The school's Faculty Leadership Fellow shared with national leaders in engaged learning about Elon Law's Leadership Fellows Program and the way experiential education is integrated into the classroom.
Associate Professor Chris Leupold, Faculty Leadership Fellow and Executive Coach in Residence at Elon University School of Law, traveled to Utah in June to share details of Elon Law’s approach to leadership and engaged learning at the 2016 Experiential Learning Leadership Institute.
Leupold holds a dual appointment in Elon University’s Department of Psychology.
In “Managing Organizational Change: Applying Kotter’s Model in Legal Education,” Leupold provided an overview of the Leadership Fellows Program at Elon Law. He discussed in detail the logic and philosophy of the Fellows Leadership Capstone project, an opportunity for students to consult and work with a community partner to devise and implement an organizational change.
Students are provided legal guidance by faculty members with additional guidance from Leupold on managing organizational change. The process is based on John Kotter’s widely popular and utilized model for creating organizational change. Leupold currently teaches the Capstone course and is supported by one of the course’s founders, Professor Faith Rivers-James, Elon Law’s associate dean of experiential education.
Leupold’s second presentation, “Optimizing Team Leadership in Legal Education: An Experiential Application,” discussed Elon Law’s Distinguished Leadership Lecture Series, curricular requirements, preceptor program, and other leadership-infused elements that all students experience.
A special focus was placed on the second-year course “Public Law & Leadership” in which student teams work to propose a legal solution to a particular need of a community partner. While working in teams, students are advised by a faculty partner on legal matters as well as by an executive coach who facilitates team processes. Executive coaches optimize team performance by teaching Katzenbach & Smith’s model for highly effective teams.
While Leupold oversees the executive coaching elements, the overall course has been most recently led and coordinated by Rivers-James and Assistant Professor Patricia Perkins.
Both presentations highlighted Elon Law’s distinctive commitment to preparing its students to become the well-rounded lawyer-leaders that the legal field and society demand today.
For more information about the Leadership Program at Elon Law, contact Rivers-James at friversjames@elon.edu or Leupold at cleupold@elon.edu.