| Summary: | <p> Although leadership training programs have been shown to better prepare college students for the professional world, higher education needs empirically-based leadership interventions to demonstrate program effectiveness. This qualitative descriptive study describes how a servant leadership training program, completed by students in a higher education setting, influenced the development of their servant leadership knowledge and skills. The goal was to provide empirical research, using servant leadership as the theoretical foundation, on a leadership training program to help build future programs for higher education settings. In three of the research questions, addressed through 10 individual interviews, participants described how their program experience influenced their servant leadership knowledge and skills. The fourth research question, which used archival data on the program, provided the pre and post-test results from the program. The results from the thematic analysis of the interviews and the descriptive statistics of the pre- and post-test results described the value of leadership development programs on a college campus and provided evidence that student growth in their servant leadership knowledge and skills can occur. The thematic analysis identified eight overall themes: awareness of self and others, knowledge gained during the program, self-improvement, shared values, trust, integrity, experience through residence life, and team activities. The descriptive statistics for the pre- and post-test results illustrated that there appeared to be an increase in all seven measured areas of servant leadership. This study encourages ongoing research on the impact of leadership programs including servant leadership initiatives. </p><p>
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