Follow the Leader

Throughout the semester, Dr. Christopher Anne Robinson-Easley held a weekly get-together for her executive leadership students on Thursday nights. No one took attendance. No one got grades for participation. But the students who chose to come found a community of aspiring leaders to support them.

Easley spent over 20 years in management and leadership positions in the corporate business sector before spending another 22 years in higher education. She’s written four books about global workforce issues, diversity and intercultural management. Easley joined the Roosevelt faculty as a full clinical professor of organizational leadership in 2020.

During their weekly sessions, the professor would be open with her students about her career: when she let herself leave positions that didn’t fulfill her and how if she could succeed by following her passions, her students could, too.

Easley did hold standard office hours where students could ask questions about an assignment or course material. For a class designed to meet only online, the Zoom meetings took their learning to another level.

“I believe many of us, including myself, left feeling stronger as we had the opportunity to talk, and for some simply sit,” Easley said.

Building a community of leaders

Networking is one of the most valuable takeaways from an MBA program. In their cohorts, Roosevelt students meet other driven, decisive professionals in the midst of their leadership journey. How can graduate students get that same experience online?

Sarah Alhayek is on track to be a triple Lakers graduate: After earning her bachelor’s in clinical psychology with honors, she returned to Roosevelt for a dual MBA and industrial-organizational psychology degree.

The transition to remote learning in March was difficult, she says, and a big departure from her last four years at RU. “It happened really suddenly after spring break,” she said. “I feel more comfortable doing it this semester, but it wasn’t the easiest thing to get used to.”

She went into the first meeting for the executive leadership course with fairly basic expectations — it was an opportunity for her to meet the professor and see who else was in the class. But over the weeks, their conversations grew deeper. Students found ways to connect what they were studying to their real life experiences in their full-time jobs and past roles.

Because the session was optional, everyone who attended was invested in the conversation.

Real bonds through difficult times

Like many Americans, Easley’s students struggled with real-world issues — job losses, illness, family difficulties — but the class connection remained a constant.

Even though the class was optional, Shante Brown-Facen attended as often as possible when her economics class didn’t overlap. She says that the consistency of the weekly Zoom meetings helped her cohort get different perspectives on management issues, week after week.

“I left the class feeling more accomplished and gained a lifetime of knowledge and tools that can guide me in both my personal and professional life,” Brown-Facen said.

The students read a book about deep change that used the metaphor of crossing a bridge to explain the process of coming to terms with the unknown. In the wake of Jacob Blake’s shooting and the election, the diverse group of classmates became a safe place to talk about leadership through the lens of everything happening in the world.

During their meetings, Easley gave her students the floor. The students drove the discussion and decided what they would talk about, with the course work as a jumping-off point.

“The professor was there engaging us in the conversation, leading conversations, but she really allowed us to talk about topics we wanted to talk about,” Alhayek said. “She never made us feel like the course was about the grades. It was more about learning first and completing your work.”

During the election, student Clarice Morgan connected with Alhayek, who is from Syria, over the course’s discussion boards.

“Dr. Easley said in the very beginning of the class was that there were going to be some things that would be hard to discuss, but she wanted us to challenge ourselves to go past the surface,” Morgan said. “The course made us get closer together.”

“She made me look at leadership and life from a different perspective,” she said. “That speaks a lot to her character and to the way that she teaches.”