What qualities do you expect to see in a highly effective leader?
The top two that I think of a highly effective leader are the following: there’s the commitment to what I would call institutional values for the following through of tasks and achievements, and there is the commitment to people and to relationships.
But if you have somebody who’s just strong on people skills and not strong in the area of institutional values and achievement, then what you tend to have in that case is a group of people who get along very well but don’t perform at a high level.
But, when you bring both of those sets of skills together, then you can tap the powers of all of the people in the organization. You have people who feel the power and you have a succession plan in place. You have more than one leader. You have a bunch of leaders and then things happen. So I think it’s the combination of those two that are critical.-David Wilson (1min.5sec)
David Wilson, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Professor of Philosophy, Webster University
LSL Class of 2003-04
David Wilson is a native Californian who grew up in the Southeast, where he attended the University of Georgia and earned his BA in Classical Greek. He earned an MA in Philosophy from the University of Illinois before returning to California to earn his PhD in Philosophy from UCLA. He remained at UCLA, where he taught philosophy and wrote the McGraw-Hill textbook, A Guide to Good Reasoning. While at UCLA he served as Vice-Chair of Philosophy, Assistant Dean of Humanities, and Associate Provost.
David arrived in St. Louis in 2002 to lead Webster University’s College of Arts & Sciences. As dean he has worked to raise the College’s profile, to build enrollments and quality, and to strengthen its resource base. Many new programs have been launched during his tenure, ranging from an undergraduate emphasis in Biotechnology to the Global MA in International Relations.
David has been actively involved in national higher education issues, having served in Boston for a year as a Fellow with the American Council on Education. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the American Council on Education’s Council of Fellows and as co-chair of their national Outreach and Engagement Committee.
David is engaged in the St. Louis region, serving as a director on many local boards. These include the Academy of Science-St. Louis, the Missouri Biotechnology Association, the Coalition for Plant and Life Sciences, the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, and the German American Heritage Society. He also chairs the Ethics Committee for the St. Louis Science Center, and has been a fellow with Leadership St. Louis.
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