Lifetime Achievement Awardee

Susan R. Komives

Dr. Susan R. Komives is Professor Emerita in the Student Affairs Graduate Program at the University of Maryland. She is past president of the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education and of the American College Personnel Association. She served as Vice President of both Stephens College and the University of Tampa. She is the co-author or co-editor of 16 books or monographs including Exploring Leadership, Leadership for A Better World, Facilitating the Social Change Model, Handbook for Student Leadership Development, Management and Leadership Issues for a New Century, How Academic Disciplines Approach Leadership Development, Cross Border Enhancement for Student Learning and Development, and the forthcoming Research Agenda for Leadership Learning and Development Through Higher Education. Four of her books have been translated into Japanese and Chinese.  She was a member of the teams that wrote Learning Reconsidered and the ensemble that developed the widely used Social Change Model of Leadership Development. In 2014, she became the founding executive editor of the New Directions for Student Leadership series, a quarterly monograph from Jossey-Bass/Wiley publishers. She was a founding co-principal investigator of the international Multi-institutional Study of Leadership, PI for the widely used Leadership Identity Development grounded theory, and co-founder of the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs. She was chair of the ACPA Senior Scholars, a senior scholar with the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, a NASPA Faculty Fellow, and a member of the Board of Directors of ILA. She has consulted in leadership or student affairs in Canada, China, Japan, South Korean, Taiwan, and Qatar. She is the 2011 recipient of the University of Maryland Board of Regent’s Award for Faculty Teaching and the NASPA Shaffer Award for Academic Excellence as a graduate faculty member. She is a recipient of both the ACPA and NASPA outstanding research and scholarship awards. She is the 2019 recipient of the NASPA John S. Blackburn Distinguished Pillar of the Profession Award, the 2013 Leadership and Service Award from the Association of Leadership Educators, and the 2012 recipient of the ACPA Lifetime Achievement Award.

Oral history is an excellent method for collecting and interpreting memories and fostering new knowledge. Dr. Phil Scarpino, past president of the National Council for Public History and Professor of History at IU, exhaustively researches each recipient prior to conducting his interviews and uses the highest standards prescribed by the American Oral History Association.

The Tobias Leadership Center focuses on research and programs related to the study of leadership across all sectors – including corporate, public service, education, religion, medicine, and non-profit organizations. Its focus on multiple sectors and on both the practice and theory of leadership distinguishes its agenda among leadership programs nationwide. Through ongoing research in a variety of sectors, it generates knowledge about leadership and disseminates this knowledge through a variety of programs.

Oral History with Barbara Kellerman
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Keynote session with Barbara Kellerman at ILA Atlanta 2016

Keynote session with Barbara Kellerman at ILA West Palm Beach 2018