Student Preferences for Academic Advisors as Transformational Leaders

A quantitative study was conducted to determine the preferences of undergraduate students for academic advisors as transformational leaders. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to undergraduate students enrolled in leadership classes at a major land grant university to determine importance ratings based on the variables including non-traditional and traditional students’ ages, classification, gender, number of times advised, number of visits to an academic advisor, membership in a collegiate military organization and athletics, and current leadership activities. Results indicated that undergraduate students preferred their academic advisors to use transformational leadership activities. There was no significant difference in the degree of preference of transformational leadership in their academic advisor based on gender, participation in athletics, traditional and non-traditional ages, classification, membership in a military organization and participation in a leadership position or number of times advised. However, inadequate representation of all groups within the number of times advised category prevented a comparative analysis. As a result of this study, a leadership education workshop was developed as a component for academic advisor training, academic advising activities were identified that corresponded to transformational leadership constructs and similarities were found between the developmental advising model and transformational leadership