Courses I teach

  • Managerial Ethics
  • Social Entrepreneurship
  • Senior Capstone
  • Organizational Behavior
  • Organizational Development & Change
  • Leadership

Social Impact

Prof. Jennifer Leigh was featured in Rochester Beacon for guiding Nazareth undergraduate and graduate students for years in projects that support Rochester Refugee Resettlement Services, which assists refugees from places such as Afghanistan with housing, education, and jobs. For example, Nazareth students created a database to help identify properties that meet the agency's criteria for housing, and in-person programming at Nazareth College has focused on the needs of refugee and first-generation students as they consider higher education.

Jennifer Leigh with students at CGIU

"There are numerous 'grand challenges' facing our society— 'wicked' global problems that can be feasibly addressed with global collaboration. Professors can play an influential role in shaping the minds of current and future leaders regarding these challenges by providing a humanistic framework for students and offering a safe environment in which to struggle with ethical, practical, and conceptual issues."

Photo: Dr. Leigh with Nazareth College students at a Clinton Global Initiative University Conference on social innovation.

Social innovation conference

Prof. Leigh co-organizes an annual conference on campus for students, faculty, and staff to learn from social innovators, gain skills in changemaking, and practice skills through small-team brainstorming.

Favorite course

"It is difficult to choose just one course! My goal is to create transformative learning experiences with my students through engaging in service-learning projects with our community, participating in global virtual teams, consulting to small and medium sized enterprises, and mentoring student-led instruction. In these deep experiential learning opportunities, students can bring more of their whole selves to the process and connect research from the course, their majors, and the core curriculum to real-world opportunities and challenges."

Recognition

  • In 2016 she received the Mid-Career Distinguished Educator Award from Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society (MOTBS). 
  • In 2010 she and her colleagues Dr. Joy Beatty & Dr. Kathy Lund Dean received the prestigious Fritz Rothlisberger award for the best article in the Journal of Management Education during 2009. 
  • In 2007 she received the New Educator Award from MOBTS.

Engaged scholarship & service

Dr. Leigh is a Service-Learning Scholar in Nazareth's Weider Community Engagement office. In the Rochester area, Dr. Leigh and her students collaborate with community organizations through service-learning projects such as the Rochester Refugee Resettlement Services (RRRS) and the Community Place of Greater Rochester.

Additionally, Dr. Leigh holds multiple leadership roles in her professional societies. She is a Senior Editor for The Annual Review of Social Partnerships (ARSP) and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Management Education (JME) and Business Ethics: A European Review (BEER). She has served as a special issue editor for both JME and BEER with editions on the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and Addressing Grand Challenges.

Research: Responsible management education

Dr. Leigh publishes widely in journals and other outlets on the topics of corporate social responsibility and humanistic management. She recently co-edited the book Educating for Responsible Management: Putting Theory into Practice with Roz Sunley (2016).

Jennifer Leigh

Research with Students

"Nearly every semester I mentor students on independent study projects which result in consulting reports to organizational clients, articles in student academic journals, and student research presentations. These collaborations sometimes even continue after graduation. Recently Nazareth alumnae Whitney Ennis and I co-authored a chapter with Dr. Erica Steckler (University of Massachusetts-Lowell) titled Harnessing the Potential of Gamification in Humanistic Management Teaching: Games for Change Insights and Learning Experiences in Case Studies in Humanistic Management (forthcoming)."

Honored

Leigh was honored in 2021 for her leadership in her field. Her workshop on Preparing the Manager for Climate Change was chosen as the best Professional Development Workshop at the Academy of Management Conference — the preeminent professional association for management and organization scholars.

Student view

"I was in the business senior seminar with Dr. Leigh. She always had an interesting lesson and was extremely open to working with students outside of class, be it directly related to the course or to their career paths in general. I was accepted to the summer 2020 X-Culture Global Symposium and to my MBA program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with her written recommendations. She really does go out of her way to help her students achieve their goals."

— Sarah Mieczkowski '20 (business management and Chinese majors; honors minor) got into her top grad school with a full scholarship

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