Yet another great review with a researcher in the field of college student leadership development is highlighted in this next podcast from the NASPA Student Leadership Podcast, hosted by Myles Surrett. In Episode 17, Myles interviews Julie Owen, an Assistant Professor of Leadership and Integrative Studies at New Century College, George Mason University and a project consultant for the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership (MSL).
Julie’s discussion with Myles centered around the current state of collegiate student leadership development and the third wave that we are now embarking upon. According to “Julie’s view of the world” we are leaving the second wave of collegiate leadership development, an era of program proliferation which focused on taking existing theories and models, and “scaffolding” them with empirical evidence. We are now entering the third wave which, in Julie’s words, “…asks critical questions about how do our own identities, subjectivities, and assumptions within our dominant social/political/economic/cultural system shape our approach to leadership? Whose voices are marginalized? … I’m so excited for what’s to come next. It’s going to be an upheaval, I think.”
Important to this discussion is critical questioning about who is included in leadership education, and who is excluded or “silenced at the table.” Julie cites the MSL study of campus inputs as an important piece of evidence. Schools identify which areas the leadership program partners with and how frequently; disability services are consistently in last place on that list. Julie imagines the opportunities when everyone has an equal voice at the leadership education table will be immense.
Finally, Julie provides a glimpse of the Leadership Educator Preparedness Model for the professional development of leadership educators. The model has three areas of development: leadership content, teaching and learning, and self-identity awareness.
To experience the full podcast, including Julie’s views on what goes wrong when leadership programs don’t work, her “rockin’ research team’s” findings on the experiences of first generation college students in leadership programs, and her “formal invitation” to join the journey of leadership education, visit the NASPA Student Leadership Programs podcasts, hosted by Myles Surrett, at iTunes or SoundCloud.