The Association of Leadership Educators has two good Facebook resources. Here is what the ALE Facebook group looks like. There are currently 143 members and some active discussions.

Association of Leadership Educators Group

They also have started growing an ALE Facebook page that you can like. I have found some helpful resources posted there lately, especially this Leadership Development Program Ranking pdf from Leadership Excellence.

Association of Leadership Educators Page

Cluster I: Participants Engaged in Building and Sustaining a Learning Community

1. Utilize an application and selection procedure to select students who are invested in their own and others’ development and are committed to engaging fully in the program.
2. Recruit from many sources and bring together a mix of students from a variety of backgrounds to create a diverse learning community.
3. Hire student-centered educational practitioners as teachers and administrators to facilitate students’ leadership development.
4. Create opportunities for leadership practitioners from a variety of fields and careers to serve as guest leaders, sharing their experiences through panels, discussions, and conversations with students.
5. Reduce status differences, be open and accessible, empower students, demonstrate integrity, care, and model exemplary leadership practice through your interactions with students.
6. Tell your stories, share real experiences, and ask thought-provoking questions.
7. Mentor and support students outside of program meetings.
8. Make the large learning community enrollment smaller through a structure that places students within smaller groups in the program.
9. Allow students to shape and share in a group identity and work together to develop the small group, cluster, or team to which they belong.
10. Utilize the small group as a laboratory to learn about leadership where students teach each other, engage in activities, work on projects, overcome challenges, and bond through developing as a team.
11. Challenge participants to risk and learn from mistakes, ask difficult questions, and think for themselves all within a safe encouraging atmosphere.
12. Set community standards and encourage participants to be approachable, encouraging, and willing to help fellow participants outside of the program as well as within.
13. Facilitate participants giving and receiving feedback to one another in critical instances after they have had time observing each others’ leadership style.
14. Utilize a wide variety of teambuilding activities and structures at the beginning of the program and throughout to allow participants to meet and connect on a one to one basis.

Cluster II: Student Centered Experiential Learning Experiences
15. Engage students in practicing the leadership skills and concepts they are learning through group development processes within the program, in class projects, and with individual leadership plans.
16. Engage students in practicing leadership in various out of class projects in the community and on campus.
17. Engage students in practicing leadership through assuming positions and roles within the program to share responsibility in operating the program and teaching fellow students.
18. Create opportunities for students to become involved in tangible ways outside of the program in the community, campus, and within other organizations.
19. Engage students in written reflection activities in the form of journals, essays about readings, and other projects.
20. Engage students in verbal reflection in reaction to discussions, questions posed, and current events.
21. Formally engage students in completing vision and goal setting activities and other projects to personalize the concepts to the individual.
22. Engage students in a variety of curricular activities designed to help them gain a greater understanding of themselves, including personality, strengths, style, skills, and values assessments.
23. Engage students in simulations to give them practice with specific leadership skills, including strategic planning, ethics, and decision making.
24. Engage students in group discussions, debriefings, and dialogues stimulated by events, activities, readings, and presentations.
25. Engage students in making meaning and connections to readings through discussing their out-of-program experiences.
26. Expose students to different situations, contexts, cultures, groups, and people through their stories and program activities.
27. Give students opportunities to practice different ways of leading, leadership roles, and engage with others with different leadership styles.
28. Provide opportunities for students to practice leadership and learn through service learning in groups and individually.
29. Expose students early to a wide breadth of multiple service sites, people, and organizations.
30. Allow students to have increasing responsibility and devote significant time for in-depth service to the site in which they are most interested or the cause about which they are most passionate.
31. Bring groups of students away from the routine of the campus for an accelerated and in depth exploration of themselves, their fellow participants and leadership.
32. Use alternative, group based, and experiential teaching methods such as a ropes courses, challenges, or intense exploration into a particular theme or issue.

Cluster III: Research Grounded Continuous Program Development

33. Offer a variety of themes, service sites, group & individual project choices, and team memberships to allow students to choose their leadership context and skills to develop.
34. Incorporate a wide variety of delivery methods to appeal to different student learning styles.
35. Integrate the various components students can choose into a common, coherent, larger whole curriculum that students experience in unique ways.
36. Develop and offer program content based on previously established desired leadership development outcomes for the students.
37. Explicitly state the mission and values of the program and model the values through the curriculum and participant action.
38. Develop content that infuses student leadership and college student specific issues to make the curriculum real and have utility for the individual student.
39. Create programs utilizing current leadership, student development, leadership development, curriculum, teaching & learning, quality program development, and education research and models.
40. Improve programs continually led by both practitioners and students, involving multiple assessment and feedback systems.

Additional articles:

Eich, D. (2008). A grounded theory of high-quality leadership programs: Perspectives from student leadership development programs in higher education. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 15(2), 176-187.

Eich, D. (2009). Using leadership education research and assessment to positively impact leadership program outcomes. Concepts & Connections: A Publication for Leadership Educators, 16(3), 7-10.

Eich, D. (2008). 40 practices that enhance student leadership development. Student Affairs Leader. 36(16), 1-3.

UPDATE: Jossey-Bass recently published the second edition of this book and renamed it “The Handbook for Student Leadership Development.” Here is the current table of contents:

About the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs.
Foreword (Dennis C. Roberts).
Preface.
About the Authors and Editors.
1 Advancing Leadership Education (Susan R. Komives).
1 FOUNDATIONS OF LEADERSHIP EDUCATION.
2 Leadership Theories (John P. Dugan and Susan R. Komives).
3 Research on College Student Leadership Development (John P. Dugan).
4 Considerations of Student Development in Leadership (Wendy Wagner).
5 Considerations of Student Learning in Leadership (Julie E. Owen).
2 PROGRAM DESIGN.
6 Establishing and Advancing a Leadership Program (Jan Arminio).
7 Inclusive Design (Art Munin and John P. Dugan).
8 Assessment and Evaluation (Julie E. Owen).
9 Funding Leadership Programs (Angie Vineyard and Craig Slack).
3 PROGRAM CONTEXT.
10 Formal Leadership Program Models and Structure (Paige Haber).
11 Curricular Programs (Felicia Mainella and Marlena Martinez Love).
12 Co-Curricular Programs (Jennifer A. Smist).
4 PROGRAM DELIVERY.
13 Powerful Pedagogies (Cara Meixner and Dave Rosch).
14 Considerations for Cultural and Social Identity Dimensions (Daniel T. Ostick and Vernon A. Wall).
15 Contemporary Topics in Leadership (Wendy Wagner and Kristan Cliente).
Epilogue.

About the Symposium

Advancing Leadership Education:
Connecting to High Impact Practices
July 7-10, 2011
University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia

The National Leadership Symposium is a professional development experience designed for faculty members, student affairs professionals and other educators involved with promoting college student leadership education. The program is coordinated by the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA) and the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs (NCLP).

Given the intense learning environment of the Symposium (included required reading prior to attending), it is advised that participants have significant professional experience in leadership education. Registration is limited to 50 people.

Symposium Theme

This year’s National Leadership Symposium will invite leadership educators to engage in rich dialogue and reflective discussion about what it means to be a leadership educator. Participants will enhance their own individual insight about their commitment to leadership education, and then explore larger questions related to the purpose of leadership education and how we best create space for gaining knowledge and fostering student learning. Evolving from why we do this work, to what is this work about, the symposium will turn toward what are we really ‘doing’ through leadership education. Research about high impact practices related to learning will be discussed. Scholar authors will provide theoretical frameworks and practical considerations for this exploration. Scholars and participants will engage in thoughtful discourse about what it means to educate or develop students and ourselves in leading and leadership. The overall goal of the 2011 National Leadership Symposium is to envision how the future of leadership education can promote increasingly complex ways of being, knowing, and doing.

Participants in the 2011 National Leadership Symposium will:

* Envision the future of leadership education to promote increasingly complex ways of being, knowing, and doing.
* Examine high impact practices for leadership development and their connection to enhanced learning and quality.
* Investigate the intersection of leadership education and human development.
* Unlock the potential of leadership educators through engagement in their own development.
* Create a network of practitioners, educators and scholars that explores and informs a current understanding of leadership education.

Symposium Scholars:

* Dr. Susan Albertine
Vice President for Engagement, Inclusion and Success, Association of American Colleges & Universities
* Dr. Lisa Boes
Allston Burr Resident Dean of Pforzheimer House, Lecturer on Social Studies, Harvard University
* Dr. Ron Riggio
Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology, Former Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College

Program Chairs:

* Dr. Marilyn Bugenhagen
Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies, Marian University
* Dr. Julie Owen
Assistant Professor of Leadership & Integrative Studies, New Century College, George Mason University

Membership:
To register, join NCLP, or renew your membership, please go to http://www.nclp.umd.edu/