Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Mentoring Experience Of High Power Distance Individuals In High And Low Power Distance Cultures, Jennifer Okoliko

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

Understanding how to effectively navigate mentoring relationships across different cultures is critical for personal and professional development in an increasingly globalized world. With the growth in migration across the world, leaders are tasked with the responsibility of understanding how to connect, communicate, and create effective teams across cultures for personal and organizational success. Exploring the mentoring experiences of individuals in high and low Power Distance cultures provides a broader understanding on how the phenomena is practiced in different cultural context and highlight important lessons for leaders.

The aim of this phenomenological study was to enhance our understanding of the lived …

Gender Role Congruence And Self-Efficacy In Emerging Outdoor Leaders, Audrey Krimm

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

Being a leader in the outdoors requires the competence and confidence to act and make decisions in high-risk situations. However, female leaders may experience an incongruence between the assertive decision-making expected of their leadership role and the passivity expected of their gender role, which can impact their leadership self- efficacy. The purpose of this study was to explore how gender role congruence influences the self-efficacy of male and female emerging outdoor leaders. A convergent mixed- methods design was used by triangulating self-efficacy survey data with in-depth interviews, observations, and reflective drawings from eight student outdoor leaders at a large Midwestern …

Leadership Education And Moocs: A Content Analysis Approach To Understanding The Pedagogy And Characteristics Of Leadership Massive Open Online Courses (Moocs), J. E. Jason Headrick

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

The purpose of this study is to identify the pedagogical strategies used for instruction and assessment in leadership-oriented MOOCs and gain a more refined understanding of the current state of MOOCs in leadership education. The study also seeks to fill the gaps in the body of knowledge surrounding leadership MOOCs. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a form of distance education course used across content areas. They have been celebrated as revolutionizing the way learners access education and the way colleges and universities could expand the notion of education on a global scale beyond their traditional campuses. The use of …

Generativity Development Of College Students Who Mentor, Nick Knopik

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

Research has shown that college students who mentor demonstrate higher levels of generativity than other college student leaders and general college students; yet, it is unclear whether college student mentors develop generativity over time as a result of their mentoring experience or enter a mentoring relationship because their generativity is already well-developed. This study compared the levels of generativity within individuals and across age cohorts during a one-year time period while controlling for gender for college students who mentor. Three quantitative generativity measures were used to collect data from a sample of 45 college student mentors at two time points, …

The Experience Of Influence Among Youth Leaders, Kelly Moguel

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

While the term “leadership” can be difficult to define, one term that is commonly seen in its association is “influence”. While the field of leadership has empirically identified several outcomes associated with adult influence (i.e., greater organizational performance, higher subordinate satisfaction, higher subordinate engagement), little is known about influence in youth leaders. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain a better understanding of how youth leaders experience influence. Twenty-nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews from fifth- 12^th-grade students in a leadership mentoring program called Nebraska Human Resources Institute (NHRI) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were conducted to ascertain …

A Phenomenological Study Exploring The Leadership Development Experiences Of Academic Research Library Leaders, Beth Mcneil

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

This phenomenological study describes the leadership development experiences of academic librarians currently working in leadership roles in academic research libraries to discover their experiences of being a library leader and to explore how they describe their own leadership development. Study participants identified as having experienced positive leadership development experiences during their careers as academic research library leaders and were, at the time of this study, employed and actively working in leadership positions reporting directly to the head of their academic research library. The goal of this exploration was to understand what the academic library leaders had experienced, with regard to …

Exploring The Relationship Between Parental Psychological Control And Emergent Leadership, Melissa S. Fenton

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

Leadership scholars have identified the need for research investigating the developmental antecedents of leadership (Avolio, 2007; Day 2011b; Murphy & Johnson, 2011). Although leadership scholars investigated the relationship between parenting and leadership, there was a gap in the leadership literature analyzing the impact of parental psychological control. This descriptive study explored the relationship between the five factor personality model, parental psychological control, and emergent leadership behaviors in emerging adults. Participants were emailed a survey including measures of the Big Five personality traits, affective-identity motivation to lead (Chan & Drasgow, 2001), leadership self-efficacy, parental psychological control, and self-reported formal and informal …

Educational Robotics As Leadership Development For Youth, Kathleen P. Morgan

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

This study explored how competitive educational robotics programs for youth contribute to the development of future innovative leaders in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The importance of leadership in creating a climate for innovation is recognized by scholars (Eisenbeiss, van Knippenberg, & Boerner, 2008; Oke, Munshi, & Walumbwa, 2009; Sarros, Cooper, & Santora, 2008) and educational robotics programs, like FIRST^® LEGO^® League (FLL), that include leadership development in their organizational missions. While youth interest in STEM and youth leadership development have been previously researched, the intersection of leadership development and STEM learning appears to be …