The School of Leadership and Social Innovation draws upon the talents and strengths of longstanding Centers of Excellence, committed faculty, and community-based learning initiatives at John Carroll University. The Center for Service and Social Action, Edward M. Muldoon Center for Entrepreneurship, a Women’s Entrepreneurship Program, the John Carroll Leadership Initiative and a Socially Responsible Management Honors Program and others like them share a common mission that leads to direct, human-scaled social action. The School for Leadership and Social Innovation will leverage new and established centers of excellence and faculty expertise in leadership, ethics, entrepreneurship and social innovation. We will combine forces to develop ethical leaders to meet the increasingly complex demands on leaders in every industry and organization.
Ethics Boot Camp Initiative
Our Vision
John Carroll University and the Boler College of Business recognize that the convergence of environmental, political, social and economic forces continue to expand the potential for ethical challenges across all areas of business. In such a high-stakes climate, business students need more immersion in and experience dealing with ethical dilemmas. A study by The Center for the Public Trust reveals that more than 80% of college graduates will face an ethical dilemma during their first year in a job.
Our Ethics
Boot Camp Initiative immerses students in a rigorous ethics process as a gateway into the broader business curriculum — and as a pre-emptive intervention for future work challenges. The Ethics Boot Camp will inspire students to become ethical and socially responsible business leaders by engaging with their peers around campus, and plant seeds of ethical frameworks and principles that will flourish for the remainder of their undergraduate careers and into the future.
Our Advantage
The Boler College of Business at John Carroll University brings a critical mass of resources and expertise to the task of preparing ethical next generation leaders. The Ginn Institute for Corporate Social Responsibility and the Raymond and Eleanor Smiley Chair in Business Ethics, held by Dr. Robert Giacalone, Ph.D., provide Boler students with the academic bedrock, scholarly thinking and experiential opportunities needed to hone their decision making and moral judgement. Dr. Giacalone has been the Series Editor for the Sage Series in Business Ethics, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Management, Spirituality, and Religion, and editor of several special journal issues. He is currently co-editor of the Ethics in Practice book series and serves on several journal editorial boards. Dr. Giacalone has edited/authored 10 books and over 160 articles on ethics and values, and has held consulting roles with large organizations, including the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, PERSEREC, (a security division of the U.S. Department of Defense), Bell Atlantic, Carter-Wallace, Wachovia Securities, and the Federal Reserve Bank.
Our Need
The Ethics Boot Camp Initiative will need a gift or gifts that yield a minimum of $80,000 in annual operating support. Funds will allow us to create an Ethics Advisory Council and provide a curriculum for learning about ethical decision-making strategies and errors to discipline specific ethical challenges (e.g., ethics in advertising, ethics in hiring). Additional support will be designated to engaging speakers from within the University and the local community businesses, along with Keynote speakers from outside Northeast Ohio, who will present academic and real world ethical scenarios. Mentoring will allow each student to develop a diagnostic assessment of his/her ethical inclinations as well as the person-specific pitfalls they may encounter.
We try to nurture the extraordinary in ordinary people. We believe that everyone can make extraordinary impact in what they do. You can innovate, impact lives and set a higher ethical standard — by stepping forward and standing for things. And you can do it all from a position of relative weakness, you don’t have to sitting at the top of an organization to be a model.
Robert Giacalone, Ph.D.
Raymond and Eleanor Smiley Chair in Business Ethics
Inspired Entrepreneurship
Our Vision
Bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-word entrepreneurial doing — across a range of student segments and partnerships. Startup Internships will match students with regional startups, in partnership with Cleveland-based JumpStart. The Jesuit Entrepreneurship Alliance will pool students and faculty from multiple Jesuit colleges and universities to compete in the annual Global Grand Challenge competition. Impact Entrepreneurships will support low-income Northeast Ohio female students in experienced-based apprenticeships designed to match their desire for a better life with meaningful work and solid mentorships.
Our Advantage
John Carroll University has long merged entrepreneurship, experiential learning, values-based enterprise and social justice. New faculty and centers of excellence allow us now to extend our reach and bring a more sustained impact to the community We renew our commitment to giving students the challenges and support required to hone nascent entrepreneurial skills and instincts, and to translate contemplation into action.
