The Bachelor of Leadership and Development (BOLD) program is an Organizational Leadership curriculum focusing on developing leadership skills that apply to business, government, nonprofit, or educational settings. The program includes instruction in organizational planning, leadership dynamics, finance, team building, conflict resolution and mediation, communication, and other leadership skills.
The BOLD Program is presented as an asynchronous online degree completion program that follows the admission and degree requirements of the WVHEPC RBA Program. BOLD comprises 39 upper-level academic credit hours that apply to the 39 upper-level academic hours specified below as part of the degree requirements. Students can officially enroll in the BOLD Program only if they are at least 21 years of age and have the following:
• Completed or will complete 36 hours of General Studies courses.
• Completed a minimum of 60 academic credit hours, including approved PLA credit hours from an accredited post-secondary institution with at least a 2.0 cumulative grade-point average.
PURPOSE:
The BOLD curriculum’s essential purpose is to equip future leaders with multifaceted leadership and communication skills for the emerging international marketplace. The program emphasizes communication, which is the encoding, transmitting, receiving, decoding, and understanding of a message, allowing practical experience. The program is presented solely in an asynchronous, online format that provides students with a realistic model of global communication as leadership will face in the coming decades. The asynchronous nature of the program provides an inviting and opportune platform for students to practice communicating in the ever-evolving global marketplace. This arrangement allows students to interact in real-world situations, operate as leaders, and influence constituents across borders.
This document outlines the Bachelor of Leadership and Development (BOLD), which was created in compliance with the Title 133 Procedural Rule of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, Series 11. The BOLD program is complete and available for implementation on the projected date of January 01, 2023. Accordingly, the following plan for creating a Bachelor of Leadership and Development (BOLD) is now submitted.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
American physician, poet, and scholar, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., once mused that when a new idea broadens an individual’s mind, it can never return to its former size (Holmes, 2006). This notion is a necessary truism. The scholarly understanding of leadership and its effects will fail to evolve without introducing, accumulating, evaluating, and integrating new, well-informed ideas. Effective leaders must and often do identify the specific needs of their constituency and respond with the requisite approach, which could include concepts from varying leadership theorems. In essence, leaders must exhibit the attribute of “intellectual ambidexterity.”
Leaders need to address their constituency’s necessities and requirements where they are. It is essential for leaders to establish mutual trust relationships that satisfy both parties. Through the lens of these relationships, leaders gain perspective on their constituency’s personalities, abilities, and values. As featured in the BOLD program, authentic leadership concepts can provide graduates with the essential tools to manage change and build edifying, sustainable workplace environments. When the program’s lessons are combined with life experience and academic theoretical concepts, such as the Social Learning Theory, these theoretical approaches establish a foundation for new theoretical ideas to compile into a new comprehensive system and real-life work situations.
The BOLD program presents contemporary leadership ideas for practical use, allowing students to participate in the integration of leadership studies and their practical applications. The program helps to provide foundational application parameters that students can further integrate into their daily operations. In the real business world, integrating real-life experiences and academic theories establishes new operational paradigms that provide foundational experiences for new examination and discussion.
PROGRAM OBJECTIVES/ OUTCOMES (PO):
Graduates of the BOLD Program will be able to:
1. Communicate effectively (in writing) in organizations using applicable word processing and presentation technologies.
2. Develop an applied research proposal employing current research software, techniques, and data collection.
3. Apply various motivational and leadership styles to facilitate change, creativity, projects, decision-making, conflict resolution, and negotiation.
4. Apply organizational marketing and finance essentials in a relevant project and organizational contexts.
5. Apply business law and human resources administration aspects that pertain to organizational leadership and administration.
6. Display professionalism by incorporating personal and organizational ethics as foundations for successful leadership.
Course Learning Outcomes (CO):
All courses are assessed through written assignments (PO 1) and quizzes. CO mapping to the applicable PO (other than PO 1) is indicated on each course’s “Learning Outcomes” line. After the course description, the area identified in parentheses is the specific General Studies/Education category defined by the Regents Bachelor of Arts (RBA) categories fulfilled by the course.
BOLD Classes
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