Date of Award

Fall 11-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

Dr. Stephen Sherblom

Second Advisor

Dr. Dana Klar

Third Advisor

Colonel Roy Joachimstaler

Abstract

Leaders are challenged daily to improve their organization's products and outcomes. “When the character of leaders is low, so are their standards” (Maxwell, 2010, p. 41), and accordingly the products and programs. No field or profession was exempt from this challenge at the leadership level. On this note, human trafficking as a humanitarian crisis was of particular interest for activists, but one that may still suffer from this same weakness at the leadership level. Consequently, having a concern for how to improve the character and standards of the leaders in the anti-human trafficking movement, the Investigator of this study questioned what type of leadership should be offered to the movement. To begin to answer that question, inspired by Greenleaf (1977, 1991, 1998, 2002, 2007), the Investigator played the role of a servant leader in her efforts of initiating, coordinating, and documenting the process of raising awareness, providing education, and engaging students in the topic of human trafficking on a college campus. The Investigator kept a reflective journal on this journey documenting her phenomenological experience of attempting to embody values aligned with Servant Leadership and engage students. At the end of the project, the Investigator’s attempts to embody this alternative leadership approach to “make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served” (Greenleaf, 1991, p. 6) was rated by the study participants. The Investigator offered a model based on this first-hand experience of Servant Leadership that highlighted the process that she and her participants went through based in her phenomenological experience. The 5P process, which in this case pertained to the issue of human-trafficking, included Personalization, Passion, Participation, Partnership, and Production. The Investigator came to recognize these five iii additive phases while she moved through them in her own personal experience while completing this study. Study participants for whom human trafficking became personal, also became passionate, which led to deepening their participation and engaging in participation for the production of something useful for this cause. Lastly, this study highlighted the important role a single servant leader could play in mobilizing a community in fighting for a moral issue of common concern.

Rights

Copyright 2019

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