Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Progress is a term used to describe advancement for humanity. It can be measured in many ways, most commonly by GDP, especially in the United States. One way of measuring progress can be to apply a wide range of elements that are used in measuring happiness, like well-being, education, social connections, health, and security. Happiness is useful in measuring individual progress by using subjective measurements and reflecting on one’s lifestyle, but it can also be useful in measuring societal progress. The World Happiness Report uses data to show how happiness can be used globally to measure progress by looking at aspects of well-being, conceptions of happiness, social media, biological components of happiness, and balance and harmony. Real life applications of this method exist with Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness that was started in 1972, where the country decided to reorganize their policies to align with these new ideals that placed its citizens happiness above all. If a similar thing is done in the US, where progress is defined not only by GDP but also by elements used in measuring happiness, then policies can be made with these ideals in mind that should benefit the citizens of the US. Areas that would greatly profit from this type of progress include education, healthcare, and the economy.

This project aimed to understand what best practices for leadership in the Information Technology sector and if it could be consolidated for a comprehensive learning plan. This learning plan was housed on a traditional LMS (Canvas) and utilized a combination of IT Management research, interviews conducted with five industry members (all boasting five or more years of work experience), and an analysis of six top institution IT Leadership programs, to create a template. For the provided questionnaires, participants were asked to consider their time in the industry and discuss work culture dynamics, distribution of power, and what pain points were felt in their daily operations. All participants also described their direct roles and seniority, ranging from self-described “middle” to ”high” level placements. Based on these interviews, much of what seems to halt productivity and employee satisfaction regularly comes from a lack of concise and regular communication and a need for more understanding regarding team members' drive or capabilities. Regarding the program evaluation, six IT Leadership programs were chosen, where five were constructed by higher education institutions and one from a certificate governing body. The top skills identified across all programs were communication and decision-making. Communication is an all-encompassing idea for collaboration and strong speaking skills, with programs 1,4,5, and 6 noting their importance. Decision-making in this context is about both work delegation and firm problem-solving. For work delegation, it was pointed out in the interviews that techs and engineers see strong leadership utilizing professional judgment as vital to a business’s performance, with all programs but program 4 similarly emphasizing the same. Given this evaluation, the leadership styles used can be identified as Delegative, Strengths-Based, and Transformative. The previously noted interviews and research resulted in a 4-week course demo, which utilized the interviews in conjunction with leadership concepts.