Leading With Purpose

Each generation of Baylor University students has gone out into the world ready to make a difference as leaders in their communities and professions. A Baylor education inspires them to lead with purpose, live for human flourishing and pursue a vision that transforms the world.

Students enrolled in Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business enjoy the opportunity to participate in programs specifically designed to assist them in shaping habits and virtues that are fundamental to effective leadership.

“Our mission is to develop leaders through competence and character,” said David M. Szymanski, Ph.D., The William E. Crenshaw Endowed Dean of the Hankamer School of Business. “Our commitment to developing principled leaders is rooted in our Christian mission and expressed through the transformational experiences we provide for our students each day.”

Grounded in Christian Values

The Center for Christian Leadership and Ethics (CCLE) stands prominently among the organizations charged with fostering a faith-informed perspective on leadership in Baylor business students.

Led by Matt Quade, Ph.D., associate dean for values-based leadership and the Kimberly and Aaron P. Graft Professor in Christian Leadership in Business, the CCLE has flourished in recent years, enhancing existing programs while establishing new opportunities for students, alumni, faculty and staff.

The Center has two primary goals. The first is to provide programs that help leaders exemplify and communicate the importance of ethical behavior and service in addition to maximizing profit. The second is to offer programming that helps students and other stakeholders identify and live out their vocational calling.

“These programs allow people to learn, engage and encourage as they connect with each other in a community rooted in Christian values,” Quade said. Christian Leadership in Business, Baylor Business: On Mission and the Armes Family Christian Leadership in Business Summit are among the Center’s standout programs.

Specialized Focus

Programs focused on particular niches in the business world provide students targeted leadership skills and practical experience. One such program is the Center for Professional Selling (ProSales), which provides a foundation upon which students build their careers. ProSales’ “college-to-career” development initiatives include the student-led Professional Development Program (PDP), which offers events that expose students to various career paths, workshops and experiences, and the Top Gun Training Program in which executives engage with students to provide input to prepare them for the career-search process and for the workplace.

Another program offering niche training is the Center for Sales Strategy in Sports and Entertainment (S3E). S3E students benefit from specialized coursework and summer internships that prepare them to pursue sales or analytics roles in sports marketing. Specialized focuses in Baylor’s business education boasts impressive career results — the S3E program currently places more than 95% of its students in full-time positions before graduation.

Building Leaders

Students naturally benefit from the expertise and experience of faculty and staff in the Hankamer School of Business, but there also is much to be gained through interacting with peers who have already traveled down the same academic path for a few years. The Billington Peer Leader Program provides just such a resource. A required component for all first-year, pre-business students, the program pairs them with upperclassmen mentors, who receive a stipend in return for their work.

Laura Lalani, B.A. ’06, associate director for student success initiatives in the Hankamer School of Business, oversees the program. She said that while the program’s benefit to pre-business students is its most obviously significant aspect, the leadership experience gained by mentors can be equally transformational.

Lalani believes the Billington Peer Leader Program and similar programs throughout the Hankamer School of Business demonstrate the University’s focus on leadership development and student success. “It’s one thing to say that you want to build leaders, and it’s another thing to put that into action,” she said.

Read the full story, Developing Leaders, to learn more about how Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business enhances the leadership skills of students through mentorship, programming and academics.