About the Program

This 12-credit certificate will provide you with a solid foundation in leadership concepts and employment relations that can enhance your leadership and managerial skills. The courses can be applied to the bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership.

An Education that Fits Your Life

Specifically built for adult learners, you will learn with a Penn State instructor and other adult learners. Accelerated evening courses meet once a week for seven weeks in-person or via live video instruction with online learning components. As a participant either in the classroom or via video technology, you can communicate with the instructor and interact with other students.

Designed for adult learners to help you understand the complex social, cultural and organizational issues needed to succeed in business, human resources, and manufacturing. Certificate features the ability to:

  • Complete a Penn State 12-credit certificate in one year, during the fall & spring semesters of one academic year.
  • Increase your leadership and management skills while gaining skills that are characteristic of effective leaders.
  • Gain specialized knowledge on workplace and employment issues from both the employee's and employer's perspective.
  • Build your resume to advance your career, quickly.

Career Potential

Open positions for employment relations and leadership skills can generally be found in human resources or as managers, coordinators or supervisors in a variety of industries including healthcare, education, manufacturing and real estate.

Source:  Burning Glass Technologies’ Labor Insight™ Real-time Labor Market Information tool.

Certificate Requirements / Curriculum

Students seeking the Foundations of Employment Relations & Leadership Certificate must complete 12 credits earning a minimum of a “C” grade in the following course work:

OLEAD 100 (3 credits) - Introduction to Leadership

Introduction to key leadership concepts and practices to show students the knowledge and skills that are characteristic of effective leaders.

This course is designed to increase your ability to:

  • Describe fundamental principles of leadership and how they relate to becoming an effective leader
  • Apply leadership concepts to case studies, self-assessment questionnaires and common leadership challenges
  • Embrace diversity and inclusion
  • Address ethics in leadership

LER 100 (3 credits) - Employment Relations

Introductory analysis of the employment relationship and of the interrelated interests of management, workers, unions and the public. 

This course is designed to increase your ability to:

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the perspectives, theories, and concepts in the field of labor and employment relations.
  • Describe the basic features of the contemporary U.S. labor relations system—collective bargaining, detailed union contracts, and private sector union density decline.
  • Work productively in teams, in social networks, and on an individual basis.

LER 435 (3 credits) - Labor Relations in the Public Sector

Analysis of labor relations problems within different areas of public employment.

This course is designed to increase your ability to:

  • Explain the collective bargaining process.
  • Contrast the differences between the FLRA and the NLRB.
  • Identify the role of unions in the public sector.

OLEAD/LER 465 (3 credits) - Collective Decision Making

Application of theories of decision making to work-related issues in groups and organizations requiring collective resolution and action.

This course is designed to increase your ability to:

  • Develop an appreciation of the processes (single-motive and mixed-motive) by which those in positions of authority, groups, and organizations make consequential choices.
  • Become familiar with what distinguishes good decision making (rational) from poor decision making (non-rational and/or irrational).
  • Learn, as well as develop skill in, what one can do to enhance the likelihood that decisional outcomes will be optimal rather than suboptimal.