Senior studies whether leadership camps do produce later leaders

By Linda Myers

Noah Doyle, a senior in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations from Commack, N.Y., has always been intrigued by how young people acquire the skills to become leaders.

ILR senior Noah Doyle, center, speaks to a group of participants at B'nai B'rith Youth Organization's International Leadership Training Conference for high school students this summer in Starlight, Pa. Doyle's senior thesis study may shed light on the effectiveness of such programs. Tommy Hoffman/Vail Hoffman Studios

As a teenager Doyle attended international leadership training conferences in the Pocono mountains sponsored by B'nai B'rith Youth Organization (BBYO) that he says led him to go on to leadership roles as an undergraduate at Cornell (he is president of Cornell's Student Assembly in 2002-03). He wondered whether others who attended such camps had similar experiences.

This summer, Doyle got to return to the Poconos to do fieldwork for his senior thesis research project on leadership development. The project will allow him to test his theory by observing, and later tracking, 150 Jewish teenagers from around the world who spent three weeks this July and August attending the same program he had -- BBYO's International Leadership Training Conference in Starlight, Pa.

While leadership camps are big business today, with parents lining up to enroll their high school-age children in them, the effectiveness of such programs has never been measured quantitatively, noted Doyle. He asked: "To what degree do the participants transfer the skills learned over the summer to their everyday lives?" And, of special interest to BBYO, "how do such programs specifically develop Jewish leadership?"

Doyle's research began as a small project after he took part in a three-day conference at Cornell on leadership during his sophomore year led by Ken Blanchard, an alumnus of the university and leadership authority who co-wrote The One Minute Manager series of books and materials.

"The conference, along with some of the courses I was taking at the ILR School, made me think more about leadership, not as an innate attribute but as a skill that people can develop and refine," said Doyle. "Since then, my research has expanded into a joint partnership between the ILR School, Cornell and BBYO, with the help of ILR Professor Tove Hammer and the support of Jeffrey Hoffman, director of BBYO's International Leadership Training Conference."

"Noah's project will engage him in scholarly research techniques as an undergraduate and may offer insights on the effectiveness of this kind of leadership training," said Hammer.

Said Doyle: "A special feature of this project is a web-based database, built by Site Effects, a technology firm based in Maryland, that will allow me to track the participants following the programs and solicit feedback from members of their family, close friends and professional directors of the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization.

"Gathering data from an international sample pool such as this one would not have been practical five years ago," he noted. "But thanks to the Internet, and the technological skills teenagers now possess, it is no longer a daunting task to track and collect information from participants living throughout the United States and abroad in countries as far away as Turkey, Bulgaria and Israel."

Doyle expects to complete his study by May 2003. Grants from a Cornell undergraduate research program, the ILR School and the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization currently fund his research. For information on the project, contact Doyle at nad24@cornell.edu.