Who We Are
We are educators who believe in the value of competition as a high-impact learning experience. Founded in 2015 as a non-profit higher education leadership program, the Collegiate Leadership Competition (CLC) joined the Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society (MOBTS) in 2024.
What We Do
CLC creates a dynamic practice field where student leaders can apply what they are learning in a context that stretches them to the boundaries of their knowledge, skills, and abilities. CLC makes leadership a real, tangible experience for students by providing an accessible curriculum, developing hands-on activities for in-person and online practice sessions, creating a community of educators dedicated to experiential learning, and hosting in-person and online competitions to put students’ learning to the test.
How We Do It
- CLC has developed an integrated and practically useful curriculum summarizing seminal work on leadership, followership, teamwork, and more.
- All content is organized across ten easy-to-remember acronyms, facilitating knowledge retention and application.
- Reflection questions, links to relevant videos, and additional readings are also provided.
- Annual updates keep the content relevant.
- CLC recruits teams across North America to learn and practice the curriculum from January to March.
- A library of practice activities, best practice guides, coaches roundtables, and one-on-one support help guide coaches through the experience.
- 255 teams from 100+ institutions across Canada and the USA have participated in CLC.
- CLC hosts in-person and online competitions to culminate the practice season!
- Teams of four to six compete in six unique challenges, earning points for their problem-solving process and the results they can achieve.
- Built-in reflection periods offer teams time to strategize between activities.
- Refreshments, supplies, and prizes are provided!
- Teams can compete in-person (Regionals), online (Global), or both!
- Regionals: various Saturdays in March on campuses across North America.
- Global: Thursday evening and Saturday midday in April, on Zoom.
Opportunities to Get Involved
Coach a Team
We are looking for coaches who have approximately two hours a week between January and March to coach students and create a culture of feedback.
Coaches may integrate CLC into existing courses or offer an extra-curricular experience to dedicated students. We have had winners from both streams!
Host a Competition
We are looking for regional hosts across North America who can host:
- on a Saturday (typically March);
- in a space that accommodates 6-12 roundtables of eight;
- refreshments (breaks, lunch), whether catered or through on-campus dining hall facilities.
MOBTS will cover all food and beverage expenses, activity supply costs, etc.
We encourage hosts to provide session spaces for a single Saturday at no cost to the organization.
...And More!
There are many ways to join the CLC community!
- Be a judge
- Join a committee
- Activity development and testing
- Research
Did You Know?
As a learning tool, competition has been demonstrated to…
- be a spur for personal growth (Sampson, 1988);
- have a positive effect on individuals’ self-esteem (Ryckman et al., 1996); learning and motivation (Ambrose et al., 2010; Cagiltay et al., 2015); and academic performance (Van Nuland et al., 2015);
- decrease distractions and increase engagement with learning (Admiraal et al., 2011);
- encourage cooperation and knowledge sharing with team members (Liu et al., 2022);
- encourage learners to de-emphasize knowledge acquisition and instead emphasize learning how to learn, improving the transferability and longevity of their acquired skills (Argyris, 1980, 1991; Armstrong & Fukami, 2010);
- lead to other benefits such as memorable experiences, peer bonding, and social capital development (Gamble & Jelley, 2014).
The Collegiate Leadership Competition has been demonstrated to…
- have a positive effect on leadership skills, self-efficacy, and motivation (Rosch & Headrick, 2022; Rosch et al., 2022);
- maintain self-efficacy increases four months after the competition (Rosch et al., 2022);
- benefit participants across gender (e.g., male, female) and class years (e.g., first, second, third, fourth) (Rosch et al., 2022; Rosch et al., 2024).
Harness the motivational potential of competition to create a space where learners challenge themselves and commit to developing together.
Get in Touch!
Lisa Kuron, CLC Chair
Brandon Charpied, MOBTS Executive Director