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Christine Riordan, director of the Institute for Leadership Advancement, helped raise more than $6 million to support leadership programs that the institute has begun offering to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as working professionals. "We make it very individualized and developmental," Riordan says. Another hallmark is ILA's commitment to the tenets of "servant leadership.

When Drew Hamilton heard about the Terry College's new Institute for Leadership Advancement (ILA), he couldn't get his managers to Athens fast enough.

Hamilton, regional vice president of the Georgia-South Carolina office for State Farm Insurance in Duluth, Ga., supervises 800 insurance agents and some 3,500 employees in the two states. Although State Farm's headquarters sends a list of preferred leadership development programs to each of its regional offices, Hamilton had never heard of one close to home. Until he got the word from newly appointed ILA director Christine Riordan. Hamilton (AB '62) sent a contingent of his middle managers to a four-day executive leadership seminar put on by the institute last October.

"I don't know whether a leader is born or made, but I do know that leadership skills can be developed," he says. "But there are very few places you can send people to do that, and we jumped at this chance." The reviews were excellent.

"My people thought it was a great program—well organized and teaching a lot of skills they could apply to the job," says Hamilton, who has begun talking up the institute's programs with other State Farm offices. "What I see in this institute is that it combines the expertise of the Terry College—one of the most highly ranked business schools in the country—with a specific program to develop leadership at all levels, and that's very unusual and special." "I think the way we're going about it is unique," agrees Riordan. "This is an academically based leadership program, and we make it very individualized and developmental."

The genesis for a leadership institute came from a suggestion by Terry College Executive-in-Residence and benefactor Earl Leonard during a reception to meet Dean George Benson at the Cherokee Town & Country Club in Atlanta.

As they talked, Leonard (ABJ '58, LLB '61) voiced concerns about the quality of recent labor pools and the importance of developing leadership, and Benson noted that the idea fit neatly with other early discussions about the college's strategic plan. The plan, which Terry faculty would approve in December 1999, determined that the development of leadership programs was one of three areas of special focus where the college could distinguish itself academically. After discussing it with more executive advisors, Benson formed a committee of Terry faculty members to develop the idea. Riordan, a management professor with a specialty in organizational behavior, served as co-chair of that committee with Benson and championed the creation of a new entity.

The Institute for Leadership Advancement emerged as the answer. When it was given formal approval by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents last May, private support was already lining up. The first was a $2 million pledge from Bebe and Earl Leonard. Other generous gifts—from SunTrust, alumni Larry and Betsy Powell, Bob Hatcher, and the President's Venture Fund supported by the UGA Partners program—preceded a $4 million gift this year from the Bradley-Turner Foundation of Columbus, Ga.

According to its plan, the ILA will have five major components:

• The Leadership Scholars Program will select several dozen junior-year students each year from the Terry College, then develop their leadership skills over a two-year period.
• The UnderGraduate Advancement (UGA) in Leadership Program will provide a set of online resources, talks, reading materials and other tools for self-directed UGA students who are not enrolled in the Scholars Program but still wish to develop their leadership skills.
• The MBA Leadership Program will help develop leadership among Terry College graduate students, utilizing seminars on team development, understanding personal leadership styles, presentation skills and other topics.
• The Executive Leadership Program is offered on campus as a four-day short course for managers to develop their own personal leadership action plan. "[This] was, without a doubt, the most worthwhile conference I have attended during my 20-year business career," said Marty Miller, manager of treasury operations for Coca-Cola Enterprises and one of the first students in the program. "[It] gave me insights about my own leadership style, as well as the styles of others, that I use every day both personally and professionally."
• A Research Consortium will perform and disseminate new research in the area of leadership. With help from 10 to 15 corporate partners, this research arm of the institute expects to create and publish a semi-annual newsletter and host roundtable seminars on cutting-edge leadership topics.

Of the five areas, undergraduate leadership development forms the largest part of the institute. An ILA faculty committee selected close to 30 Terry College juniors to be the first participants in the Leonard Leadership Scholars Program, now under the direction of management professor Melenie Lankau. The program will gradually increase enrollment to as many as 50 students per junior class—all privately funded at an average cost of $5,000 per scholar, none of which is paid by the students.

"This program is very competitive," stresses Lankau, who received almost 200 applications for the first 30 slots. "It was challenging for the selection committee to narrow down the field of applicants to the final scholars. The applicants demonstrated a high caliber of leadership talent and potential."

Once selected, the undergraduate scholars will take a battery of personality-assessment tests to determine their extroversion and introversion, "emotional intelligence," perceived control of situations, and propensity for risk-taking, among other traits. They also will be subject to so-called "360° evaluations" by parents, teachers, friends and employers, then discuss the results in mixed groups of students.

All of this assessment and group dynamic will improve scholars' leadership styles, adds Riordan. "If, for example, a student is weak on public-speaking skills, we will identify that and then work to improve it," she explains.

Scholars will each be paired with faculty mentors to further develop their leadership qualities; each will job-shadow executives to observe high-level leadership firsthand; and each will assemble a comprehensive portfolio for use in the job search process.

One of the most remarkable components of the institute's programs, however, is its unwavering focus on community service.

"They've got to make a commitment to us, because we're making a commitment to them," says Riordan. Throughout the scholars' two years in the program, the concept of "servant leadership"—the idea that leaders must always strive to improve the lives of others—will be driven home, both in a required course called "Leading from Within" and during required community service projects and optional summer internships. Finally, scholars will par- ticipate in one of a number of Youth and Community Mentoring Assemblies, a project in which each will give a talk or otherwise teach leadership skills to middle school and high school students.

"Leadership is not just about yourself, it's about giving back to others," says Riordan of the concept. "A lot of people equate leadership with power, but we're trying to impart that it's about empowering and developing others, as well. We hope that our students will leave here recognizing that the world is not just about for-profit businesses or about becoming a CEO as quickly as you can, but about being a contributing member of a community. We're starting to see more of that sentiment in the business world, and more evidence that a company can be very effective from a business standpoint by treating its employees as human beings."

Indeed, Columbus-based Synovus Financial Corp. was recently rated among the top five places to work in the nation by Fortune magazine; and a newly endowed ILA faculty chair will be named the Synovus Chair in Servant Leadership in its honor.

Taken together, ILA's programs are already drawing attention from both corporate and academic communities. State Farm's Drew Hamilton was so impressed that he secured an unrestricted $100,000 gift from the State Farm Insurance Companies Foundation to support the institute.

"I have two children at UGA, and I would certainly encourage them to take these courses if they could," says Hamilton. "This is probably the single most important skill you need to get into management and then move up in management.

"We hire an awful lot of Terry College graduates, and they're a cut above students from other business colleges. This institute is just one more way to ensure that will continue to be true."

Institute for Leadership Advancement Website