Factors influencing College of Agriculture students' participation in leadership development certificate programs: A tri-state study
Abstract
Leadership development has been identified as one of the objectives of undergraduate agricultural degree programs in Land-Grant colleges throughout the United States (Love & Yoder, 1989). Efforts to enhance the leadership skills of agriculture students have varied widely across degree programs, departments, and institutions. Leadership development efforts in some institutions have been promoted through courses to enhance leadership attributes of students. Other institutions have adopted a more relaxed posture by encouraging leadership development through participation in student option clubs, student organizations, and activities (Schumacher & Swan, 1993). This mixed-methods study consisted of a quantitative survey instrument and a qualitative in-depth interview approach to determine the factors that influence College of Agriculture students to participate in leadership certificate programs and why students choose not to participate in leadership development certificate programs. There were three groups of students involved in this study from each of the three universities involved. The participants were students who are members of the Colleges of Agriculture at the University of Illinois, Purdue University, and the University of Wisconsin. Group 1 consisted of students who are currently involved in a leadership development certificate program at their respective university. Group 2 consisted of students who have chosen not to be involved in leadership development certificate programs and Group 3 consisted of students at each university who came to the certificate call out meetings, but then chose not to participate in the leadership development certificate program. This group also contains students who started the program and dropped out prior to the completion of the requirements. The study was limited to three classes of cohort students from 2006-2008. The data from both the qualitative collection and the quantitative collection indicate that students choose to participate in leadership development certificate programs because they feel like it will benefit them specifically when it comes to job placement. Students also indicated that they have a strong desire to become a leader, and were more likely to participate when encouraged to do so by a faculty or staff member. The most frequently mentioned reasons for not participating or completing the leadership development certificate program were; time, involvement with student organizations, and students didn’t know that the opportunity to participate in the leadership development certificate program in their college existed.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Peters, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Agriculture|Curriculum development|Higher education
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