New UB center to create more effective leaders, organizations

A new center opening this fall in School of Management aims to create more effective leaders and organizations.

The Center for Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness (CLOE) will significantly advance research and teaching in the area of leadership and its impact on organizational effectiveness. It also will support the UB 2020 goals of accelerating academic excellence, translating scholarship and developing leadership capabilities in UB students and business leaders.

“Through the center we will seek to create partnerships with the business, nonprofit and public sector communities that support leadership development, innovation and change efforts that both contribute to leadership and organizational effectiveness and the advancement of UB as a thought leader in this critical area,” says Paul Tesluk, Donald S. Carmichael Professor of Organizational Behavior and the center’s academic director.

Critical to those efforts will be the center’s newly hired executive director, Sarah Gilson, an experienced leader with expertise in leadership and organizational development.

“We are off to a strong start, launching programs, initiatives and projects to help organizations in rapidly growing industries such as the life sciences and health care,” says Tesluk.

Among those plans is an initiative to share the school’s expertise in leadership development with other units in the university, including the Academic Health Center (schools of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Dental Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Public Health and Health Professions).

CLOE also will offer executive leadership programs, similar to its recent non-degree program, “Leading Transformation and Change in Health Care,” which gives participants a strategic understanding of the trends and transformations taking place in the health care industry through a series of presentations and discussions with noted health care leaders and experts.

Arjang A. Assad, dean of the School of Management, says CLOE will be a means for building a top-tier faculty of leadership scholars and will provide ways to work with the business community, as well as with other units across campus.

“Western New York is in a time of critical growth and transformation,” says Assad. “CLOE will support UB’s pivotal role for economic engagement in the region, while producing world-class research and instruction.”