Connecting Leadership Experience to Academic Knowledge

Leadership Impact Plan Paper
Your program has provided many opportunities for you to cultivate your competencies as a leader. The Leadership Impact Plan Paper provides an opportunity for you to assess and reflect on your leadership journey and the knowledge and skills you have developed over time to help you guide and provide direction to others.
Using the Individual Student Profile information (completed in the first course in your program) as a springboard, consider your growth as a leader and document your change over time as a result of your participation in this program. In a 5 culminating paper, reflect on your personal and professional growth as a leader during your program journey and how those experiences contributed to and will continue to contribute to you becoming a more informed, reflective, and responsive leader in your field. Personalize your reflection by providing examples of how you translated the knowledge and skills you gained in your coursework into practice and authentic leadership experiences and how you will continue to develop your leadership skills.
Reflect on the following questions to guide your response:
How have you grown as a leader during the course of your program journey?
What leadership qualities are most important to you, and how have these qualities been enhanced by your graduate experience?
Which leaders in your field or profession have influenced your transformation and why?
Revisiting the reflections written in courses, in what ways have your goals or thinking about your profession changed?
What are the implications and applications of your learning and leadership for your profession?
How can you apply the leadership competencies you have gained or improved to make a difference in your personal and professional life and in the lives of others?
How will you continue to develop your leadership skills?
Before you begin writing, review the rubric for this assignment. Organize your thoughts so that you have a section in your paper for each of these topics:
Reflection – How has your past knowledge and experience guided your growth as a leader?
Connection to Experience – What connections can you make between your experiences as a leader and your academic knowledge?
Connection to Discipline – How does your work as a leader cross disciplines? How does one field of study inform another?
Risk Taking – What risks have you taken while in your program? How have you moved beyond what is comfortable to what is new in your role as a leader?
Ethical Perspectives – When have you had to consider ethics in making decisions as a leader?
Initiative – How have you demonstrated that you have been willing to take the first steps in a leadership action?
A template for the Leadership Impact Plan Paper has been provided for you in Student Commons in the Capstone Experience Resources.
APA and Writing Checklist
Title page (Use title, author’s name, author’s institution, course prefix and number, course instructor name, and assignment due date.)
Title on first written page
Introduction
Use headings
Conclusion
References with doi# or url
Length: The double-spaced paper should be 5 pages in length.
Overall format:
Compose the paper in a Word document.
Leave a one-inch margin at the top, bottom, left, and right.
Use 12-point Times New Roman or Arial font.
Organize your paper with APA-formatted headings and sub-headings.
References: Follow APA format.