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Human Services Leadership and Administration BHS

College of Community Studies and Public Affairs / Human Services
Undergraduate major / Bachelor of Human Services

About The Program

The Human Services Leadership and Administration concentration (57 credits) is a degree program that focuses on preparation for various administrative positions in a range of public and private nonprofit human service organizations. This area of study provides knowledge and skills for people who have, or intend to get health and human services-related administration jobs in planning, organizing, monitoring, evaluating, or coordinating social service programs or agencies.

The core of any administration curriculum includes basic knowledge in the areas of budgeting, communication, organizational planning and change, public relations/marketing, leadership, supervision and personnel administration & development. The Human Services Leadership and Administration degree curriculum also includes basic knowledge in areas unique to nonprofits, such as organizational management, volunteer management, program management, fund-raising, legal issues and governance. This program area contains courses specifically applicable to leadership and administration in human services organizations.

Student outcomes

Students pursuing coursework in the Human Services Leadership and Administration degree program will:

  • Develop leadership skills across Human Services sectors.
  • Work effectively with diverse stakeholders.
  • Manage information to support quality decision-making.
  • Use best practice technology.
  • Understand dynamics of managing employees, volunteers and teams.

Start Your Metro State Journey

Interested in the Human Services Leadership and Administration concentration? Earning a degree at Metro State is for daring dreamers and doers, those who are determined to pursue continuing education opportunities. By obtaining a Human Services Leadership and Administration degree, you will be prepared for a job in planning, organizing, monitoring, evaluating, or coordinating social service programs or agencies.

Advance Your Education

How to enroll

Current students: Declare this program

Once you’re admitted as an undergraduate student and have met any further admission requirements your chosen program may have, you may declare a major or declare an optional minor.

Future students: Apply now

Apply to Metropolitan State: Start the journey toward your Human Services Leadership and Administration BHS now. Learn about the steps to enroll or, if you have questions about what Metropolitan State can offer you, request information, visit campus or chat with an admissions counselor.

Get started on your Human Services Leadership and Administration BHS

Courses and Requirements

SKIP TO COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Prerequisites

This course is an introduction to the sociological perspective. Students examine the social processes that shape societies and the course of their histories. The social nature of biographies is explored through the study of the family and socialization, education and work, bureaucracy and the economy, gender, social class, and race and ethnicity.

Full course description for Introduction to Sociology

Requirements (57 credits)

+ Human Services Core Required (20 credits)

This non-credit workshop is for students who declare a major in Human Services or Alcohol and Drug Counseling. It facilitates the process of completing a background check through the Minnesota Department of Human Services. All students in these majors must complete a background check by their second semester as a declared HSER BS, BHS, or ADC major. These majors require a practicum and practicum sites have set standards for background check results. Payment for the background check to the Minnesota Department of Human Services is the responsibility of the student. Results of the background check are sent to the student and to the background check administrator at Metropolitan State University's academic Department of Human Services. Results can be used to guide the student's course of study.

Full course description for Background Check Workshop

This course introduces students to basic counseling skills to be used with clients dealing with a variety of issues including family challenges and substance use disorders. As such, it is designed to help students develop essential helping skills needed for client engagement, follow-through, completion and overall therapeutic effectiveness. It includes examination and practice Person-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Motivational Interviewing, techniques central to helping others across a range of issues including substance use disorders. Specific skills covered include developing rapport, building empathy and active listening, encouraging trust, self-disclosure, immediacy, questioning and evoking, addressing discrepancies, etc. This course is highly experiential in its format. Students will participate in classroom exercises, role plays, and video-taping and self-assessment of counseling skills.

Full course description for Counseling and Interviewing Skills

This course emphasizes the experience of race and racism and how both intersect with various forms of human diversity in the helping arena. It will provide students an understanding of how power and privilege are operant in the human services. Students will examine assumptions, myths, beliefs, and biases that block effective relationships between groups of people and that hamper helper-helpee dynamics. Course activities involve self-assessment and opportunities for application of learning in a human service environment. COMPETENCE STATEMENT: Knows conceptual frameworks dealing with racial-ethnic identity, racial-cultural world views, oppression and power well enough to explore, develop, and evaluate personal responses and professional strategies to eliminate the myths, beliefs, biases, actions and efforts, that sustain social oppression in the helping professions.

