BIO

Hello! My name is Kara Sloper and I am a second year honors student from Ellicott City, Maryland dual majoring in nursing and public health. My passion for research began in high school where I worked in a lab researching more effective cures for prostate cancer using mice and rats as cancer models. This experience motivated me to apply to the UROP program, through which I am currently researching how leadership programs are taught throughout the United States. In the future, I aspire to become a pediatric nurse practitioner while continuing my passion for research throughout my career. Overall, UROP has been an extremely rewarding experience, and I am looking forward to serving as a UROP colloquium leader in the fall to share my own passion for research with other students!

Academic Leadership Programs Across the United States

Abstract

Throughout the past decades, leadership has grown into a formal discipline across many institutions, providing individuals an opportunity to acquire a fundamental skill set to become leaders in different educational and professional settings. This growth has led to an increased prevalence of leadership programs taught at higher education institutions around the globe. To understand the various ways institutions teach leadership, educators must acknowledge the details and demographics of these programs. The Leadership Programs Project builds on previous studies conducted by the Leadership Learning Research Center at Florida State University by adding new programs to the existing data set of over 1,500 programs. By conducting a detailed assessment of the available national programs, we determined the demographics of institutions that teach academic leadership programs and the characteristics of these programs. We found that the majority of programs fall under the discipline of education and business. Additionally, forty three of the institutions are private and fifty eight are public, with the majority of programs offering master’s or doctoral degrees. By understanding the elements and prevalence of these programs, leadership in higher education institutions will continue to expand, allowing for a future generation of strong and effective leaders.

Keywords: leadership, learning, academic