Our Advantage
Our Need
Inspired Entrepreneurship initiatives require significant funds both for initial ramp up, student travel, competition fees, staffing and for annual operations.
We want students to see themselves as change-makers. Whether you’re working for a big corporation, the Peace Corps, or your own start-up… be somebody who can make a change for the better in that organization.
Doan Winkel, Ph.D.
Director, Muldoon Center The John J. Kahl, Sr., Chair In Entrepreneurship
Inspired Ethics
Our Vision
Surround and engage students with a range of experiences and mentors to prepare them to live inspired and ethical business lives in an increasingly competitive and challenging marketplace. The Business Ethics Honors Initiative challenges students to develop a scholar-practitioner-approach to ethics, social responsibility, corporate citizenship and sustainability. The Ethical Companies Travel Program gives students exposure to best practices — HR, finance, supply chain — within the region’s most ethical companies and organizations. The Ethics, Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability Fellowship, offered by the Ginn Institute, provides fellowship support to two fellows from the MBA program to pursue a year-long research project related to Ethics, Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship or Sustainability.
Our Advantage
Recent studies show that eight in 10 college graduates will face an ethical dilemma during their first year on the job. John Carroll University has always engaged in the crucial conversation of what it means to go beyond what’s legal, and actually do what’s right. We do so with the support of a critical mass of resources and expertise to the task of preparing ethical next generation leaders, including the Ginn Institute for Corporate Social Responsibility and the Raymond and Eleanor Smiley Chair in Business Ethics.
Our Need
Inspired Ethics initiatives require significant funds both for initial ramp up, student travel, scholarships, fellowship support, competition fees, staffing and for annual operations.
We’ve done a good job of preparing students for an ideal business world that doesn’t exist. And the new reality is that we've got to get students out into the real world sooner so that they can encounter ethical dilemmas and entrenched problems. That’s how the next generation will create solutions better than what we’ve created in our generation.
Robert Giacalone, Ph.D.
Raymond and Eleanor Smiley Chair in Business Ethics
Partnerships in Ethics
Our Vision
Build strong and sustainable relationships in the community, while strengthening organizations and the region by convening influencers and decision makers around the region’s more challenging workforce and workplace issues. The Executive Caucus Initiative will gather business leaders and John Carroll faculty and graduate students to discuss real-world ethical decisions and their implications for organizations and society. Ethics and Social Responsibility Roundtables will match local business leaders and compliance professionals to meet to discuss current issues in ethics, social responsibility, corporate citizenship and sustainability. An Annual Forum Series: The Business Challenge of Ethics, Values and Social Responsibility Lectures – will host a yearly ethics forum in areas such as financial specialization (e.g. accounting, business and technology) to explore the emerging ethical, social responsibility or sustainability challenges in the financial world. Religion, Spirituality and Work Interfaith
Roundtables will advance understanding, collaboration, education and dialogue related to the role of religious diversity in advancing the human needs of the modern workplace.
Our Advantage
Corporations, non-profits, civic and industry groups and others across Northeast Ohio understand the interplay between ethical and sustainable organizations, and the well-being of the region. John Carroll University plays a distinct and strategic role with its ability to convene thought leaders and decision makers around the region’s more challenging workplace and workforce issues. We do so with the support of a critical mass of resources and expertise to the task of preparing ethical next generation leaders, including the Ginn Institute for Corporate Social Responsibility and the Raymond and Eleanor Smiley Chair in Business Ethics.
Our Need
Partnerships in Ethics initiatives require significant funds both for initial ramp up, speaker’s fees, travel, scholarships, staffing and for annual operations.
I like to say that there has never been a more exciting time to be in business — but apply that thought to senior management and you could also say that there has never been a more risk-laden or challenging time to be in business. Our Jesuit tradition, a nearly 500-year practice of asking “what is the right way?” has both resonance and relevance for today’s business leader.
