• EDUC 802: Leadership Seminar
• Semester: Fall 2004
• Professors: Dr. S. David Brazer
• Syllabus

• Class Dicussion Leadership: "Decision Engineering" - Chapter in March (1994): Presentation (ppt) • Questions • David's Feedback
• Paper # 1: A Bounded Decision - Adoption of Montessori Model
• Paper # 2: Leadership Hurdles - NASA's space shuttle disaster
• Paper # 3: Definition of Effective Leadership

• Books:
  • Allison, G. & Zelikow, P. (1999). Essence of decision: Explaining the Cuban
            missile crisis. New York: Longman.
  • Bolman, L.G. & Deal, T.E. (2001). Leading with soul. San Francisco: Jossey-
            Bass.
  • Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-
            Bass.
  • March, J.G. (1994). A primer on decision making: How decisions happen.
            New York: The Free Press.
• Articles:
  • Cohen, M. D., March, J.G., Olsen, J.P. (1972). A garbage can model of
            organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17, pp. 1 - 25.
  • Langley, A. et al. (1995). Opening up decision making: he view from the black
            stool. Organization Science, 6, pp. 260 - 279.
  • Simon, H. (1993). Decision making: rational, nonrational, and irrational.
            Educational Administration Quarterly, 29, pp. 329 - 411.
  • Weick, K.E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems.
            Administrative Science Quarterly, 21, pp. 1 - 19.

• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (most recent edition).

        This course presented a wide variety of leadership perspectives, some were based on research while others were not.  I began to see the differences between academic, research based writing and popular writing (usually based on meeting the expectations of the reader).   It was interesting to see how "pop literature" tries to mimic legitimate research by providing citations and eluding to "years of study".  I never really thought too much about leadership before this course so it was a good opportunity for me to do some active thinking about this concept.  In addition to learning about leadership and various theories on individual and organizational decision-making, I will remember this class for the academic writing ... again! Yes, academic writing! The cornerstone of every class taught by Dr. Brazer.   However, I felt much more comfortable with writing this time around.

        I really enjoyed analysing the adoption of Montessori Model by a private school using the "theory of bounded rationality" as a conceptual framework and NASA's space shuttle disaster using several organizational decision-making theories and the literature on organizational pathologies.  Finally, the paper on my definition of Effective Leadership offered me a good vehicle to integrate all the theories and readings about leadership and reflect upon what leadership meant to me.

        [Click here] to see the list of competencies achieved in this course.