It only took a couple of class meetings for Linda Anderson, a supervisor of 86 employees at a child development center in Inglewood, to get hooked on the approach Anderson School faculty are taking to help her become a better manager.

"What I personally like most about the program is that it begins with us, analyzing who we are," said Anderson, a coordinator for child development programs in the Inglewood Unified School District. "We're learning about our own personalities and how that affects our management style. We're looking at our decision-making process and taking it apart. That, to me, is the perfect place to start. From there, either you accept things about yourself or you make changes."

One of 50 Los Angeles County Head Start professionals enrolled in a management training course taught by the same award-winning faculty who teach Anderson's top-ranked M.B.A. program, Anderson and one of her managers, Francine Sandoval, who runs Head Start, are already starting to make innovative changes within their agency, even though they are in mid-course.

"Perhaps we would have made these changes on our own, or maybe it would never have occurred to us," said Anderson, who is already seeing positive results. "What's certain is that we're now on a pathway to change some things."

Funded by the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), the UCLA/LACOE Head Start Leadership Institute is designed to give Head Start professionals the foundation for managerial and entrepreneurial competence in areas ranging from operations to profit management.

The program, which began last July and runs until February, provides training for management teams from 10 Head Start agencies that oversee nearly 159 Head Start sites serving 8,314 children throughout Los Angeles County.

"This program is about giving all of our children the best possible head start by empowering those entrusted with the early development of tomorrow's adults," said Alfred E. Osborne Jr., director of the Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and the institute. The center designed the curriculum and coordinates the program. "We are instilling Head Start professionals with the tools to become social entrepreneurs to meet their changing needs -- whether that means finding suitable facilities, raising funds, providing training and development for staff or marketing their programs."

In addition to Anderson faculty, the Head Start managers also learn from UCLA experts in public policy and early childhood education. Each month, they gather in the classroom to discuss organization and strategy, management theory and practice, systems thinking, marketing, and finance and accounting.

Students also will undertake a project that addresses specific issues within each agency and develop a blueprint for action, using their newfound skills and knowledge.

The program is based upon the highly successful Head Start-Johnson & Johnson Management Fellows Program, conducted by The Anderson School for the past 10 years, which has reached more than 650 Head Start directors nationwide.