Excelsior University and the Lake Forest Center for Leadership have formed a partnership that is certain to benefit both organizations.
Excelsior University President David Schejbal explained that Excelsior is an adult-serving, primarily online institution that was established in New York in 1971 to help adults who have some college credits to finish their degree. It was also designed to help Vietnam vets go back to school.
“Since then, we’ve become a national institution. We have programs throughout the country,” Schejbal said. “40 % of our students are either active members of the military or veterans.”
The accredited, not-for-profit online institution was designed to help adults complete their degrees and advance their careers.
It seems like a natural fit for the Lake Forest Center for Leadership, which is a leadership training program. “It is a custom training program, noncredit for executives and professionals,” Schejbal explained.
For more than 35 years, the Center for Leadership has offered skill-building courses and comprehensive leadership development. Excelsior students will be able to take advantage of these professional leadership development opportunities with the joining of the two organizations.
Participants and client organizations can benefit from the Center for Leadership programs for leadership development through degree and certificate pathways. They are similar in that both
Excelsior and the Center for Leadership have the goal of offering real-world experience to their students.
“We have relationships with 400 companies, government agencies, and NGOs throughout the United States. What the Center for Leadership does for Excelsior is it provides us with a new army of programs that we can offer to those corporate and government partners,” Schejbal said
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And Excelsior can offer the Center for Leadership a bigger platform, the president explained.
He noted that this agreement started because the financially-strapped Lake Forest Graduate School of Management closed on June 30.
“We had been talking with the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management for several years about potential partnerships,” Schejbal said. “The timing seemed right at this point.”
The partnership will allow professional development opportunities and executive leadership development for Excelsior’s students.
In addition, the Center for Leadership can “provide opportunities, especially with its corporate partners, to have those employees at those organizations transition to degree programs at Excelsior,” Schejbal explained. The school has degree programs at the associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels.
“We have a very generous credit transfer policy, so we’re able to help adults finish their degrees faster, cheaper, and more efficiently,” Schejbal said.
There is an expansive number of possible degrees — 45 or more are offered at Excelsior, including engineering technology, nursing, healthcare, business, criminal justice, and many other options, Schejbal indicated. They also offer an MBA program and will additionally offer a doctorate of business administration starting in January.
The inclusion of the Center for Leadership also means that Excelsior will be offering some live, in-person, and hybrid programming in addition to its online offerings.
“We provide professional development for a variety of adult students, and the Center for Leadership expands that capacity and allows us to reach a broader audience,” Schejbal said. “We love our new colleagues. They are terrific, and I think they’re pleased to have made the transition.”
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.