who are practitioner/scholars in their respective field and have the skills to work with adult learners. As a result, they are able to stimulate relevant discussions that challenge students to think about the concepts they read and learn in the classroom as well as challenge them to apply them in their workplaces.

Reading

To supplement the discussions in the classroom, students are provided and expected to read books, journals, and articles that are used to expand a range of choices for action.

Executive Coaching

To foster continual learning and self-development, the Key Executive Leadership Programs utilizes executive coaching;a relationship that focuses on positive performance and the development of emotional and social intelligence. For validation, Key uses a 360° feedback survey developed by the Hay Group (ESCI) or Leadership Circle Profile (LCP), which transforms research into actionable insights.

Action Learning

When in the Executive MPA program, students work on an Action Learning capstone in lieu of a master's thesis. Students identify a difficult, long-standing unresolved problem in their workplace; sign a contract with their supervisor to work on the issue; recruit a 5-7 person team; teach their colleagues the Action Learning process; apply the process to the issue and recommend for resolutions; present the recommendations to the agency; write a paper identifying what they have learned about the process, themselves, and their teammates, the public administration concepts they applied to their work, and what they learned about leading change; and present their paper to their colleagues in the cohort and the faculty of the program. Learn more and view sample projects.