A recent article focused on "New Directions for Student Leadership," a sourcebook published by Cara McFadden, assistant professor of sport and event management, and Don Stenta, director of student life recreational sports at the Ohio State University.
A recent article looking at how campus recreation professionals can foster a culture of leadership development among their student employees draws on the insights of Cara McFadden, assistant professor of sport and event management at Elon.
The article, titled “Lessons in Leadership,” points to “New Directions for Student Leadership,” a sourcebook published in 2015 and edited by McFadden and Don Stenta, lecturer and director of student life recreational sports at the Ohio State University. The edition focuses on understanding how the leadership capacity of students can be developed in recreation and athletic environments, and offers a variety of theories and models as the framework for promoting that leadership development.
“A lot of the time we are doing the work, we just aren’t connecting it to models,” McFadden told Campus Recreation Magazine. “A lot of time there is a fear in the word ‘theory.’ We don’t want to talk about it. But if we are able to take some of the existing things we are doing around student leadership and then understand how it connects to a model, it gives us the opportunity to assess if we are actually developing the leadership capacity in our students.”
McFadden also recently published an article in SportRisk: Risk Management Newsletter for Campus Recreation, examining the concerns of an active shooter in sport and recreation environments and the role practitioners play in educating students to have a survival mindset. For the article, she drew on her own experiences as a doctoral student at Virginia Tech in April 2007, site of the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history at that time.