Alan Miciak, Ph.D. Dean
Boler College of Business
Social Innovation Fellows Program
Our Vision
The Social Innovation Fellows Program seeks to attract and mature a cohort of undergraduates, each inspired by Ignatian values, who aspire to merge for-profit business skills and models with design thinking and sustainable social innovation. All Social Innovation Fellows will complete rigorous academic coursework, be paired with business and social innovation mentors and pursue a range of co-curricular challenges and competitions.
Our Advantage
John Carroll University and its supporters have invested in the development of faculty, students and programs aimed at advancing experiential learning, values-based enterprise and social justice. Our Arrupe, Honors and Leadership Scholars Programs provide a viable model for how to attract and develop students looking to become agents for transformative change. Our Kahl Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship, Edward M. Muldoon Center for Entrepreneurship and Raymond & Eleanor Smiley Endowed Chair in Business Ethics provide the faculty expertise and passion to support the Social Innovation Fellows Program.
Our Need
A $250,000 Social Innovation Fellows Program Endowment will allow us to launch the program with an initial cohort of students. Additional gifts will allow us to build to a cohort of 20 students, expand programming, support additional business mentors and advisors and increase community impact.
We bring students out of the classroom, into the community. Even as we try to create change, we’re asking what does solidarity mean? Social innovation only works if you're meeting another person, not a label, not a statistic, not your own prejudice in the community. At first, there is quite a big gap in understanding. So often times students start, they get their feet wet because they want to help somebody. And that's a fine impulse but it's really misdirected. Once they begin to engage in the community, they do wake up. They discover that more than a good idea, it’s a human encounter that ultimately matters.
Sr. Katherine Feely, SND Director
Center for Service & Social Action
Women’s Entrepreneurship Program
Our Vision
Create favorable conditions, incentives, mentors and experiences to inspire a new generation of female entrepreneurs across John Carroll University’s fields of study. Our Women’s Entrepreneurship Program will recruit a well-connected Advisory Council, develop a formalized Mentor Network, offer incubation and acceleration space and launch a student-managed angel investing fund.
Our Advantage
The Edward M. Muldoon Center for Entrepreneurship has a well-established track record of developing entrepreneurs and leaders — with more than 500 companies are either owned or run by JCU graduates across Northeast Ohio. The rate of women entrepreneurs has been growing at a rate double that of their male counterparts. Women now make up 40 percent of new entrepreneurs in the United States — the highest percentage since 1996, according to the 2016 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity. At the same time, the migration of millennials to the core city of Cleveland has outpaces our peer cities. The trend mirrors entrepreneurship activity tracked by Steve Case, former co-founder of AOL and head of venture capital firm Revolution. Case uses the term “the Rise of the Rest” to denote a new era for entrepreneurship in which high-growth companies can now start and scale anywhere, not just in a few coastal cities. Case says that advancements in tech are lowering the barrier of entry and access to venture capital is expanding geographically. Case gives more targeted reasons for geographies like Cleveland that are related to mobility and cost. “Increased mobility enables ‘Rise of the Rest’ start-ups to more easily attract talent,” writes Case, “often by luring people back to Midwestern cities for lifestyle reasons.”
Our Need
The Women’s Entrepreneurship Program will need a gift or gifts that yield a minimum of $200,000 in annual operating support. The Advisory Council and Mentor programs will require $10,000 annually to further close the gender gap. Build out and operating expenses for the Women’s Entrepreneurship Program Accelerator will require $50,000 annually to fund early-stage, high-growth potential ideas and an additional $20,000 for staff. A stand-alone gift of $100,000 would launch the Angel Investing Network, a cross-disciplinary, JCU student-managed angel investing fund. JCU undergrad and grad students apply to participate in managing this fund, and thus learn angel and venture capital investment strategies by investing in Cleveland and Northern Ohio entrepreneurs, startup companies and projects.
At the heart of entrepreneurship and leadership from a Jesuit perspective is basic respect for human dignity. Working toward the common good, working in solidarity, helping others. These things are core to our tradition and students can see this is what that means for me as an entrepreneur or someone managing other people. When they can see how to use those traditions in a way that can help them do better in business, and be purposeful and happy — that Jesuit business education at its best.
Tina Facca-Miess, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Of Marketing
