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Engaging students emotionally is the key to strengthening their dispositions toward critical thinking. Elder (1997) contends that it is critical thinking which leads us to a rational and reasonable emotional life. The link between thinking and emotions is essential in leadership education. With this in mind, the researchers sought to examine the relationship between the skill sets of emotional intelligence (Developing Your Emotional Intelligence) and the dispositions of critical thinking (EMI). The researchers identified positive relationships ranging in magnitude from low to substantial. The overall skills associated with emotional intelligence showed positive moderate relationships with cognitive maturity, engagement, and innovativeness. In considering EMI critical thinking disposition scores and emotional intelligence, the relationship was substantially positive. The conclusions and recommendations encourage educators to take advantage of this relationship by providing students with experiences which elicit their emotional intelligence. In so doing there is opportunity to strengthen their disposition toward critical thinking.

Interdisciplinary leadership education programs attempt to integrate students from diverse backgrounds and ideologies within contexts that facilitate cognitive growth and allow students to engage with real world problems. Specifically, the development of agency and effective decision-making can provide students with a powerful toolkit replete with the necessary capacities and dispositions for addressing complex global problems. However, recently counter- reality has created significant challenges for leadership educators. Counter-reality, or the pervasive and persuasive replacement of objective truths with subjective opinions grounded in falsehoods, lead perceptions and provide barriers to developing leadership students primed for sustainably addressing complex organizational and community challenges. The following educational framework intends to address the challenge posed by counter-reality by developing agency in leadership students, so they are better equipped to ask incisive questions when presented with counter realities. Addressing counter-reality through the development of agency is incredibly timely as false claims and misinformation are presented on nearly a daily basis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine student, program and institutional support characteristics that relate to cohort intent to persist among Professional Golfers’ Association Golf Management University Program (PGA-GMUP) undergraduate students from 12 universities.

A survey instrument was created and disseminated to the targeted population. Multiple regressions were used to analyze the 473 responses of students’ intention to persist across the three independent variables (student, program and institutional support).

The research findings suggest higher levels of college GPA, career goals specific to the student’s desire to become a PGA professional, higher levels of faculty engagement, higher levels of satisfaction with major, being a leader in the student association and involvement in the student association are related to students’ intent to persist. Conversely, the results suggest career goals focused on being happy instead of graduation or working as a PGA professional and finding it difficult to make friends are associated with lower levels of intention to persist, while parental expectations of advanced degrees negatively affected students’ intent to persist. Additionally, passing a player ability test did not have bearing on intention to persist.

Results from this analysis offer insight into which persistence factors lead to students’ matriculation, with the ultimate goal of program completion. Identifying persistence factors may help PGA-GMUPs and other hospitality programs recruit students that are more likely to persist in the program, develop program characteristics that optimize cohort matriculation, and utilize university or institutional support services characteristics that may ensure program completion.