Become a Healthcare Leader: What UIC’s Online MHA Program Can Do for Your Career

Strong leadership is essential in today’s complex healthcare landscape, and UIC’s Online Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) program is designed to help professionals grow into confident, effective leaders. Whether early in your career or already working in the field, the program offers practical tools to lead teams, manage change, and improve systems.

One standout course is HPA 410: Health Organizational Leadership, taught by Professor Emily Stiehl, a clinical associate professor. In this course, students don’t just study leadership, they practice it. They learn to confidently lead, motivate teams, and make lasting organizational improvements through real-world projects, peer collaboration, and evidence-based frameworks. In this spotlight, Professor Stiehl shares what makes the course so impactful and how it prepares students to become effective healthcare leaders.

Can you provide an overview of your background in healthcare administration?

I’m a Clinical Associate Professor in Health Policy and Administration at the UIC School of Public Health, and I’ve been in this role since 2012. Before joining UIC, I completed my PhD in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at the University of Pittsburgh, where I was also a postdoctoral researcher.

Much of my early research focused on certified nursing assistants. My dissertation explored how factors like low wages, limited benefits, and external stressors impacted their health and well-being at work. That’s what initially drew me into the healthcare space.

Since joining UIC, I’ve been deeply involved in the Master of Healthcare Administration program, teaching courses, advising capstone projects, and working closely with partner organizations.

What makes UIC’s MHA program stand out in healthcare leadership?

When choosing a program, it’s crucial to think about more than just the degree. What is valuable to you in your organization? What skills do you really want to take away from the program? UIC’s online Master of Healthcare Administration program gives you practical skills you can immediately implement and take back to your organization. The NCHL competency model underpins our curriculum, and we have faculty at the forefront of healthcare practice who bring firsthand knowledge into the classroom.

UIC’s MHA program sits at the intersection of business and public health. Our program believes that healthcare is a right, not a privilege, and that healthcare administrators should work to make healthcare more accessible, affordable, and sustainable. We’re located in Chicago, one of the country’s largest and most diverse healthcare markets. Major health systems and national organizations like the American Medical Association and the American College of Healthcare Executives are based here, making it a crossroads for healthcare innovation. Chicago also brings important social and structural issues to the forefront. The city’s long history of segregation and its diverse population present real challenges for healthcare delivery, which provides rich opportunities for improving patient access to healthcare and creating novel partnerships to address community needs in real-time. Our experiential education, connection to the Chicago healthcare community, and public health perspective help our program to stand out.

Why is HPA 410: Health Organizational Leadership important for students to learn?

Healthcare Organizational Leadership is incredibly valuable. Many students who enter our Professional MHA concentration are already working in healthcare, but want to understand how to incorporate performance improvement in their current roles and advance their careers.

A common theme I hear from our professional students, even those already in leadership positions, is that many were never formally trained to lead. They seek ways to ground what they already do in broader theories or frameworks. In HPA 410, I provide students with terminology, frameworks, and foundational knowledge from leadership and organizational behavior scholars and practitioners to support their leadership journey.

Our professional MHA track is also great for clinicians who are highly skilled in providing healthcare but require business management skills to help them understand new responsibilities or to take on more leadership roles in the future. Again, many of our clinical students have taken leadership roles out of interest or necessity, but were never trained to lead. It can be frustrating when the leadership tactics they use in the operating room or primary care office fail to translate into driving organizational change.

This course gives students the tools and theories to bridge those gaps. It provides students with language and frameworks for articulating their current leadership practices, and it offers them new insight that they can immediately apply to their organizations.

Key Leadership Skills You’ll Gain in UIC’s Online MHA Course

One key skill that the online Master of Healthcare Administration program fosters is self-reflection, reflecting on what they’re already doing and identifying existing strengths.

In addition, the course connects students with tools and frameworks for addressing organizational issues, including conflict resolution, decision making, health equity, perceptual differences, and motivation in the workplace. We focus on assessing employee needs at the system and individual levels and help students to create an environment that fosters employee success.

I often say that healthcare leadership isn’t something you learn by sitting in a classroom and listening to someone speak. It’s a practice. Even within the 8 weeks of the course, I want students to reflect on how they can apply what they’ve learned to improve their leadership style. My goal is for them to walk away with a fresh perspective or approach they can take back to their organization and use immediately to make improvements.

What’s a Hands-On Project Students Complete in HPA 410?

I firmly believe in evidence-based management, so the final project for this course is designed to apply leadership principles directly to students’ organizations. It’s a team-based project where students identify a specific leadership issue within their organization. They start by formulating a focused question, then conduct a literature review and gather internal insights through interviews or surveys to better understand the issue at hand.

The final project consists of tangible recommendations for the organization that are ideally actionable for the organization. What I love about this project is that it’s not just an academic exercise. If students fully engage with the project, they can return their findings and recommendations to their workplace, where they can try to implement them. This project is practical, hands-on, and designed to have a real-world impact.

What Are the Top Challenges Healthcare Leaders Face—and How Does This Course Help?

One of the biggest challenges today is the uncertainty around funding. Both Medicare and Medicaid are potentially under attack, and federal grants for research and innovation, which many academic medical centers rely on, are also at risk. This creates a lot of uncertainty for healthcare leaders.

Another ongoing challenge is how to motivate and retain a diverse workforce. Healthcare organizations employ individuals in many different healthcare roles and occupations, who are often motivated by different things. These employees have diverse levels of training and experience and encounter different struggles at work and home, but they have to work together seamlessly to ensure high-quality patient care. Many healthcare organizations continue to grapple with how to find and retain frontline workers, and turnover in these occupations is still high.

Additionally, leaders are struggling to maintain fairness across employees in different roles. They’re dealing with concerns about remote work versus work that must be done in-person, fostering interprofessional teams of workers, who might be compensated in different ways, and ensuring that health and well-being benefits are accessible to all employees. Healthcare leaders have to motivate their teams, foster a sense of belonging, and manage team dynamics, all while facing the uncertainty of funding.

In HPA 410, we help students address these challenges by providing leadership tools to navigate this uncertainty, manage diverse teams effectively, and foster an inclusive, supportive work environment.

What’s the Most Important Lesson You’ve Learned in Your Healthcare Career?

Especially during these challenging times, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that we all have more power and influence than we often give ourselves credit for. In our executive and professional programs, I’ve heard students say things like, “My boss never lets me try new things or make changes in the organization.” As we discussed it further, we realized that they have the power to help their own team members thrive. So, I’d encourage students to think about how they can use their influence to support their colleagues’ growth and new ideas. We often focus on the people above us, but looking at how we can empower those around us to succeed may be just as important.