The Study Of LeaderShape In American Colleges And Universities

This article using the theories and methods of Comparative Education is a special study for LeaderShape Institute which is one of the forms of leadership education in American colleges and universities. On the basis of summarizing the literature in China and foreign countries systematically, this article explores the context, history, status and characteristics of LeaderShape. With these studies, we could get a complete and concrete understanding of leadership education in American colleges and universities, and then bring forward some advisements to students' development in Chinese higher education.There are five parts in this article. The first part is an introduction which introduces the purpose and the meaning, the questions and the contents, the methods and the writing structure of the article, and summarizes the related literature in China and besides. The second part discusses the context in which LeaderShape Institute in American colleges and universities developed, the increasing economic variables, declining civic consciousnesses and the development of leadership theories are the social context of LeaderShape, and the development of leadership education, the reformation of engineering education, the tradition of gifted education and the return of character education are the educational context. The third part focuses on the history, status and characteristics of LeaderShape Institute in American colleges and universities, LeaderShape Institute in American Colleges and Universities is a six-day program that exists to develop college man committed to lead with integrity. This program focuses on such factors as vision, integrity, relationship and results, pay attention to the changing impact participants made to the campus, organization and the circumstance. LeaderShape Institute in American colleges and universities has a development process from fraternity to incorporation and then approaches to higher education. There are 57 colleges and universities hold LeaderShape Institute in 2007, and the student participants will have a good leadership development experience through this six-day retreat. The forth part is the case study of LeaderShape Institute in University of Texas at Austin, Engineering College LeaderShape and McCombs Business College LeaderShape are presented to describe the implement of LeaderShape in American colleges and universities concretely. According to these foregoing studies, in the last part, we could make some conclusions and get some valuable thoughts for developing students in colleges and universities.