Full course description for Intersection of Race and Diversity in Human Services

This course comes at the end of the student's senior course work in human services. Students complete a human services portfolio assignment demonstrating what they have learned in human services over the period of time while studying in this program. This assignment helps students to reflect on their academic course of study (both theoretical and practical) and how it applies to the professional practice of human services. The written portfolio provides evidence of competence and is a way for students to demonstrate readiness for graduation and work as Human Services professionals. In order to complete the portfolio assignment Capstone students should also be registered for HSER 331 Human Services Practicum wherein they will complete 160 practicum hours in a human services agency under the supervision of a Human Services Professional. The course culminates with students giving presentations on the agency studied and written about in their portfolio.

Full course description for Human Services Capstone Seminar

+ Administration and Leadership Requirements (32 credits)

This course, designed for those planning careers in human services administration, provides insight into some of the common problems and concerns of management in a human services agency. Students use actual case studies to focus on examples of organizational planning, community relations, the decision-making process and personnel management. Overlap: HSA 360 Health Care Management and Supervision I and HSA 362T Human Service Administration Theory Seminar.

Full course description for Human Services Leadership and Administration

This course aims to introduce common, and sometimes complex, processes used to fund nonprofit organizations and government entities. Students will understand the rationale behind third-party funding, through readings, demonstrations, and guests in the classroom. Working in teams and individually, students will produce a program plan, budget, and proposal. Whether the student is a professional or advocate, funding is essential to human services, health, education and many other sectors. The course will equip students from all disciplines with the necessary skills to sustain their programs.

Full course description for Program Planning, Budgeting, Proposal Writing and Funding

This course focuses on the knowledge and skills needed to appropriately identify, collect, analyze and report evaluative information to be used in making decisions about, and changes in, programs. Topics include approaches to program evaluation, the process of planning and conducting an evaluation, basic principles and practices of designing evaluation instruments, and methods for interpreting and presenting data with an emphasis on providing relevant information to decision makers. This course is appropriate for anyone in business, public, nonprofit or human services administration who is responsible for making decisions about service programs or for conducting evaluations.

Full course description for Program Evaluation

Students confront complex ethical and moral issues in their professional and personal lives. In this course, students study and apply the cultural, social, legal, economic, theological and philosophical bases for making such decisions. Each student learns to articulate coherent arguments involving at least two divergent views of many current ethical issues confronted in human services today. Students select, research and present an individual project on a major ethical issue relevant to their professional interests in human services.

Full course description for Ethical Issues in Human Services

This course provides an overview of organization development principles necessary for any type of organization to effectively cope and react to inevitable change that will impact organizational effectiveness and survival. Addresses the theory and practice or organizational development including: initial diagnosis, entry, contracting, data collection, data analysis, action planning, approaches to implementing planned change, and evaluation of planned change effectiveness. Today, every manager, at any level, must be capable of dealing with certain change in a proactive manner.

Full course description for Organizational Development and Change

This course examines causes and underlying factors of interpersonal conflict in human interactions. The course covers principles and techniques to diagnose conflict, develops an understanding of issues causing conflict, differentiates between various types of conflict, explores the variety of forces and factors which push conflict in a productive or dysfunctional direction, and develops personal skills to influence outcomes to the inevitable conflict situations one encounters in one's personal and professional lives.

Full course description for Conflict Resolution

This course is for students who want to learn how to design training and teach adults in an organizational setting. Students develop an understanding of the role and impact of training in helping organizations reach objectives. Topics include adult learning theory, needs assessment, instructional design, media selection and how to present training content to different audiences.

Full course description for Organizational Training and Staff Development

+ Practica (5 credits)

Experiential (practica) learning opportunities are an essential component of the human services degree program. Thus, every student is required to complete a practicum experience.