With airline pilots in demand, EMU Lancaster’s new degree program offers flight certifications and skills in leadership formation, organizational behavior and human dynamics. (Photos by Andrew Strack)
EMU’s new academic programs enable students to follow their career dreams in a changing marketplace.
EDUCATING THE NEXT GENERATION of pilots. Preparing marketing professionals with digital media and business skills. Deepening the knowledge of future peacebuilders. Equipping organizational leaders.
EMU’s innovative responses to job market growth projections and student interest have resulted in a number of new program offerings for the coming academic year.
Students in Professor Tammy Duxbury’s entrepreneurship class pitch business proposals in an end-of-semester contest. EMU’s new marketing major offers specific coursework related to business promotion and management.
With pilot shortages predicted in the near future, EMU Lancaster is poised to provide what aviation program coordinator Jim Cistone calls a “solid and proven pathway” to professional aviation. The program uniquely combines four levels of flight certification and a bachelor’s degree in leadership and organizational management.
“Based on our market research, this degree fills a unique and high-demand niche that combines aviation training with the development of the collaborative, dynamic and intuitive qualities that today’s leaders need,” said Mary Jensen, EMU Lancaster associate provost.
Also in response to favorable job market predictions and a burgeoning population of digital-native incoming students, the new marketing major is a collaborative effort between EMU’s visual and communications arts (VACA) and business and economics departments. The curriculum builds on EMU’s unique global and cultural perspectives.
“Marketing impacts larger cultural forces, with the potential to advocate for social change by getting unique and challenging messages into the social dialogue,” said Professor Jerry Holsopple, who teaches digital media. “Students with cross-cultural ways of knowing and collaborative ways of working will be valuable beyond their technical or theoretical skillset.”
That major has two tracks: media and design, and management.
Additional new majors this fall include global development, music with a musical theater concentration, organizational leadership, and peacebuilding. New minors are interfaith studies, leadership, marketing, nonprofit management, and philosophy and theology.
