Management Studies at Antioch University

I have a Masters in Management from Antioch University. This is one of the oldest fields of study in one of the oldest school in the country. Founded in 1852 by the father of American Education, Horace Mann, Antioch has always been about hands on education, with a focus on leadership and applicability to the workplace. One of the most important thinkers in the history of management studies is the author of "The Human Side of Enterprise," Douglass McGregor. His concept of theory X vs. theory Y is foundational now to almost all other workplace leadership theories. He was president of Antioch University from 1948 to 1954.

When I was attending the Seattle campus in 2004 to 2006, that robust management program had merged with other programs that were dwindling in student interest ("Organizational Psychology," "Whole Systems Design," and "Environment and Community,") to form a new university department at the Seattle Campus called The Center For Creative Change. At the same time the over all Seattle University system has a PhD in Leadership and Change program, which did not have a Master's degree option, and took in very few students who didn't already have a master's degree. When you graduated from the Center for Creative Change, if you were going to a PhD program it was Antioch's Leadership and Change program, and some of the faculty of the Center for Creative Change were graduate students in the PhD in Leadership and Change program.

As a graduate assistant I helped promote The Center for Creative Change at a few events. I myself was attracted to this Antioch's Management program as an alternative to MBA programs which at the time were a dime a dozen and focused primarily on the operation of spreadsheets, only to reconsider changing my major to Organizational Psychology or Whole Systems Design instead (though I did not.) I saw this play out at these events, with undergraduate students coming to the Antioch University table first to look at the Management program, but then also start to get interested the other majors in the Center for Creative Change. 

So many management students chose to take less generic sounding majors after having decided to enroll, that they changed the Management major title to "Management and Leadership." But eventually the Center for Creative Change decided the Management major was no longer necessary. I protested that this would put too much distance between the Center for Creative Change and their market for students (primarily the MBA market,) and in a handful of years the Center for Creative Change disintegrated and was no more. 

However by this time the rest of the Antioch University had already compensated, with Green MBA programs at various campuses, and the PhD in Leadership and Change program starting to create their own specific master's program, the Masters in Leadership Practice. Much of the leadership faculty from the my Management program had been drafted to help with the greater university system as a whole (Shawna Horman and Mark Hower.) Now in 2020 the over all Antioch University System continues in the tradition of the Center for Creative Change with all sorts of leadership and management studies, in fields ranging from non-profit to tech to medical. I have never regretted studying Management at the world's foremost institution for doing so, Antioch University.