Introduction

WHAT DO STUDENTS need to know, believe, be able to do, and engage in to be effective leaders in college, in their careers, and in society? The Student Leadership Competencies Guidebook and resources have been designed to provide tools for using leadership competencies in program development, curriculum design, and assessment to help students develop and enhance critical competencies to effectively engage in leadership.

What Are Competencies?

Competencies are knowledge, values, abilities, and behaviors that help an individual contribute to or successfully engage in a role or task. Knowledge includes information that is helpful for one to know in order to engage in an intended behavior. This may include understanding models, theories, practices, processes, and/or steps. Values are those attitudes or beliefs that one possesses that indicate that something is important. For instance, knowing how to make an ethical decision is helpful, but if one does not believe that being ethical is critical, then that may affect one’s ethical behavior. Ability refers to one’s skill level or motivation to effectively engage in a behavior. Some competency areas are about skill development, and practicing can help one enhance those competencies. Some competency areas are less about skill, though, so it is vital to consider motivation as a catalyst or barrier to one’s ability to engage in a particular behavior. Finally, behavior is the engagement in the competency in an effective manner. Is one truly effective when engaging in the competency?

Why Focus on Leadership Competencies?

To adequately prepare students for their future careers, it is imperative to understand the competencies that are deemed necessary for effectiveness in their career roles. Knowing this can help provide a framework within which to design experiences that help college students better prepare for and develop essential leadership competencies specifically linked to their career fields. Because the use of competencies is commonplace in many professional organizations (Ammons-Stephens, Cole, Jenkins-Gibbs, Riehle, & Weare, 2009) and in nearly 75 percent of businesses (Conger & Ready, 2004), focusing on competency development in college will allow students to become familiar with the process and language of competencies prior to entering their career fields. Students will know what competencies will be expected of them in their future careers and can both intentionally develop the competencies necessary for their fields as well as articulate that development using competency language with prospective employers in the job search process.

Also, using competencies is an inherently intentional process. By identifying competencies before designing a program, then creating curriculum around those competencies, and finally measuring student learning and development, there is a process of intentional development at work. In an era of accountability, being intentional about student learning and development and then quantifying it through assessment is vital. Using measurable competencies is yet another vehicle with which to demonstrate effectiveness of leadership education and accountability in higher education.

How Were the Student Leadership Competencies Developed?

The initial list that would become the Student Leadership Competencies was developed in 2008 from an examination of the components inherent in the Relational Leadership Model (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 2013), the Social Change Model of Leadership (Astin et al., 1996), and the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2008), along with the standards outlined for leadership programs in the 2006 edition of the Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS) in Higher Education (Dean, 2006) and outcomes from the ACPA/NASPA 2004 document, Learning Reconsidered (Day et al., 2004). A master list of all concepts, standards, components, elements, and competencies listed in these documents was created. In many cases, a concept like Vision or Empowerment appeared across multiple models or documents. In other cases, a concept only appeared once, like Evaluation. Some overarching concepts such as Critical Thinking appeared. Because critical thinking is a cluster of several competencies, it was vital to identify each of the specific competencies associated with critical thinking, such as Research, Evaluation, and Analysis.

After the initial list of competencies was created, the process of using this information to analyze learning outcomes from academic programs began. The first step was to research the programmatic accrediting organizations accredited or endorsed by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors. These three agencies serve as clearinghouses for programmatic accrediting organizations and in 2008 collectively housed seventy-two programmatic accrediting organizations such as AAMFT (American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy) and NASM (National Association of Schools of Music). Each programmatic accrediting organization accredits specific academic programs. An academic program is defined as a specific discipline and degree level, for example, a bachelor’s in accounting or a master’s in electrical engineering. Some programmatic accrediting organizations accredit only one academic program, whereas some accredit more than fifty. In total, in 2008, the seventy-two programmatic accrediting organizations accredited 475 undergraduate and graduate academic programs in the United States.

Once the 475 academic programs were identified, a master database was created to list the learning outcomes specific to each academic program. Some programs listed only one outcome whereas others listed several hundred. These learning outcomes included all knowledge, values, abilities, and behaviors expected of graduates of each academic program in order to be effectively prepared for entry-level work in the careers associated with that academic program.

Once the learning outcomes were identified for each of the 475 academic programs, the process of analysis and coding began. The initial list of competencies that would eventually become the Student Leadership Competencies was then compared to the learning outcomes for each academic program. Through this process of analysis, any learning outcome from an academic program that included a competency from the list was coded and matched with the appropriate competency. Not only did this process validate the initial list of competencies, other competencies could be added to the list based on emergent data from the learning outcomes analyzed. For instance, two of the competency areas added through emergent data were Confidence and Excellence. Although these were embedded in the literature used to create the initial competency list, they appeared less prominent than other competencies that were selected for the list and were not deemed as vital to being included. The continued prevalence of these competencies within the academic program learning outcomes validated the need to include these competencies after all.

This process resulted in the creation of the Student Leadership Competencies as well as a robust dataset that linked learning outcomes with applicable competencies. From this dataset, it was possible to determine the prevalence and frequency of each of the competencies within and across academic programs. In addition, data could be disaggregated by degree level and similar academic programs to better understand competencies necessary for different students in different contexts. The original findings of the 2008 dataset were published in the Journal of Leadership Studies in 2013 (Seemiller & Murray).

In 2013, the study was again completed by examining the updated learning outcomes of all original academic programs and adding new programs that had emerged since 2008. The total number of academic programs analyzed was 522. Given the emergent data, the Student Leadership Competencies list was again updated to reflect the new findings, and a new dataset was developed. In total for the 2013 analysis, nearly eighteen thousand learning outcomes were analyzed and coded.

In addition, the components and elements associated with the Relational Leadership Model (Komives et al., 2013), the Social Change Model of Leadership (Astin et al., 1996), Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2008), Emotionally Intelligent Leadership (Shankman & Allen, 2008), and CAS Standards (Dean, 2006) have been cross-listed with the Student Leadership Competencies. This provides a resource to those using these models to easily incorporate the Student Leadership Competencies into a programmatic or curricular framework based on one or more of these models.

What Are the Student Leadership Competencies?

The Student Leadership Competencies consist of sixty competency areas within eight categories.

Each of the sixty competency areas includes four competencies that reflect each of the following dimensions:

• Do I know how to effectively execute the behavior related to this competency?

• Do I believe this competency is important?