EMU’s new MA in Human Resources program focuses on organizational leadership for change, resilience, empowerment

Eastern Mennonite University’s newest graduate degree program, the MA in Human Resources, launches in August 2022. 

The 30-hour degree program is designed for working professionals who want to shift to an HR career track or for current HR professionals who want to enhance their effectiveness as organizational leaders. It includes evening online synchronous courses and can be completed in 21 months.

“If you’re the kind of leader who thinks about motivated and productive employees as key to your organization’s success, this is a great degree for you to pursue,” said Andrew Miller, director of EMU’s Department of Business and Leadership graduate programs. “It combines the foundational skills to engage in HR leadership, basically getting the right people in the right places to fulfill the organizational purpose, but then with this extra unique focus on the wellbeing and thriving of employees.”

Examples of this, he says, would be a people-centered process for developing systems, processes and policies: job rotation for repetitive work, securing and offering appropriate benefits, working to create both physically and emotionally safe workspaces.  

For current HR professionals looking to broaden their skill-set, the program also offers leadership training and integration of several unique interdisciplinary fields, including trauma awareness and resilience. 

“Learning more about how people behave under stress or in stressful conditions, the processes to repair harm with restorative practices are unique skills a leader can bring into the workplace,” Miller said.

The curriculum focuses on the philosophical foundations and core competencies of leadership, specifically developing one’s distinctive leadership style that is responsive to and supportive of employee, organizational, societal and ecological well-being. 

Courses include

• Human Resources and the Employee Experience 
• Strategic Talent Management 
• Compensation and Benefits: Total Rewards 
• Labor Law, Compliance and Risk Management 
• Learning and Development 
• Change Leadership and Facilitation for Resilience
• HR Analytics and Evaluation 
• Human Resource Leadership
• Intro to Leadership Theory 
• Organizational Behavior 

*pending approval by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges