Date of Graduation

5-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Education in Recreation and Sport Management (MEd)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Health, Human Performance and Recreation

Advisor/Mentor

Sarah Stokowski

Committee Member

Steve Dittmore

Second Committee Member

Kara Lasater

Keywords

Campus Recreation, Club Sports, Leadership, Sport Leadership, Student Organizations, Transformational Leadership

Abstract

Campus Recreation and its programs can be used as a way to combat the national trends of decreasing enrollment and retention (Weaver, Forte, & McFadden, 2017; Kampf & Teske, 2013). In fact, 62% of students indicate that Campus Recreation programs are a factor when choosing an institution and 67% indicate that recreation programs were a factor when deciding to stay at a particular institution (Forrester, 2014). As a program within Campus Recreation, Club Sports specifically is perceived to have the greatest health and wellbeing benefits out of all Campus Recreation programming (Lower, Turner, & Petersen, 2013). Due to the voluntary nature of Club Sports, Transformational Leadership (Bass, 1985) may be the most prevalent leadership style (Chan & Mak, 2014). The purpose of this study is to determine if Club Sport Presidents exhibit Transformational Leadership characteristics. The Global Transformational Leadership Survey (Carless et al., 2000) was sent to all Club Sport members. Fall ‘17 Club Presidents received a separate survey which obtained information about their leadership experience on campus. Results: The average GTL score was 31.13 out of a possible 35 with a standard deviation of 2.94. There was not a significant difference between High and Low Involvement groups t(25) = -.586 , p = .563. Club Sport Members perceived their Fall 2017 Club Presidents to exhibit characteristics of Transformational Leadership. However, it does not appear that the amount of time a President spends in a Club Sports leadership role has an impact on these characteristics.

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