Purdue University Global to develop academic program for Gallup Straight to Business initiative

INDIANAPOLIS — Purdue University Global has partnered with Gallup to develop and deliver an academic program to support Gallup’s Straight to Business initiative.

The Purdue Global program, named Strengths Oriented Leadership, will consist of five unique courses. The courses will be bundled into an undergraduate microcredential, aligned with and stackable into bachelor’s degree opportunities in analytics, business administration, communication, and industrial/organizational psychology.

“We are extremely excited to collaborate with Gallup on this project,” said Jeffrey Buck, Purdue Global vice president and dean of the School of Business and Information Technology. “This innovative partnership draws on distinctive strengths and core values shared by both organizations. It’s an initiative that provides a real benefit to society by reimagining the traditional pathway for accessing the benefits that result from work experience and post-secondary education.”

The course content will be derived through a collaborative approach that includes subject-matter experts identified by both Purdue Global and Gallup. Each course will be 10 weeks in length and will include weekly seminar sessions led by Purdue Global faculty.

“Gallup is excited to partner with Purdue University Global to offer a new Strengths Oriented Leadership microcredential,” said Joe Daly, Senior Partner at Gallup. “This partnership is a key component of Gallup’s Straight to Business initiative that aims to create a more diverse talent pipeline for corporate America by identifying and recruiting students straight out of high school to pursue an accelerated no-limits career track that also includes a bachelor’s degree.”

The five courses are Strengths-based Leadership, Organizational Culture and Intrapreneurship, Customer Engagement, Selling from Your Strengths, and Managing for Organic Growth. Upon successful completion of the courses, students will be able to describe and apply their individual strengths, as defined by Gallup’s Clifton Strengths model; identify and develop their individual strengths in efforts focused on customer creation, innovation, and organizational growth; and create a strategy to improve or build upon the customer-centric focus of an organization.

The first course will be available for students by Nov. 11.

About Gallup Straight to Business (STB)

Gallup Straight to Business is a program that disrupts current entry-level hiring practices for corporate America. Straight to Business is based on identifying highly talented high school students and placing them directly into full-time entry-level corporate jobs. A key aspect of this program is access to a more diverse talent pool versus hiring from traditional four-year college programs. Upon graduating from high school, STB participants go straight to full-time employment and pursue an online bachelor’s degree at Purdue University Global, taking a set of courses based on Gallup research intended to prepare students more adequately for future corporate leadership. The goal of STB is to provide STB participants with a debt-free bachelor’s degree and accelerated career development, setting them on a path of unlimited career progression after four years.

About Purdue University Global

Purdue University Global delivers personalized online education tailored to the unique needs of adults who have work or life experience beyond the classroom, enabling them to develop essential academic and professional skills with the support and flexibility they need to achieve their career goals. It offers a hyper-tailored path for students to earn an associate, bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree, based on their work experience, desired pace, military service, previous college credits and other considerations – no matter where they are in their life journey. Purdue Global serves more than 32,000 students (as of September 2020), most of whom earn their degree online. It also operates several regional locations nationwide. Purdue Global is a nonprofit, public university accredited by The Higher Learning Commission. It is affiliated with Purdue University’s flagship institution, a highly ranked public research university located in West Lafayette, Indiana. Purdue University also operates two regional campuses in Fort Wayne and Northwest, Indiana, as well as serving close to 6,000 science, engineering and technology students at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus. For more information, please visit purdueglobal.edu.

About Gallup

Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 80 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers, students and citizens than any other organization in the world. 

Writer, Media Contact/Purdue Global: Tom Schott, 765-427-1721, tschott@purdue.edu

Media Contact/Gallup: Khorshied Samad, Khorshied_Samad@gallup.com

Sources: Jeffrey Buck, jeffrey.buck@purdueglobal.edu

Joe Daly