Higher Education Students
OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of leadership training in U.S. Army ROTC programs at two New England universities.
METHODOLOGY The sample included third and fourth year ROTC cadets at a private military university in Vermont (N = 31) and a large urban private university in metropolitan Boston (N = 91), with a response rate of 98 percent. Cadets completed the Student version of the Leadership Practices Inventory during a regularly scheduled class period, and provided demographic data. Most respondents were male (80%), about half juniors and the other half college seniors, with 46 percent having attended a ROTC Leadership Camp the previous summer, and only 20 percent had a parent in the military.
KEY FINDINGS Modeling was the most frequent practice for cadets at the military academy followed by Enabling; and this order was reversed at the urban university. Encouraging, Challenging and Inspiring followed next in frequency for both groups of cadets. However, there were no statistically significant differences found between the two groups of cadets for any of the five leadership practices. While the average scores on all five leadership practices were higher for those cadets who had attended the Summer Leadership Camp, none of these were statistically significant.
All in all, no differences were found in the leadership practices of ROTC students who attended a military school and those who attended a traditional urban university. Likewise, no differences were found in the perceptions of cadets who had attended a leadership camp and those who had not attended.
The author concludes: “College students participating in Army ROTC demonstrate the leadership practices identified by Kouzes and Posner” (p. 52).