Revised Standards Released for Leadership Education and Development

The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) is pleased to announce the release of a revised set of standards for Leadership Education and Development.

CAS, a consortium composed of over 40 collaborating professional associations representing over 115,000 professionals in higher education, has developed standards for 47 functional areas and 3 cross-functional teams, and rooted them in the scholarship and work conducted within their respective fields. These revised standards delineate expectations for practitioners and educators in related functional areas, and are an update to the standards published in the 2019 CAS Professional Standards for Higher Education (10th ed). The revised standards reflect a name change to the functional area formerly known by CAS as “Student Leadership Programs.”

The CAS revision committee was chaired by Gayle Spencer, Director of the Illinois Leadership Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CAS partnered closely with scholars, practitioners, and other experts in leadership studies in the revision of these standards. Kristan Cilente Skendall, Associate Director of the Gemstone Honors Program at the University of Maryland and a CAS Representative from the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs (NCLP) provided expert guidance to the group in identifying relevant literature, trends, practice recommendations, and standards of good practice in leadership education and development. Skendall was joined a team of experts including Natasha Chapman (University of Maryland), Chris Esparza (University of Oregon), Nyasha Guramatunhu-Cooper (Kennesaw State University), Kathy Guthrie (Florida State University), Brian Magee (University of Rochester), Julie Owen (George Mason University), Darren Pierre (Loyola University of Chicago), Avani Rana (The College of New Jersey), Corey Seemiller (Wright State University), William Smedick (Johns Hopkins University), and Vernon Wall (Leadershape®).

Spencer and Skendall were joined by a multidisciplinary team of other CAS representatives in the review process, including Jane Hamblin (Association of College Honor Societies), Renardo Hall (NASAP, Millersville University), and Jim Walters (National Society for Experiential Education).

CAS is proud to release this revised set of standards for an important and evolving functional area in higher education.

The new standards for Leadership Education and Development are now available at:
https://www.cas.edu/store_product.asp?prodid=147

An accompanying Self-Assessment Guide (SAG) is available at:
https://www.cas.edu/store_product.asp?prodid=75

Please direct all questions and inquiries about the revised standards to the CAS Executive Director ([email protected]).