Whether you just earned your undergraduate degree or you have been in a job for several years and aspire to advance to a leadership role, Truman’s Master of Arts in Leadership Program can help you enhance your professional credentials. Gain a better understanding of leadership by examining best practices and studying leadership theories, decision-making, research, ethics, and organizational change.
Format: On Campus or Online
Why Truman?
Two Paths to Completion
Synchronous Online
Let our expert faculty come to you.
In-person
Join us on our beautiful campus in Kirksville, Missouri.
Grow your ability and marketability as a leader
The Master of Arts in Leadership program prepares you to lead in a variety of settings — for-profit, non-profit, health care, military, government, education, human services, management, and more.
Curriculum
Your degree will be a mix of core coursework (12 credits), courses from your area of specialization (12 credits), and a culminating experience capstone with thesis, project, or internship (9 credits).
Become acquainted with dominant leadership theories in research literature, and identify your leadership strengths and weaknesses as viewed through the lens of each theory. You’ll also learn about ethical standards and behavior, the basics of resource management (e.g., time management, financial management), and goal setting. Finally, you’ll begin to plan your own path of personal leadership development.
Here you’ll study classic and contemporary works on organizational leadership, using the classics as a basis for analyzing the contemporary.
Discover the major academic approaches to decision-making while consciously building on the contributions of several disciplines.
Move from theory to application in a case-study format. You’ll use knowledge gained from your coursework in perspectives of leadership theory, organizational behavior theory, and decision-making theory to find actionable solutions to real-world problems.
These courses give you the opportunity to focus your studies on a specific field. Here are a few examples of existing specializations, though you may choose something completely different:
- Sports Management
- Data Science
- Gifted Education
- Higher Education Administration
- Public Health: Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response
The capstone provides an opportunity to showcase what you’ve learned — both to yourself and to future employers. It’s a major project that allows you deeply investigate a topic or field of interest, revise your portfolio of work from across the program, and reflect about personal and professional goals.
and one of these three options:
LDRS 671G: This is where you’ll integrate course learning, personal approaches to leadership in the workplace, and obtain practical experience in organizational settings that are particularly interesting to you.
LDRS 672G: For this academic and reflective portion of your internship, you’ll work with an assigned faculty mentor and other students to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and growth you experienced during your internship.
The leadership project builds a connection between the academic components of the program and applies that knowledge to a real-world context. It requires an independently produced deliverable (e.g. technical manual, website, needs assessment study, diversity training seminar curriculum, etc.) that has a function within an organization and can either target an actual workplace need or serve as an exercise in gaining experience.
A thesis is generally a good option for students who wish to continue onto doctoral study as it establishes the student’s capacity to do original scholarly research.
Admission
For priority consideration, apply by:
SPRING:
Apply by November 1
SUMMER:
Apply by April 1
FALL:
Apply by June 1
Admission Requirements
Tuition
*Total estimated tuition based on 2024-25 academic year. Tuition subject to change.
Financial Aid
Degree-seeking students enrolled in at least six credit hours per semester are eligible for federal financial aid programs. For more information, see Financial Aid Resources for Graduate Studies or contact the Financial Aid Office at (660) 785-4130 or finaid@truman.edu. We hope to introduce institutional scholarships and graduate assistantships as the program grows, but these are not currently available.
Schedule a Visit
Virtual or In-person
Get an inside look at program specifics, tour your learning environment, and meet your professors.
