Theory and Practice in Doctoral Leadership Training

• In Event: Organizational Communication Research Escalator - Extended Session

Abstract

Doctoral students rarely receive training in how to take on both formal and informal leadership roles in the university. Leadership education, particularly at the doctoral level, is most often a peripheral outcome of the graduate school experience. Those in the pipeline for academic leadership therefore often lack both the expertise and experience with leadership in higher education, leading to the need for some investigation of this situation. By approaching this topic through a communicative perspective, a deeper understanding of leadership as both content and process may occur.
Leadership education in higher education is not a new priority. Recognized as a critical outcome for undergraduate college and university students (Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education, 2009), leadership education has advanced from an atheoretical and loosely structured set of activities to one that is both informed by theory and organized around curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular outcomes. The methods and processes to educate undergraduate student leaders have evolved to meet the shifting perspectives of leadership. Despite the growth of these formal leadership initiatives at the undergraduate level, this emphasis on leadership training lacks attention at the graduate level.
As graduates and current members of PLDI, a program developed at Rutgers University
and designed to address these needs, the authors offer a unique perspective into academic leadership training at the doctoral level. Drawing on the literature in leadership, organizational, and communication theory, with specific attention on student leadership education and the unique context of academic leadership, this paper offers a model for graduate student development that focuses on developing both scholarship and leadership.
This paper outlines key elements of the Pre-Doctoral Leadership Development Institute (PLDI) at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, including program goals, stakeholders, and program components. PLDI is a two year certificate program offered in association with study in the traditional communication discipline and taught by an interdisciplinary staff from higher education administration and faculty from the departments of communication, education and political science. Students are accepted from a variety of disciplines, including science, technology, business, social science, arts and humanities.
This perspective focuses on the ways in which leaders interact with followers. The PLDI program provides a venue for leadership education that focuses on the necessary communication competencies for effective academic leadership. The PLDI program promotes a model of collaborative leadership, in which leadership is enacted through discursive activity situated within and across the individuals. Throughout the four-semester program, fellows come to better understand the context of higher education, the multiple views of reality, and the relevant stakeholders and their attitudes, values and beliefs. Fellows share ideas and engage in open dialogue and inquiry. And finally, through the capstone program fellows come to recognize that positional leadership is but one type of leadership. The essence of the PLDI program is the fundamental belief that the successful governance of the institution of higher education is dependent upon such “leaderful practices” (Raelin, 2003).
It is acknowledged that some elements of general leadership theories are applicable to higher education; however, a review illustrates some of the gaps in applicability. As the analysis will show, some of the theories, especially early leadership theories, are by design better suited for explaining leadership in hierarchical, business organizations because of their linear, top-down approaches, which do not reflect the organizational realities of higher education.
PLDI in essence is grounded in the idea of experiential learning, which makes use of experience for guiding conduct (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). Traditionally, graduate students are socialized into academia primarily through interactions with faculty within their discipline, limiting their understanding of the institution of higher education as a whole. Academic and administrative units have different goals and operate on different principles. Faculty is typically concerned with research and instruction, while administrators are focused on broad institutional matters related to process, policy, and procedure and the various needs of multiple stakeholder groups both internally and externally (Foster, 2006). In having instructors with both faculty and administrative experience, PLDI fellows are exposed to relevant theory and a broad range of leadership issues.
Moving forward, this project seeks to assess the PLDI program and its sister programs through a communicative lens for evidence of improved leadership skills among its graduates.

Authors

• Maria Dwyer, Rutgers University

• Ralph A Gigliotti, Rutgers University

• Christine Goldthwaite, Rutgers U

• Surabhi Sahay, Rutgers U

• Brian Agnew, Robert Wood Johnson U Hospital