Developing Leadership Skills Through Service-Learning Courses

In recent years, employers have increasingly emphasized the importance of leadership training and service learning in developing workforce skills. Moreover, researchers have found service learning to have a positive impact on leadership development. In this article, the author provides direction in planning, developing, and implementing a service-learning course that helps students develop leadership skills through experiential education. The author bases this advice on eight years of instructing and iteratively refining a service-learning course called Community Leadership.

To design the course, the author researched service-learning and leadership courses, as well as related opportunities offered at a number of universities. In this process, the author noted two important aspects of successful courses: first, successful leadership and service-learning courses were uniquely tailored to reflect the structure of the particular university that was offering or hosting the course; second, including community leaders was a critical element of success. To implement these two aspects in his leadership and service-learning course, the author formed an advisory group comprised of local leaders. The author collected data from advisors related to topics such as the time commitment that they deemed appropriate to dedicate to such a course, the importance that students placed on having community leaders as guest speakers in the class, and how many times per year to offer the course in order to design meaningful community-partner projects. (In this particular community and university setting, the finding was once per year.)

The class design emphasized experiential learning and reflection opportunities for effectively developing leadership skills. The author acted in a facilitator role and, drawing on notions of effective pedagogical practice, used transformational teaching techniques, such as reflective journaling, group projects, guest speakers, and student-driven topics. Researchers evaluated students based on five primary criteria: midterm project status reports, end-of-term project status reports, teammate evaluations, presentations, and final reflection papers.

The course centered on service-learning projects, and the author highlighted the importance of the project selection process for the course. Findings showed that students must be excited about their project in order to maximize project success and personal engagement. The author emphasized the importance of beginning the project selection process several months before the start of the course and described a process for doing so. The process included community leaders submitting project proposals, registered students reading the proposals, and students indicating their project preferences by rank. In this way, the instructor was able to assign all students one of their top two or three choices. To maximize leadership learning, the instructor further recommended that the project be divided into components that each student in a group could manage individually.

Over the eight years of the course, 223 students completed 65 service projects for over 50 local nonprofit organizations. The author gathered feedback from students and community leaders each year and revised the course, as needed, to enhance success. Students reported that their favorite parts about the course included: working with local community members, having practical leadership experience, the flexibility and freedom of the projects, and working outside the classroom. The author provided year-by-year data on the suggestions for improvement and the biggest challenges encountered by the students. Such challenges included the need for community leaders to provide more specifics in their project proposals, students procrastinating and needing help with time management, students avoiding projects with political implications or motivations, and the need for more relevant guest speakers.

The author addressed these issues in a number of ways. Project specificity issues were addressed by providing the community leaders with a project proposal template that detailed the desired scope of the work. Drafts of project proposals were collected and the author encouraged students to address clarity issues immediately; three mandatory meetings were required between the students and community leaders.

Students reported developing leadership skills throughout the course, including gaining skills in communication, planning, organizing, self-confidence/the ability to make a difference, and teamwork/collaboration among others. The author notes all of these are skills that today's employers see as critical.

The author's eight years of experience in developing, teaching, and improving the Community Leadership course provides an example of how environmental education can be a part of service learning at higher education institutions. Faculty members can emphasize environmental education opportunities as one avenue for meaningful projects; similarly, environmental education practitioners can engage in service-learning projects with students and universities.