Most of this section reads like straightforward advice: how to give feedback, how to run a retrospective, how VCU structures its leadership curriculum. Behind that, there's a specific, consistent standard for where a claim is allowed to come from and how it's checked - this page is that standard, written down once instead of implied differently on every page.
Author disclosure
MBA Lab's Leadership content is written by a current VCU Executive MBA candidate. That's disclosed here directly, and it cuts both ways: it's why the VCU-specific pages in this section are unusually well-informed about what the program actually covers, and it's exactly why the non-affiliation notice below isn't a formality. Enrollment doesn't make this an official VCU publication, doesn't give it access to speak for the university, and doesn't exempt it from the sourcing rule in the next section - if anything, being close to the material is the reason that rule is enforced more strictly here, not less.
Non-affiliation
MBA Lab is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or an official representative of Virginia Commonwealth University. No page in this section is reviewed, approved, or commissioned by VCU before publishing. Where a page discusses VCU specifically, it says so with the same notice as this one, driven by a vcuRelated flag in that page's own front matter rather than typed by hand each time - see the definitive VCU guide for what that looks like on a full page.
What's allowed to inform a page
Two source types, and nothing else:
- VCU's own public materials - the graduate bulletin, published course catalog descriptions, publicly posted program pages, and anything else VCU itself has made publicly available. Never internal course content: no assignments, no slides, no session recordings, no material that was distributed only to enrolled students.
- The independent published leadership-research literature - peer-reviewed research and established frameworks the curriculum itself draws on, cited by source, not repackaged as VCU's own claim unless VCU's own materials actually say so.
A separate, real research report anchors most of the VCU-specific pages in this section - see the full source list for exactly what was consulted and when.
Verification and dates
Every VCU-specific claim in this section carries the date it was last checked against VCU's own current public materials - shown automatically wherever the non-affiliation notice appears. VCU updates its bulletin and program pages on its own schedule; a verified date is a claim about when something was true, not a guarantee it still is. When in doubt, check the source directly rather than trusting a page here that hasn't been re-verified recently.
What never gets published
A short, deliberately explicit list, not because any of these have happened, but because "we'd never do that" is worth saying plainly rather than assuming it's obvious:
- Verbatim VCU course content - slides, assignment text, session materials - regardless of how it was obtained.
- Anything presented as an "official VCU framework," curriculum name, or methodology VCU itself hasn't published under that name.
- A causal or outcome claim ("this makes you a better leader") that the cited research doesn't actually support.
- Named students, named non-public faculty statements, or any other detail that identifies a specific person from a specific cohort.
- A validated-instrument claim for any of this site's own self-assessment tools - see the honest answer on that if you're wondering.
If something here looks wrong
Genuinely useful to hear about. VCU's program details change, research gets superseded, and a source-transparency standard only means something if it's actually checked when someone points at a specific claim - if a VCU-specific page reads as stale or a citation looks misapplied, that's worth flagging rather than assuming it's been silently kept current.