USNA officially received Carnegie Foundation’s Leadership for Public Purpose Classification. Achieving this was the culmination of over 12 months of work from a team composed of members by the Leadership Excellence Council, led by the Stockdale Center and our own Timothy and Susanne Sullivan Director of Influencer Development, Dr. Celeste Raver.
In total, 25 colleges and universities will receive this inaugural classification. Those colleges and universities represent 19 states across the United States and include 15 public institutions, 10 private, and two service academies.
What this means for USNA:
We are recognized as an exemplar, higher education institution focused on leadership as a public purpose and viewed within the broader scientific and practical field of leadership as an institution that “embodies a culture of leadership and leadership development for the betterment of society.”
The Leadership for Public Purpose classification looks for four main elements to highlight how leadership-centered institutions apply research best practices to develop leaders and create organizational cultures centered on leadership for public purpose. Those four main practices include:
A mission centered on the development of leadership at the institution. Further, the mission enables individuals to serve as leaders of character within society.
A clear plan/conceptual framework on how that leadership purpose is achieved throughout the ENTIRE institution.
Alignment among ALL activities at the institution helping to achieve the Leadership for Public Purpose mission (curriculum; co-curricular; scholarship and how scholarship informs the institution; practical applications; development of supporting entities – faculty, staff, and coaches; rewards & recognition).
Assessment of the Institution’s Leadership for Public Purpose mission, goals, and initiatives (at the institutional, programmatic, and individual levels).
Perhaps the single greatest benefit of completing this was the creation of a comprehensive document that shares USNA’s story of how we develop leaders to serve the Nation, which was achieved by a team of individuals representing ALL mission aspects of the Naval Academy.
The process also helped us ask ourselves challenging questions regarding how we truly are achieving our mission of graduating leaders to serve the Nation and assessing the effectiveness of our approach. It further highlighted our need to continue to ensure alignment of our leadership development efforts across the Naval Academy and the absolute value of assessing the effectiveness of our development of leaders at all levels (institution, programmatic, and individual).