The District 5390 Leadership Academy Story

Background: 

District 5390 has had great difficulty finding individuals who were willing to take on the challenge of being District Governor or to serve in other District leadership positions.   Sometimes we have only one or two candidates each year seek the office and even though all did a fine job serving as club president, we knew that we had many qualified Rotarians in the District who were not showing any interest in the DG's position or any other District level office.  We knew we had to do something to change this. Then DG Carl Prinzing talked with the District 5110 leadership and decided to follow the lead of Rotary District 5110 in creating within District 5390, a "Leadership Academy" program.  Carl asked PDG Bill Spath to head up the effort. Bill obtained the District 5110 Academy curriculum and got as much information as he could about their program and began to put together a plan to implement a similar program in District 5390 during the 2004-2005 Rotary year. He worked extensively with the District 5110 Web Site Manager, Harriett Schloer, who serves as the Academy liaison between District 5110 and District 5390.  Harriett manages the District 5390 Academy web site and also serves as the instructor for Course #1:  Communications, which she authored.

A committee was established to work on the development of the program, its format, its content, and recommend who the "faculty" members would be. The program that was finally decided upon was as follows:

1.   There would be one Leadership Academy class per year beginning with the 2004-2005 Rotary year.

2.   The Academy Program would be 8 months long (beginning in September and ending in April)

3.   The curriculum would consist of six separate courses:

Course #1:  Communications

Course #2:  Membership Development and Retention

Course #3:  Rotary Club, District and International Organization

Course #4:  Public Relations for Effective Rotary Clubs

Course #5:  The Rotary Foundation Programs and Ways of Giving

Course #6:  Humanitarian Service Projects and Grant Preparation (Local and International)

4.   All courses would be taught electronically, there would be no actual "classroom time".

5.   There would be one course per month (beginning in September and ending with the final Course being delivered on March 1

6.   Each course would be "taught" by a separate faculty member and the students would have one month in which to complete each course (including an assignment) and take an online final exam.

7.   Faculty members would be drawn from PDG's or others knowledgeable in a specific course area and who are currently serving at the district level in that course area.

8.   Each course would have an exam that must be taken online with Hosted Test by the deadline date for each course.

9.   In order to graduate, all students would  be required to attend the following District events:

a.   The District TRF dinner (Mandatory)

b.   The District Assembly (Mandatory)

c.   The District Conference including a half-day "Seminar and Wrap-up" session to be held the day before the start of the District Conference (Mandatory)

e.   The Graduation Ceremony

10. In order to be eligible for the Academy, students must be a member in good standing of a District 5390 Rotary Club.

11. Individuals must be nominated for participation in the Academy by their Club President, the DG, a PDG, or other district officer. All nominated individuals must then be approved by the District 5390 Leadership Academy Dean(s).

12. All students must have a personal Gmail account and must be connected to the Internet via a high speed connection.

Each Leadership Academy class will be limited to a maximum of 20 participants. With the above program outline in place, the Faculty was selected and given initial materials based on the Oregon program which they then adapted and expanded to fit the needs of the District 5390 Leadership Academy.  Each year as District 5110 updates its curriculum, it is share with District 5390 which, in turn, updates it to meet the needs of District 5390.

All of the course work and materials are available only on the District 5390 Leadership Academy web site or the Rotary International web site.

At the final half-day seminar and wrap-up session the students are asked to critique the overall Academy program and the final seminar event.