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The purpose of this study was to explore how variables such as student demographics, pre-college leadership activities, and perceived pre-college parenting behaviors predict students’ leader self-efficacy (i.e., individuals’ confidence in themselves to lead and belief that others will support their leadership [Hannah et al., 2008]) in college and leader emergence (i.e., college-based leadership involvements [DeRue & Ashford, 2010]) in college. Undergraduate students (n = 420) at a large, public university in the Mid-Atlantic were surveyed to examine these relationships and data were analyzed using hierarchical and logistic regression, with appropriate controls and moderators. Findings included discovery that pre-college engagement with sports team positional leadership, community service, extracurriculars, and positive parenting behaviors, such as family routine and greater quality time with parents, predicted leader self-efficacy. Further, findings noted that pre-college community service, extracurriculars, peer tutoring and perceptions of parental quality time and proactive parenting predicted leader emergence. This study suggests that students’ leadership development is influenced by myriad systems across the lifespan and demonstrates that, as educators committed to student development, we must engage the full arc of our students’ leadership journeys and provide for intentional partnerships between higher education and the K-12 community.

Rising operational costs and software sustainment concerns have driven the Air Force to move to newer technology to ensure that the Air Force Standard Base Supply System (SBSS) can continue to provide affordable and sustainable mission support in the years to come. This paper aims to summarize the successful software modernization effort the Air Force undertook to achieve that objective.

The paper describes the preliminary system updates that were required to isolate the SBSS software from all internal and external system and user interfaces in preparation for the subsequent successful code roll effort. Once the legacy SBSS component was fully isolated, the SBSS software modernization objective was achieved via a “code roll” conversion of the SBSS software from legacy COBOL to Java code, and movement of the integrated logistics system-supply application from a proprietary information technology (IT) platform to an open IT operating environment.

The SBSS system modernization yielded immediate and significant IT operational cost reductions and provided an important foundation for achieving Air Force logistics system consolidation and cloud computing objectives going forward.

The SBSS modernization experience should be useful in assisting similar data system software modernization efforts.