The Noel Academy for Strengths-Based Leadership and Education

I have the good fortune to work with some amazing colleagues in the doctoral program in Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University who also do research together with the Noel Academy for Strengths-Based Leadership and Education. A little over a year ago the Noel Academy began as a way to honor the work that Don Clifton and Chip Anderson had been doing for several decades. Don, chairman of the board of The Gallup Organization, always asked "What would happen if we studied what was right with people?" Chip, one of our colleagues on the doctoral faculty at Azusa Pacific was fond of asking, "What would we do if we really loved our students?" Before he passed away in July of 2005, Chip had clearly left his mark on the university and our students. Our president, Jon Wallace, committed with our Board of Trustees for the university to become a strengths-based campus. Lee Noel, co-founder of Noel-Levitz, Inc., was a good friend of Don and Chip's. By funding the Noel Academy for Strengths-Based Leadership and Education, he not only honored the work of his colleagues and friends, but also ensured that APU would maintain its commitment to becoming a strengths-based campus. Bringing in Dr. Eileen Hulme as the first executive director of the Academy was a huge coup for us, as she has done some amazing work at Baylor University as the Vice President for Student Life.

The Academy will launch officially this April 27th with a dedication of the new building that houses the Academy offices. The grand opening event provides us with a great opportunity to gather people from around the country to discuss how a strengths-based approach can be utilized in three key areas: (a) in helping students discover their calling and vocation, (b) in helping K-12 schools recognize and capitalize on the strengths of their teachers and students, and (c) in impacting college campuses by building on the research coming out of the field of positive psychology. For more information, check out the Academy's website at www.apu.edu/strengthsacademy.

The mission of the Academy is to transform educational practices by equipping college and university faculty and staff to identify and nurture students' strengths as the foundation for engaging students in the learning process and helping them to achieve excellence. It does so by focusing on a TRIAD of activities outlined below. What can the Academy do for you?

• Training and development of leaders, educators, coaches, and others who wish to apply a strengths-based approach to the work they do. The Academy can provide executive coaching or appropriate training for your leadership team members, academic advisors, faculty, student development staff, and student leaders.
• Research on the impact of strengths-based interventions in higher education and K-12 settings. The Academy partners with researchers around the country to determine the outcomes of strengths-based interventions.
• Interventions designed to produce engaged learning, student success, and a sense of meaning and purpose. The Academy can help you design the interventions that are most likely to produce the impact you desire, based on its experience in program design.
• Assessment of the effects of strengths-based programming. The Academy can help you design assessment programs and evaluation measures before begin a strengths-based program, so that you can document to your campus leadership the effects of the program on outcomes that matter most to your institution.
• Dissemination of best practices. The Academy intends to function as a clearinghouse for best practices in strengths-based leadership and education.

In future posts, I'll talk more about what it means to become a strengths-based campus and will share with you some of the best practices we've discovered along the way.