Designing Academic Leadership Minor Programs: Emerging Models

Abstract

With a growing number of leadership programs in universities and colleges in North America, leadership educators and researchers are engaged in a wide ranging dialogue to propose clear processes, content, and designs for providing academic leadership education. This research analyzes the curriculum design of 52 institutions offering a “Minor in Leadership” (13 institutions) or a “Minor in Leadership Studies” (39 institutions) in the United States to evaluate their commonalities and differences using the Brungardt, Greenleaf, Brungardt, and Arensdorf (2006) courses classification model. The results show a large variety of curricular designs with emerging trends. While we recognize the need for flexibility and innovation in program design, in this paper we also argue for greater harmonization of academic leadership program designs.