Dr. Stanton Brown, the University’s Executive Director of the Buccino Leadership Institute, said that he chose to come to Seton Hall because it was a “match made in Heaven.”
Brown said his passion for leadership, real life experience, higher education credentials, and had a respect for a multidisciplinary approach were what Seton Hall was looking for in its new executive director of the Buccino Leadership Institute.
The Buccino Leadership Institute has been expanded for each of the separate colleges at Seton Hall, starting with the Stillman School of Business, and has now become a hub for interdisciplinary leadership development.
During this process of change, Brown has taken over as the executive director, and many others have been added to the team of people heading this new version of the Institute.
Brown said that he always thinks in threes, and the three things that he is bringing to the Buccino Leadership Institute as the executive director are the connections that he has, staying true to experiential learning and delivering on different experiences for his students and following a multidisciplinary structure.
One hurdle that Brown said he has had to overcome is leading a team with varying experiences with the Buccino Leadership Institute. Brown said, “Part of being new to an environment is meeting people, but also actively listening to them and saying, that’s good.”
Brown said that the three hardest parts of transitioning to becoming the executive director are getting to know the past, figuring out how much he can do and the tactical work to being an inspirational leader.
In the past, Brown has had many roles involving leadership, from being the senior class president of his high school to becoming a member of his local school board. However, Brown has never had a similar job to the unique one that he is taking on at Seton Hall University.
Brown said that he is qualified for this position because of his past experiences, in which he has had successes and losses. “Failure allows me the opportunity to look back on an experience to say, hey what went wrong, why the timing wasn’t right,” he said.
In the future, Brown said he plans for the Institute to lean into learning by doing and staying true to experiential learning. He plans for the Institute to go on more excursions as well, like visits to the 9/11 Memorial and study abroad trips to Spain like the Buccino Leadership Institute is doing in the spring.
He said the Institute is working on small changes to enhance what it has implemented this fall, to see what has worked and what hasn’t, and what they want to change for the next semester.
Brown said that his favorite part of being the executive director of the Buccino Leadership Institute is the students.
“It has been a joy to interact with students, to hear how they think about life, how they think about the institute, how they think about what they want to do,” he said, “And that’s refreshing.”
Brown said that he wants his students to learn how to be leaders in their own right during their time at the Buccino Leadership Institute. He wants them to look back on their time at the institute so that they can look forward.
Brown said that he wants his students to have an “authentic leadership development experience that stays with them for the rest of their lives.”
Margaret Fisher submitted this article from her Writing for the Media course. She can be found at margaret.fisher@student.shu.edu.
