Background

Since 2004, I-LEAD has been able to accomplish the goal of delivering college credit through a close partnership with Harcum College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. The two institutions now jointly offer an Associate Degree in Leadership Studies through its "College Without Walls" initiative.

The curriculum, incubated through Urban Genesis and Pennsylvania Weed and Seed, has served over one thousand Pennsylvania community leaders in sixteen cities extending from Chester, Philadelphia, and Easton in the East; through to Erie, Sharon, New Kensington, Aliquippa, Wilkinsburg and McKeesport in the West; and including cities in Southeastern and Central Pennsylvania, such as Norristown, Reading, Coatesville, York, Allentown, Lancaster, and Harrisburg.

This initiative grew out of I-LEAD’s effort to respond to students’ desire for college credit in recognition of their participation in I-LEAD’s leadership curriculum. Students acknowledged that the education received through I-LEAD was directly relevant to improving their employability and their qualification for promotion from entry-level positions. Workers today develop specific vocational skills through on-the-job training. In this context, the relevance of I-LEAD’s curriculum has increased because success in securing and advancing in employment depends not on technical training or education, but rather on developing flexible communications and creativity skills, and on personal motivation – factors intensively developed through I-LEAD’s curriculum. I-LEAD and its students recognized that restructuring the successful curriculum to provide college credit would greatly increase the program’s value. To sustain the initiative, Harcum and I-LEAD equally share program costs and tuition revenues.

Leadership Courses for Citizens

The program expands and deepens I-LEAD’s original programming from 120 hours (four course modules) to approximately 850 hours (60 credits), comprising ten core leadership courses and nine general education courses. The ten leadership courses include:

• Effective Dialogue

• Building Relationships & Negotiating

• Creative Leadership

• Systems Thinking

• Public Systems

• Private Systems

• Speaking as a Leader

• Political Leadership

• Group Dynamics

• Ethical Leadership

The general education courses are composed of the core curriculum required for an Associate Degree, including courses in Math, Science, English Composition, Humanities, and Computer Information Systems.

Like I-LEAD’s traditional leadership programming, College Without Walls operates in participating communities, working during the evenings in a community-based setting with cohorts of 10-20 students. The program targets low-income and under-employed adults, aged 25 to 50, who missed college and see this initiative as an opportunity to improve their employability and entrepreneurial capacity. The students that the program serves understand that developing their communications skills, learning ability, and personal effectiveness through a college program is the most efficient pathway to personal success and improved outcomes for their neighborhoods.

I-LEAD is making a special investment in the development of its College Without Walls in communities of southeastern Pennsylvania. Within the targeted communities, literally thousands of students are eligible to participate and to receive substantial financial aid. For example, a single mother working for minimum wage and lacking significant assets would qualify to receive grants totaling approximately 90% of the tuition for the program.

This program offers aspiring community leaders in some of Pennsylvania’s most challenged communities with a rare opportunity to begin their higher education. Earning a college degree will enhance participants’ employability and future potential, lifting many of them out of poverty and out of low-wage, entry-level jobs for the first time. Some will earn promotions, thereby increasing their incomes and opening up entry-level opportunities beneath them. Others will innovate within their organizations creating new jobs, and others will demonstrate independent entrepreneurial leadership creating new organizations. This will lead directly to increased economic development in their struggling neighborhoods.

In Pennsylvania’s rapidly changing workplace, College Without Walls will demonstrate that Pennsylvanians can overcome barriers of poverty, worker dislocation, and unemployment through hard work and educational achievement.