Student Leadership Development Through Recreation and Athletics New Directions for Student Leadership, Number 147 J–B SL Single Issue Student Leadership Series

Developing college students leadership capacity has become an essential outcome in higher education over the past decade. Collegiate recreation and intercollegiate athletics are two unique environments that often integrate leadership development initiatives. This volume explores the developing leadership capacity of students in recreation and athletic settings and includes:

• a variety of conceptual frameworks, including the Social Change Model of Leadership Development,
• practical approaches for creating leadership education initiatives,
• discussions of the difficulties students face transitioning from high school to college, and
• literature and resources for assessing leadership development occurring in recreation and athletics.

This volume provides a great resource for practitioners and educators to positively influence the leadership development of students throughout their time at the university.

The Jossey–Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Student Leadership explores leadership concepts and pedagogical topics of interest to high school and college leadership educators. Issues are grounded in scholarship and feature practical applications and best practices in youth and adult leadership education.

EDITORS′ NOTES 1
Donald A. Stenta, Cara W. McFadden

1. Connecting Collegiate Recreation and Athletics to Leadership 5
Cara W. McFadden, Donald A. Stenta
Development of college students leadership capacity can occur in a variety of settings found in the university environment. This chapter connects multiple perspectives for how leadership capacity can be developed in collegiate recreation and athletic settings.

2. Applying the Multi–Institutional Study of Leadership Findings to Collegiate Recreation and Athletics 19
Gordon M. Nesbitt, Anthony Grant
This chapter describes the four high–impact practices of the Multi–Institutional Study of Leadership (MSL) and applies these findings to recreation and athletics.

3. Linking the Leadership Identity Development Model to Collegiate Recreation and Athletics 33
Stacey L. Hall
A development model is shared to provide context of how college students develop leadership capacity during their time in college by connecting the identity model to recreation and athletics.

4. Opportunities and Challenges for First–Year Student–Athletes Transitioning From High School to College 43
Joy Gaston Gayles, Ashley R. Baker
This chapter discusses the transition student–athletes face when matriculating into the university as a first–year student. The impact of these transitional experiences on developing leadership capacity is explored.

5. Intercollegiate Athlete as Student Leader 53
Anthony Weaver, Kathleen Simet
This chapter challenges the idea that student–athletes leadership development is typically viewed from a positional perspective and provides examples of current programs that exist to develop students leadership capacity.

6. Collegiate Recreation Student Employee as Student Leader 65
Cara W. McFadden, Julia Wallace Carr
This chapter highlights how intentional use of leadership theory and student development theory for student employees in collegiate recreation can be used to create learning beyond training programs for the actual role the student has as an employee.

7. Positive Psychology as a Framework for Leadership Development in Recreation and Sport 77
Amy C. Barnes, James Larcus
A description of positive psychology provides a context for practical applications on how to create experiences that not only support student wellness, but also encourage leadership development for all students.

8. Adventure Leadership and Experiential Education 89
Elizabeth A. Speelman, Mark Wagstaff
This chapter demonstrates how adventure education blends with the high–impact practices in student leadership development and discusses specific tools and theories used in adventure education by linking to
contemporary practice of student leadership development.

9. Leadership Assessment in Collegiate Recreation and Athletics 99
Sarah E. Hardin
This chapter identifies prominent methodologies and instruments that are being used to assess various aspects of leadership and current practices in leadership programs and assessment within collegiate athletics and recreation are shared.

INDEX 109

Volume Editors:
Donald A. Stenta is the director of Student Life Recreational Sports at the Ohio State University and a lecturer with the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, where he teaches classes in leadership and public policy. 

Cara W. McFadden is an assistant professor in Sport and Event Management within the School of Communication at Elon University.