The Balancing Act: Exploring Scholarship for the Agricultural Leadership Educator

Abstract

Today’s leadership educator is housed in a variety of departments across our colleges and universities. As a result, leadership coursework is taught contextually based in multiple disciplines including, but not limited to, business, education, military studies, student affairs, and agriculture (Pennington, 2005). Within colleges of agriculture, leadership offerings include not only coursework, but also minors, majors, and certificate programs (Brown & Fritz, 1994, Fritz & Brown, 1998, Fritz, Townsend, Hoover, Weeks, Carter, & Nietfeldt, 2003, Pennington, 2005, Pennington & Weeks, 2006). A few academic leadership programs in agriculture have enrollments large enough to employ leadership educators devoted solely to the purpose of teaching and studying leadership. However, it is common for leadership educators teaching in the context of agriculture to be academically prepared as agricultural (teacher or extension) educators and then later assigned to teach agricultural leadership. Typically, leadership educators in agricultural departments are agricultural educators, first, and leadership educators, second (Fritz & Brown, 1998, Pennington Weeks, Weeks, Barbuto, & Langone, 2009). For the purposes of this paper, leadership educators teaching within the context of agriculture will be referred to as agricultural leadership educators.