KEVAN LAMM
Teaching
I have been immersed in the study of effective leadership throughout my career. These studies have taken me around the world, with a specific emphasis on leadership development.
My passion as a teacher is found in helping individuals realize their leadership potential. I want to guide my students to become dynamic leaders both in their organizations and in their communities.
I believe in an applied approach to teaching. The connection between theory and practice should be obvious to all students. My classroom is a supportive environment where meaningful learning can occur, supported by behaviorist, experiential, and constructivist philosophies. The work I do with my students is successful when they carry my lessons forward and create a ripple effect of positive change in the world.
Communication and Leadership in Groups and Teams
This undergraduate-level course is designed to enhance student’s ability to successfully lead groups and teams in various contexts. The course examines leadership as it relates to group and team behavior. There is a focus on the components of a group or team, how to establish professional relationships amongst team members, improving the overall effectiveness of the team, and developing appropriate communication strategies.
Program Evaluation
The primary objectives of this graduate-level course are to help learners recognize the importance of high-quality program evaluation and to identify robust program evaluation methodologies. Within the course, students examine, identify, and select appropriate evaluation models, plan an evaluation, and collect and analyze evaluation data using qualitative and quantitative methods.
Supporting Others: A Path to Exceptional Leadership
An undergraduate course featuring topics such as conflict management, fostering and enabling others, issue awareness, political process awareness, and recognizing values. The goal of the course is to examine what role supporting others plays in effective leadership practice.
Extension Facilitation Capacities
As a graduate-level course, the goal of this class is to enhance the abilities of each student to identify and empirically measure extension personnel facilitation capacity. In this course, students examine the relationship between facilitation needs and abilities, within an adult learning theory context.
Extension Communication Preferences
The communication channel preferences amongst Extension stakeholders are the focus of this graduate course. Specifically, the course focuses on community-related information and aims to enhance the student’s ability to identify appropriate communication channels based on the characteristics of an audience.
Showing Up: Leading Through Action
This is an undergraduate-level course that examines the characteristics and traits of leadership through action. Some of the topics included in the course are assuming leadership roles, advocacy, mentoring, networking, expanding issue engagement, and serving as a resource for others.
Systems Thinking
The application of systems thinking to food systems is the focus of this graduate-level course. The course helps students understand how to think about the complex connections between various systems. Students will come away with an understanding of why systems thinking is important when addressing the problems faced by the environmental sciences and agriculture.
Leading in Times of Change
Periods of change place great stress on leaders and leadership. This undergraduate course highlights the challenges presented by various types of change, including internal change inside an organization, and external change, like the COVID-19 pandemic. The course includes topics such as innovation, risk-taking, self-efficacy, and leaders acting as change agents.
Relationships and Character: Fundamental Components to Effective Leadership
Leadership demands strong character and productive relationships. This undergraduate course focuses on topics such as individual confidence, empathy, ethics, initiative, integrity, life-long learning, and motivation.
Soybeans to Stock Markets: Learning to Think in Systems
This undergraduate-level course helps students identify the characteristics of systems and system dynamics. The topics covered in this course describe the system’s view, how to develop a vocabulary for describing systems, developing tools to think in systems, and different system archetypes.