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My goal is to provide learners with the skills, knowledge, and confidence to tackle most learning, leadership, and organization development roles or tasks they encounter.

Cynthia Sims

Associate Professor

I’ve always loved learning and seek to make learning easy for others. My biggest thrill is when students experience “the light bulb moment” – when they master the subject and incorporate it into their repertoire. My role as a professor is to facilitate those instances.  I am a Human Resource Development (HRD) scholar who focuses on what ways intersectional identities impact how leadership is enacted, received, and developed in the workplace.

My teaching philosophy can be described as competency and evidence-based instruction using a variety of virtual educational methods to enhance scholar practitioners in human resource development. As a pragmatic scholar, my teaching philosophy seeks to integrate constructivism and objectivism approaches.

Having hired a lot of graduate students in my corporate career, my goal is to provide learners with the skills, knowledge, and confidence to tackle most learning, leadership, and organization development roles or tasks they encounter.

Before joining academia, I held several human resource and related roles (Director of Staff Operations, Director of Learning and Performances, and Director of Human Resources) at a Fortune 100 organization. I was also a senior education manager at an international consulting firm. I’m an empty nester who hails from Chicago and has lived in Greenville SC, Columbus, OH, and Herndon, VA. In my spare time, I enjoy traveling, jazz, and art galleries.

Learn more about Cynthia Sims.