MVCC, Leadership Mohawk Valley receive $152K grant to create Center for Leadership Excellence

UTICA, N.Y. — Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) and Leadership Mohawk Valley (LMV) announced they were awarded a four-year, $151,900 grant from the Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties to create a Center for Leadership Excellence to address the region’s need for effective, equipped, and engaged community leaders.

While existing leadership programs in the region have shown “positive results,” MVCC and LMV believe there is still “tremendous potential waiting to be unlocked in the community, including through women, minorities, refugees, and other groups that are underrepresented in local leadership positions,” the organizations said in a news release. The Center for Leadership Excellence will create one location for participants to learn skills to lead the region in the future.

“This new partnership between Leadership Mohawk Valley and MVCC will allow us to maintain our 28-year-old core community leadership program, while developing new programs to serve the leadership development needs of the Mohawk Valley,” said Ann Rushlo, LMV director.

The grant will help increase the impact of LMV, which typically has a class of fewer than 40 people annually, by initiating a leadership-training effort that will serve more than 150 individuals each year, the groups contend.

The Center for Leadership Excellence will “align existing LMV and MVCC campus activities as cornerstone programming while laying foundations for multiple new efforts to address community needs. Within the first four years, the Center will have several strands of programming in operation, and is researching offering a Leadership Fellowship Certification for individuals who complete three of those programs,” the release stated.

The four existing programs include LMV’s flagship 10-month civic-leadership training program; Youth Leadership: Girls Soaring; Leadership Academy; and Supervisors Institute. These programs will all be “refined to better meet the current and emerging professional development needs of the community,” the organizations said.

Other programs will be added in the future, including:

 * Neighborhood Leadership: designed to develop a pool of men and women from “underrepresented populations” with leadership capacity for addressing ongoing and emerging corporate and community issues.

 * Board Leadership: set up to equip future and current board members with skills to grow organizations, and enhance effectiveness, decision-making, and navigation of “unexpected opportunities” and challenges.

 * Organizational Leadership: a series of one-day sessions to provide common learning through “uncommon experiences” to explore disruptive innovation and “vibrant organizational cultures.”

 * Intro Mohawk Valley: an invitation-only opportunity for community leaders who are new to the area to network with their peers. It seeks to “fast-track introductions and connectivity to the area.”

The grant provides resources for additional staffing capacity for the expanded program development and delivery that seeks to produce a “self-sufficient” business model in the next four years. MVCC says it will provide “extensive support services” for the Center for Leadership Excellence.

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