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This chapter examines the integration of curricular and extracurricular approaches to learning.

The study is performed through a case study examination of leader development programs at the United States Naval Academy.

The Naval Academy’s organizational and pedagogical approaches are grounded in the science of experiential learning and seek to integrate classroom instruction with the myriad leadership opportunities that are inherent in the design and function of the institution. Highlighting the example of the Class of 1977 Gettysburg Leadership Encounter, we show the impact on leadership development of explicitly linking curricular and extracurricular programs, and describe various tools that have proved effective reinforcing those linkages.

Students involved in this and other experiential programs and activities are better able to transfer the knowledge acquired in the classroom to the practical experience of leading their peers, and they lead with more confidence and better effectiveness. We conclude that this kind of integration has the potential not only to benefit the individuals involved but also to generate data on learning and development which could then be leveraged to enhance leader development through evidence-based analysis, feedback, and basic research.

Purpose – This introductory essay to an edited volume proposes possible contributions from economic sociology to the study of work broadly defined. Weber had a vision of economic sociology as a study of not only economic phenomena but also economically relevant and economically conditioned phenomena. Work, in its market and nonmarket variety, falls in all these categories and thus presents a fruitful research arena for economic sociologists who have thus far primarily studied markets and corporations.

Methodology/Approach – The essay provides an analytic review of literature in economic sociology, uses information from the content analysis of recent publications in sociology of work, and provides an overview of chapters included in this edited volume.

Value of paper – Applying economic sociology to work means: (a) investigating its embeddedness in social structures, culture, and politics; and (b) uncovering the socially constructed nature of what constitutes paid market work. This article also proposes that economic sociologists can expand the boundaries of work by examining such activities as care work, work in the informal economy, and prison work.