Keywords

leadership, student government, transformational leadership, advising, community college

Abstract

College student government organizations (SGOs) have the important responsibility for achievement of purposes that serve students and the college community. They are also the student voice in higher education governance. Effective student leadership is vital to the effective fulfillment of these purposes, as is the role of the student government advisor in ensuring the success of student leadership and leadership development. Transformational leadership (Bass, 1985) is seen as a way of reaching higher levels of leadership effectiveness and organizational performance, and it has been advanced for use in SGOs. This study examined the extent to which community college student government advisors who exhibited transformational leadership qualities had an influence on the organizational outcomes of community college student governments. Several research questions were formulated to guide this examination. Surveys which included an instrument to measure the effectiveness of reaching organizational outcomes and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for Research (MLQ 5X) (Bass & Avolio, 1995, 2000) were given to Florida community college student government executive board members and their respective student government advisors. Anticipated findings included increased levels of organizational outcomes in those community college SGOs in which advisors exhibit greater levels of transformational leadership qualities. Analysis of the data yielded advisor and student government member demographics, and a strong level of fulfillment of organizational outcomes. Statistically significant positive correlations were found between student reported transformational leadership qualities of advisors and student ratings of achievement and importance of organizational outcomes. A statistically significant correlation was also found between student ratings of importance of organizational outcomes and student ratings of the achievement of organizational outcomes. This indicates the existence of a relationship between the transformational leadership qualities of Florida community college student government advisors and the perceived importance and achievement of student government organizational outcomes. Secondary results were also given. Results of this study suggest that Florida community college student government advisors who exhibited higher levels of transformational leadership qualities engendered higher levels of organizational outcomes in Florida community college student governments. Implications were discussed for the study findings, and recommendations for future research were made.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2005

Semester

Fall

Advisor

House, Jess

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

College

College of Education

Department

Educational Research, Technology, and Leadership

Degree Program

Educational Leadership

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0000771

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0000771

Language

English

Release Date

January 2006

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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