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Certificate, Prosocial Leader
School of Education & Human Development
Overview
Degree: Credit available Non-credit
Classroom Type: Fully Online
Ignite your capacity to lead with courage, compassion, and a vision for schools where every person feels seen and supported. Through a flexible one-to-three-course learning journey, you’ll gain the mindset and tools to inspire prosocial, emotionally intelligent change in your community. Stack three courses to earn the certificate.
Program Details
Interest Categories: Education & Counseling Public Administration & Policy
Campus: CU Denver Online
The Prosocial Leader certificate is a powerful professional learning experience for school leaders who are ready to lead with impact, heart, and confidence. Designed for today’s most pressing challenges—from educator burnout and retention to student wellbeing, equity, and academic success—this certificate equips you with research-backed strategies to create school environments where adults and students thrive.
You will strengthen your leadership presence, sharpen decision-making, and lead change with clarity and purpose when it matters most.
Built for busy professionals, each course blends flexibility with meaningful connection. Through engaging coursework, weekly office hours, and dynamic communities of practice, you gain practical tools you can apply immediately in your own school or district. Courses such as Leading with Social and Emotional Learning in Mind and Cultivating Awareness & Resilience for Administrators: Adult SEL and Leader Wellbeing help you build trust, boost morale, and model the kind of leadership that fuels strong relationships and a positive school culture. Ready to scale your impact? The course Systemic Implementation of SEL prepares you to align policies, practices, and partnerships to create sustainable, equitable learning environments.
You may take a single course to meet a specific leadership need or complete all three to earn the certificate and position yourself as a forward-thinking, prosocial leader prepared to drive lasting improvement across your organization.
Audience
Designed for leaders across the learning ecosystem, this certificate brings together school and district administrators, teacher leaders, higher education professionals, and nonprofit and organizational leaders from around the world.
By the end of the certificate, participants will:
- Develop a deep understanding of prosocial leadership and SEL integration
- Strengthen their self-awareness, emotional regulation, and leadership presence
- Apply adult SEL practices to support staff wellbeing and reduce burnout
- Design and implement systems-level change initiatives
- Foster inclusive, culturally responsive, and human-centered school environments, and
- Build a community of practice with fellow leaders across contexts.
Start Dates
- Session one: Starts June 8 (eight weeks)
- Session two: Starts July 8 (eight weeks)
- Session three: Starts August 8 (eight weeks)
Length
Each course is eight weeks.
Full certificate: 24 weeks (if taken sequentially)
Hours per week
Online/asynchronous with optional community hours every week
Facilitator
Courses
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EDUC 5401 - Leading with Social and Emotional Learning in Mind
3 credits
Course Details
This course will enable administrators to understand, investigate, assess, and plan to increase the quality and depth of social and emotional learning (SEL) in their schools and districts. Participants will explore the theoretical frameworks and scientific findings in the growing field of SEL. The course adopts an empirical and experiential approach whereby participants will both analyze extant research and carry out job-embedded assignments to assess and plan for more systemic models of SEL, as well as reflect on what they do and can do as leaders to support high-quality SEL in their contexts. (45 contact hours) -
EDUC 5402 - Cultivating Awareness & Resilience for Administrators
3 credits
Course Details
CARE (Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education) for administrators is a professional development program that helps administrators handle stress and build their personal leadership capacities. The goal of CARE is to offer administrators tools and resources for reducing stress, preventing burnout, enlivening their leadership to help staff students to thrive socially, emotionally, and academically. (45 contact hours)
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EDUC 5403 - Systemic Implementation of SEL
3 credits
Course Details
This course focuses on Systemic SEL in which students will examine strategies for actively engaging students in learning and practicing social emotional competencies across classrooms and school environments, and in partnership with families and communities. The course will also focus on creating the conditions for students learning, including relationship-building and supportive learning environments. Students will further explore tools and resources for collecting data to use to track progress toward their SEL goals at their schools, draft action steps and an aligned evaluation plan, and develop strategies for engaging the full school community in learning from the data. (45 contact hours)
Recommended Completion Time:1.5 years
Required Credits for Completion:9
Admission Requirements
How to Apply
Please complete the Graduate Non-Degree Admissions application to apply for this certificate program. Complete the application sections in order for the best experience.
- Fill in your Personal Information before continuing to the "Academic Interest" section
- Select the Certificate button
- Select the Online certificate option. Please note that not all programs are offered as both on-campus and online.
- Choose a certificate under the Certificate drop down menu
- Select the Term you wish to enroll and then continue the rest of the application as instructed