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Leadership Educators Symposium

December 8-10, 2025 | University of Tampa

The Leadership Educators Symposium (an evolution of the former National Leadership Symposium) is a retreat-style experience that dives deeply into a timely leadership education topic via conversation and co-constructed learning. Participants explore the symposium topic alongside renowned scholars and approximately 30-40 other leadership educators. Program curriculum is cohort-based and highly experiential, centering dialogue principles and critical perspectives through topical lectures, workshops, and collaborative projects. NCLP has offered a symposium for leadership educators regularly since the 1990s.

Symposium is offered bi-annually in odd-numbered years, alternating with the Leadership Educators Institute (LEI) (December in even-numbered years). You have a leadership educator program to count on every December, which means more consistent connection with the leadership educator community and more straightforward professional development planning year-after-year.

Symposium is offered by NCLP in collaboration with our friends at LeaderShape, Inc., a non-profit organization well-known and respected in the leadership education community for their commitment to partnerships, programs, and initiatives to help create a just, caring, and thriving world.

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THE SYMPOSIUM MODEL

True to the format of a symposium, we seek to engage the leadership education community in dialogue and exploration of a new topic each year. Curriculum is re-designed for each Symposium to center the featured topic while making space for participant input and program evolution and adjustment in real-time. Learning from the Symposium experience also helps guide conversations and initiatives hosted and supported by NCLP throughout the entire calendar year. Recent Symposium topics include:

  • The philosophy and practice of co-construction as leadership educators
  • Disruption by design for leadership education
  • Leadership & interconnection - building critical hope and taking action
  • Leadership and democratic engagement

LIBERATORY LEARNING & PRACTICE

In 2022, NCLP and the Symposium community committed to continual exploration, learning, and growth to advance liberatory pedagogy and practice in leadership education. Liberation is about expanding beyond the limits of socialized thought and behavior that perpetuate oppressive systems and inequity (Freire, 1970). Liberatory learning inspires us to think critically, freeing the mind and raising consciousness, and taking action to advance social change and transformation (hooks, 1994; Sayles-hannon, 2007). This work is ongoing for ourselves as individuals and for our institutions. As such, Symposia themes center liberation in leadership learning and development.

2025 SYMPOSIUM THEME: RECLAIMING AND REIMAGINING COMMUNITY

We will begin this year’s Symposium by reconnecting with the notion of liberation; what is liberation, who we are in the work toward liberation, and how does liberation connect to leadership learning and development? We will then dive more deeply into the question, “How do we do this?” or, ways to incorporate liberatory practice into our work as leadership educators. Symposium 2025 invites us to consider the role of leadership education in creating, reclaiming, and reimagining community, particularly when communities are being displaced and dismantled. This includes:

  • Challenging dominant narratives in leadership education to critically examine messages of what leadership is and who it is for
  • Examining the role of community in liberatory learning and leadership
  • Exploring how community building can be a process for reclaiming agency
  • Reimagining community across lines of difference, disciplines, and institutional structures
  • Discovering the power of kinship and solidarity as liberatory practices in leadership

By the end of the 2025 Symposium, we hope to all have gained:

  • Deeper understanding and confidence in utilizing liberatory approaches
  • Strategies for incorporating liberatory practices into your curriculum and program planning
  • Relationships with colleagues who value liberatory learning in leadership education
  • Ideas for new collaborations and partnerships on your campus and/or across institutions

SCHOLARS-IN-RESIDENCE

Symposium Scholars-in-Residence are selected for their record of scholarship, practice, and community-building within the field of leadership education. Caring deeply about advancing critical leadership conversations, Symposium scholars craft a unique learning experience with and for Symposium participants each year and serve as guides through discussion, reflection, and engagement around the Symposium topic. 

2025 Scholars will be announced later this summer!

PLANNING TEAM

A vital source of support for Symposium scholars and participants (and experienced leadership educators themselves), the Symposium planning team includes faculty associates and volunteers from NCLP, our partner organizations, and our host campus. Planning team members facilitate the overall Symposium experience, assist Symposium scholars with curriculum planning, and handle all program logistics.

LOGISTICS, ACCOMMODATIONS, & REGISTRATION

Plans for the 2025 Leadership Educators Symposium are underway! Registration will open in late summer 2025. Be sure to check back for updates.

New for 2025! Register early and receive the discounted rate of $475 (by mid-September). Regular registration will be $525. Registration cost includes programming, lunch on both program days, and one Symposium community dinner. Breakfast is included in the hotel rate. We have arranged a block of rooms for Symposium participants at the Hyatt Place Tampa Downtown for $189+tax per night. A link to book will be provided during the Symposium registration process.

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