A MESSAGE FROM OUR DIRECTOR
David V. Day
December 2024
Academic Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute Steven L. Eggert ’82 P’15 Professor of Leadership George R. Roberts Fellow david.day@cmc.edu
Dear KLI Community, Well, I am back from sabbatical! Where did the year go? A huge thanks to the KLI team and especially Dr. Sherylle Tan for serving as Interim Director in my absence. It was reassuring to know that the Institute was in such capable hands. We are off and running with a very strong start to the 2024-25 Academic Year. A noteworthy accomplishment was recognition by the Carnegie Foundation for the inaugural Elective Classification for Leadership for Public Purpose. CMC was selected as one of 25 campuses for this recognition. KLI played a key role in identifying, curating, and reporting the information that went into the comprehensive application. We will be building on this momentum by co-hosting the 30th Kravis-de Roulet Leadership Conference with the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University. The conference will take place 7-8 March at CMC with representatives from the other recognized campuses attending and participating in an engaging conference program. The interest in leadership and in KLI is at an all-time campus high. In a typical year we have 25-30 applications for KLI student assistant positions. This Fall we had 130 applications, with most being lodged by first- and second- year students. The downside of this record number of applications is that we had to say no to a lot of very talented and motivated students.We did increase the number of “new hires” at KLI, with the total number of students now at 42. Rest assured that we have plenty of work to go around! As reminder, all KLI students engage in the KLI Leadership Development System to enhance their leadership skills and self-views and support their peers in their respective development efforts around Courage, Creativity, and Collaboration. The Women in Leadership Development (WLD) initiative continues to gain strength with a record number of applicants for this year’s cohort. The initiative is now in its fourth year and is led by KLI Assistant Director Marilyn Pierce. The Student Engagement and Mentoring Initiative (SEMI) is going strong. A new initiative this year is “Office Hours” – a suggestion by some of our students. Much like office hours held by professors on campus, Board members meet with a few KLI students for an hour to discuss different topics. Many thanks to Mike Nutting ’97 P’24 for kicking off this new initiative and to our new Board Chair, Scott Gilbertson ’91 for his support. KLI is proudly one of the 11 Research Institutes and Centers at CMC. As a research institute, we focus on the advancement of research all things leadership. Given the research-based mission of KLI, a little more than half of our student assistants participate across seven research teams investigating a variety of leadership-related topics. Relatedly, we are pleased to welcome back the Post-Doctoral Fellow, Dr. Laura Dannhäuser, to help support the research and leadership education at KLI. Finally, a huge thanks for your ongoing support of KLI! David Day, Ph.D. Academic Director
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