Marymount’s Leadership and Community Development (LCD) graduate program prepares graduates to lead in business, governmental and not-for profit settings. Drawing upon on our Catholic education tradition, the program is based on the belief that Marymount graduates lead lives of service to others. The program produces skilled leaders who recognize that an interdisciplinary approach to advancing any community is dependent on leadership’s ability to understand an organization’s past and portray an inspiring and sustaining future.

The unique character of the program derives from the conjoining of local and international concerns. LCD issues in urban US cities are distinct from rural Lake County or tribal rural Ghana, but they follow predictable patterns and common elements: leadership and governance, individual vs. community obligations, the impact of built space and the mapping of residence, transport and markets.

Starting with the familiar and moving steadily towards an unfamiliar world, this process is reflected in the progression of study from classroom to field. In that emerging process, the student comes to learn how to understand and effectively study communities, to see how they work, how they are organized, and the culture, using learned skills and techniques from the program.

LCD instruction uses case-study and an experiential and virtual-assisted teaching in order to conceptualize the sociocultural, economic and ecological impacts. The program provides the professional skills to prepare students to work in one or another of the related professions that seek to improve the conditions of communities.