Utilizing the Kirkpatrick Model to Evaluate a Collegiate High-Impact Leadership Development Program

Abstract

The Dr. Joe Townsend ’67 Leadership Fellows is a high impact leadership development program offered through the Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications department of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. The goals and objectives of the program are to create better-equipped college graduates with enhanced leadership skills and abilities. The program focuses on helping its members further develop in five specific areas, developing self, developing others, organizational management skills, vision, and values. Although the Fellows program has be an active program since its creation in the spring of 2009, there have not been any formal evaluations performed on the program. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the Fellows program through the use of Kirkpatrick’s Evaluation Model, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior. A summative evaluation was used to assess whether or not the program had been meeting its stated objectives. The entire group of students who once participated in the Fellows program was sent a survey through Qualtrics to determine the success rate of the Fellows program through the four sections of Kirkpatrick’s Evaluation model, Reaction, Learning, Behavior, and Results. The data collected was then analyzed to determine if the objectives of the study were met. As a quantitative study, the results found were very clear. The participants scored statistically significant scores on all four portions of Kirkpatrick’s model. The overall effectiveness of the Fellows program, per the data collected, was deemed successful, and the results from the participants were both positive and promising for the program. Recommendations for future practitioners and researchers, as well as other leadership programs, were made based on the study’s conclusions.