Leadership (LD)

Programs: M.S.

Offered Online

The Master of Science in Leadership (MSLD) at the University of New Hampshire is designed to meet the needs of working professionals across industries who want to strengthen their leadership capability while developing a deeper understanding of organizational management, strategy, and decision-making. Grounded in real-world application and designed for career advancement, the program serves to prepare students to lead people, guide teams through change, and shape organizational outcomes in dynamic and complex environments.

Today’s organizations demand leaders who can navigate uncertainty, align talent with business priorities, foster innovation, and make decisions informed by evidence and ethics. The MSLD responds directly to this demand by focusing on practical leadership competencies such as communication, influence, collaboration, systems thinking, and strategic implementation, while also helping students understand the organizational forces that shape performance, culture, and sustainability.

Through coursework emphasizing applied learning, students gain the skills to lead across functions and settings, whether in business, education, healthcare, government, nonprofit, technology, or entrepreneurial environments. Students explore contemporary leadership challenges including workforce engagement, organizational culture, conflict management, inclusive leadership practices, change leadership, and the management of cross-functional and distributed teams.

To support professional goals and allow specialization, the MSLD offers option areas that allow students to tailor the program to their career interests and workplace needs. Options include areas such as: Human Resources & Organization Development, Information Technology Management and others.

Outcomes-Based Learning

Our greatest concern is that our graduates develop a specific set of skills and abilities.

The College’s outcome-based degree programs and curriculum:

  • Provide standards to be met in demonstrating competence
  • Form a base from which to design and pursue learning activities
  • Foster the ability to demonstrate self-directed learning

In addition to individual student assessment and grading, learning outcomes assessment is conducted in all programs to ensure the quality of our programs and to prompt ongoing improvements in teaching and learning.

Graduate Degree Learning Outcomes

Based in our commitment to our students through our mission, vision and values, every graduate degree program at the College of Professional Studies - Online provides students with opportunities to learn and demonstrate their abilities to do the following:

Communicate, particularly

  • Communicate effectively—orally and written—with respect to theories, arguments, methods, and concepts, using supplemental materials and technology as appropriate.
  • Disaggregate, reformulate and adapt principle ideas, techniques or methods when completing a paper or project.
  • Contribute to, expand, evaluate or refine the scholarship within the field of study.
  • Collaborate with diverse people and teams using elements of effective team dynamics to effectively and appropriately structure team work.

Think critically and comprehensively, particularly

  • Demonstrate analytical skills needed to gather and assess information to influence data-driven decision making.
  • Exhibit a conceptual understanding of the most widely applicable methodologies of decision-making; for example, employ creative problem solving for strategic planning.
  • Demonstrate critical thinking, appropriate analytical models, and critical reasoning processes to evaluate evidence, select among alternatives, and generate creative options in furtherance of effective decision making.

Apply knowledge to workplace and community, particularly

  • Display competency and appropriate skills for working effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and orientations.
  • Effectively engage in one’s broader community through various forms of outreach.
  • Design and implement a project that requires the application of advanced knowledge to a practical challenge and articulate the insights gained from the experience.1

Gain specialized knowledge, particularly

  • Demonstrate proficiency in specialized skills and technologies needed to participate in the intellectual and organizational aspects of one’s profession.

1 Not applicable to Graduate Certificate programs.