Seton Hall Selected as New Home for Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership
SOUTH ORANGE, NJ – Following a national search, the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, the leading international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the awareness, understanding, and practice of servant leadership, has selected Seton Hall University as its new home. The Center’s programs include workshops, online learning, speakers, and an international conference that connects, educates and inspires servant leaders from around the globe.
A prominent thought leader in leadership, education, religion, nonprofits, and management circles, the late Robert K. Greenleaf founded the Greenleaf Center, originally known as The Center for Applied Ethics, in 1964. His landmark essay, “The Servant as Leader,” and his book Servant Leadership: A Journey Into Legitimate Power and Greatness, launched the modern servant leadership movement.
Institutional trailblazers such as Stephen Covey, Peter Drucker, Peter Senge, Warren Bennis, and Margaret Wheatly have praised his servant-leadership model, which promotes the ethical use of power and people-centered, values-based organizations. The 10 characteristics of servant leadership include listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community.
The Greenleaf Center will relocate from Atlanta, GA, to Seton Hall’s South Orange, NJ, campus on July 1 and will be housed in Presidents Hall. The Center’s decision to be based at Seton Hall followed a highly competitive national search and selection process.
“The university and the Greenleaf Center share a commitment to the fostering of servant leadership throughout the nation and the world. By associating the Center’s research and advocacy with Seton Hall’s culture of service and leadership, we will create a powerful alliance for spreading Robert Greenleaf’s transformative ideas,” says Interim Seton Hall President Mary J. Meehan, who serves as a board member and former chair of the Greenleaf Center.
Seton Hall's commitment to servant leadership is an integral aspect of its mission and in keeping with the university’s Catholic values to cultivate students as servant leaders and to inspire all university constituents with a dedication to servant leadership. The university supports these efforts with its Center for Vocation and Servant Leadership, Servant Leader Scholars program, and an annual Servant Leadership Day.
Joseph Patrnchak, Greenleaf Center board chairman and a national pioneer in the field of servant leadership, recently addressed the University community on “Servant Leadership and the Engaged Enterprise,” during Seton Hall's eighth annual Servant Leadership Day. “The Greenleaf Center considers it a privilege to be here at Seton Hall. We recognize that the qualities of servant leadership have permeated the University for many years, and that Seton Hall has fully committed to servant leadership and forming students as servant leaders,” said Patrnchak.
About Seton Hall University
One of the country’s leading Catholic universities, Seton Hall has been showing the world what great minds can do since 1856. Home to nearly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students and offering more than 90 rigorous academic programs, Seton Hall’s academic excellence has been singled out for distinction by The Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Seton Hall embraces students of all religions and prepares them to be exemplary servant leaders and global citizens. In recent years, the university has achieved extraordinary success. Since 2009, it has seen record-breaking undergraduate enrollment growth and an impressive 110-point increase in the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen. In the past decade, Seton Hall students and alumni have received more than 30 Fulbright Scholarships as well as other prestigious academic honors, including Boren Awards, Pickering Fellowships, Udall Scholarships, and a Rhodes Scholarship. The university is also proud to be the third most diverse national Catholic university in the nation.
During the past five years, the university has invested more than $165 million in new campus buildings and renovations. In 2015, Seton Hall launched a School of Medicine as well as a College of Communication and the Arts. The university’s beautiful main campus in suburban South Orange, N.J. is only 14 miles from New York City—offering students a wealth of employment, internship, and cultural and entertainment opportunities. Seton Hall’s nationally recognized School of Law is located prominently in downtown Newark. The university’s Interprofessional Health Sciences (IHS) campus in Clifton and Nutley, NJ, opened in the summer of 2018. The IHS campus houses the University’s College of Nursing, School of Health and Medical Sciences, and the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University. For more information, visit www.shu.edu.