Morehead State University
Leadership: Lessons Learned at Summer Camp
Institution
Morehead State University
Faculty Advisor/ Mentor
E. Noel Earl
Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the leadership characteristics and lessons that were learned in a summer camp environment. This was inspired by the award-winning novel The Cabin Path by Jay Gilbert and compared to the popular theory Reframing Leadership by Bolman and Deal using a typological approach. Gilbert’s novel categorizes and explains how essential leadership experiences such as working in a team or improvisation can be honed outside of the traditional classroom setting. The hypothesis was that those leadership lessons identified by Jay Gilbert were in fact, essential to becoming a leader and were comparable to the scholarly work in Bolman and Deal’s theory. The goal was to establish the lessons outlined in the novel as paralleled to the theory and identify their value beyond summer camp into a career field and adulthood. The findings concluded that a popular novel written for a juvenile audience may still outline very scholarly ideas as compared to a widely accepted theory. Those leadership lessons are valuable and crucial to success in post-secondary education as well as a profession.
Leadership: Lessons Learned at Summer Camp
The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the leadership characteristics and lessons that were learned in a summer camp environment. This was inspired by the award-winning novel The Cabin Path by Jay Gilbert and compared to the popular theory Reframing Leadership by Bolman and Deal using a typological approach. Gilbert’s novel categorizes and explains how essential leadership experiences such as working in a team or improvisation can be honed outside of the traditional classroom setting. The hypothesis was that those leadership lessons identified by Jay Gilbert were in fact, essential to becoming a leader and were comparable to the scholarly work in Bolman and Deal’s theory. The goal was to establish the lessons outlined in the novel as paralleled to the theory and identify their value beyond summer camp into a career field and adulthood. The findings concluded that a popular novel written for a juvenile audience may still outline very scholarly ideas as compared to a widely accepted theory. Those leadership lessons are valuable and crucial to success in post-secondary education as well as a profession.