Leadership Certificate

If you’d like to go deeper with your learning, the Center for Leadership also offers the Undergraduate Leadership Program (ULP). Through ULP, you can earn an academic Leadership Certificate as part of your studies at Northwestern. Your Certificate coursework includes the opportunity for you to take on a major leadership project of your own design. You’ll also learn more about the major theories, thinkers and frameworks that leaders use every day, and take an elective course that’s of particular interest to you.

Taken together, ULP’s Certificate courses are a rigorous and thought-provoking way for you to learn about your leadership strengths and weaknesses, to identify gaps in your leadership assets, and to receive group and personal coaching.

The Leadership Certificate has 3 steps, and requires you to complete a total of 4 units of academic credit, as follows:

The Paradigms & Strategies of Leadership course is offered each Fall.
« Go to Paradigms & Strategies of Leadership

The Leadership Certificate offers four options for meeting this requirement. You can select an option from any of the following:

- Complete LDRSHP 396 - Field Study in Leadership, which is offered each Fall, Winter and Spring quarter. This option allows you to design your own leadership development experience. Please note that there is an Important 1st Step before you can enroll

- Complete Chicago Field Study in Civic Engagement for a minumum of 2 units of credit. This option allows you to participate in the popular Chicago Field Studies program. Please note that you must enroll in the Civic Engagement section

- Complete Engage Chicago which is offered each summer through the Center for Civic Engagement and provides students academic coursework, fieldwork and an internship in Chicago, one of the world's most dynamic cities

- Complete the Global Engagement Studies Institute. This option allows you to learn about leadership in an international context, including summer fieldwork at one of several locations around the world - Bolivia, India, Nicaragua, South Africa, or Uganda.

Step 3: Complete a 1 Credit Elective Course

To complete ULP’s Leadership Certificate you must take and pass an elective course during your time at NU. Electives give you the opportunity to learn about a particular aspect of leadership from the perspective of faculty members who come from a wide variety of disciplines. While we recommend that you take your elective course after you complete LDRSHP 204 – Paradigms & Strategies of Leadership, the elective course may be taken at any time during your undergraduate career. Here, you’ll find a list of approved elective courses. You can also petition to add a course to this list by contacting Todd Murphy

One final note: Northwestern University does not allow students to count a course that they’re using to meet an academic major or a minor requirement to also meet a certificate requirement. Please be sure that you work with your academic advisor so that you can satisfy all of your academic requirements.

LDRSHP 396 - Field Study in Leadership

Successfully completing this field study is a demonstration of your ability to positively affect the success of a group, organization or community – to leave a “leadership footprint.” 

Your field study should critically explore and engage leadership outside the classroom. Specifically, the field study’s goals are for you to:

• Experience leadership that matters to you and others;
• Build and refine a leadership model and assets that work for you;
• Successfully defend your model and describe your assets to leadership scholars and practitioners; and,
• Help set you on a path to routinely solve leadership problems and step forward when opportunities present themselves.

As you consider which field study to propose, keep in mind that we expect you to demonstrate your ability to:

• Ask powerful questions
• Lead others to identify and solve chaotic challenges
• Inspire others through narrative
• Mobilize different people to improve performance
• Take risks and confidently overcome setbacks and failure
• Lead others in collaborative and hierarchical settings

We expect that you will propose and conduct a field study that simultaneously meets your desires and our expectations for your learning about leadership. Accordingly, you and we need a unified approach.

Important 1st Step

You should expect to meet at least 3 times and in person with Todd Murphy in advance of our agreeing to a final proposal. So, your first meeting with Prof. Murphy should be no later than 5 weeks before the start of the quarter in which you plan to begin your field study. Also, you must submit a proposal that is approved by Prof. Murphy at least 15 days prior to the start of the quarter in which you plan to enroll in LDRSHP 396 – Field Study in Leadership

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Elective Courses

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The Center for Leadership serves the Northwestern community. Its academic programs are offered through the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science.