Transformational Leadership Practices of New England Community College Presidents

Abstract

Historically, community colleges began with the intention to provide training and education to a non-elite population of learners. Today, community colleges have growth by the thousands across the United States. They serve as niche institutions of higher education that provide programs and services to meet the growing and ever changing needs of our economy, secondary schools, technology, globalization, and social needs. In order to meet these challenges, community college presidents need to engage in transformational leadership practices. Therefore, this study described the transformational leadership practices of New England community college presidents and related these practices to selected personal variables (age, gender, experience) and institutional variables (size, percentage of enrolled minority students, location). The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI - Self) (Kouzes and Posner, 2003) was utilized to collect data concerning the transformational leadership practices of the 25 community college presidents who elected to participate in the study. The LPI defined The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership as: (1) Model the Way; (2) Inspire a Shared Vision; (3) Challenge the Process; (4) Enable Others to Act; and ( 5) Encourage the Heart. The analysis of the data revealed that New England college presidents were highly engaged in transformational leadership practices, with mean scores well above the average levels of engagement of a national sample of leaders. Although no statistical relationships between leadership practices and personal and institutional variables were identified, several approached significance. Specifically, the percentage of minority students enrolled at the college was related to Inspiring a Shared Vision (p = .06) and Model The Way (p = .09). Also, several differences between the community college presidents approached significance. Non-urban presidents reported higher engagement in Enabling Others to Act compared with urban presidents (p = .07), and females had higher levels of Model The Way than males (p = .056). Based on the results of this study, several recommendations for future research were proposed. Future researchers should replicate this study in other regions of the United States and further explore the relationships that approached significance in this study. Also, the opinions of faculty and administrators concerning the leadership of presidents should be examined to determine if they are similar to the self-reported perceptions of the presidents.