Colleges and universities continually seek to foster the leadership development of undergraduate students through curricular and co-curricular opportunities and experiences. This study examined the effects and potential contributions of participation in campus-based leadership trainings on college students' leadership development with special consideration for gender and racial background. To better understand the relationship between campus-based trainings and leadership development, data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNS) was utilized. The WNS was a multi-institutional, longitudinal dataset made up of 47 four-year colleges and universities from 21 states throughout the United States. This study mark's one of the first multi-year, multi-institution longitudinal studies to investigate the relationship between campus-based leadership trainings and leadership development.
The results of the study pointed to several over-arching themes. The first theme was that a student's background and leadership experience prior to college matter. Next, a student's curricular success matters, and influences their leadership gains throughout all aspects of the SCM. The interactions students have with peers who are different from themselves matters. Leadership development opportunities need to be intentionally designed. Finally, campus-based leadership trainings offer a potential programmatic option for institutions to help develop their students as socially responsible leaders, regardless of backgrounds and other experiences.