Whether you just earned your undergraduate degree or you have been in a job for several years and aspire to advance to a leadership role, Truman’s Master of Arts in Leadership Program can help you enhance your professional credentials. Gain a better understanding of leadership by examining best practices and studying leadership theories, decision-making, research, ethics, and organizational change.
Two Paths to Completion
Synchronous Online
Let our expert faculty come to you.
In-person
Join us on our beautiful campus in Kirksville, Missouri.
Grow your ability and marketability as a leader
The Master of Arts in Leadership program prepares you to lead in a variety of settings — for-profit, non-profit, health care, military, government, education, human services, management, and more.
Why Truman?
- flexibility to customize the program to match your particular goals
- experiential learning through simulations, case studies, and internships
- attentive faculty mentors
- 6th best master's university in the nation
Schedule a Visit
Virtual or In-person
Get an inside look at program specifics, tour your learning environment, and meet your professors.
Curriculum
Your degree will be a mix of core coursework (15 credits), courses from your area of specialization (15 credits), and an internship (9 credits).
Become acquainted with dominant leadership theories in research literature, and identify your own leadership strengths and weaknesses as viewed through the lens of each theory. You’ll also learn about ethical standards and behavior, the basics of resource management (e.g., time management, financial management), and goal setting. Finally, you’ll begin to plan your own path of personal leadership development.
Here you’ll study classic and contemporary works on organizational leadership, using the classics as a basis for analyzing the contemporary.
Discover the major academic approaches to decision-making while consciously building on the contributions of several disciplines.
Move from theory to application in a case-study format. You’ll use knowledge gained from your coursework in perspectives of leadership theory, organizational behavior theory, and decision-making theory to find actionable solutions to real-world problems.
Designed to be the last course you take, your capstone provides an opportunity to showcase what you’ve learned — both to yourself and to future employers. It’s a major project that allows you to deeply investigate a topic or field of interest, revise your portfolio of work from across the program, and reflect about personal and professional goals and the practical assistance needed to achieve them.
In addition the core curriculum, you’ll have the opportunity to focus your studies on a specific field. Your selected specialization will make up more than half of your degree, making the program truly customizable to your goals. Here are a few examples of existing specializations, though you may choose something completely different:
- Sports Management
- Gifted Education
- Data Science
- Public Health
This is where you’ll integrate course learning, personal approaches to leadership in the workplace, and obtain practical experience in organizational settings that are of particular interest to you.
This is the academic and reflective portion of your internship. Working with an assigned faculty mentor and other students, you’ll evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and growth you experienced during your internship.
Admission
For priority consideration, apply by:
SPRING:
Apply by November 1
SUMMER:
Apply by April 1
FALL:
Apply by June 1
Application Requirements
Financial Aid
Enrolled students taking at least six credit hours per semester are eligible for federal financial aid programs. For more information, see our Financial Aid Resources for Graduate Studies page or contact the Financial Aid Office at (660) 785-4130 or finaid@truman.edu.We hope to introduce institutional scholarships and graduate assistantships as the program grows, but these are not currently available.