by Milsy Westendorff
Dr. Debra Arfsten has been part of CUC for 15 years. She has a PhD in higher education leadership from Colorado State University. In fact, Dr. Arfsten was born and raised in Colorado, but it was the opportunity to come and teach at CUC that made her move to Chicago.
Concordia University Chicago may be small compared to other universities, but it’s home to a diverse staff and faculty that have so much knowledge and are willing to share it with others. One of those people is Dr. Debra Arfsten.
Dr. Arfsten specifically focused on servant leadership when it came to her research.
“I worked with an organization that is a Christian Organization, but it’s a for profit, it’s a publishing company. They had as part of their mission statement that servant leadership was part of what they do.”
Basically, servant leadership is a type of leadership where the one in charge, in this case, the head of the publishing company, demonstrates that they care about their employees. They have an interest in their employees where they focus on helping them by improving and honing their skills.
“What I wanted to do was interview or survey everybody in the organization, which at that time was like 300 people. The owner of the company understood and practiced servant leadership. I wanted to survey everybody from the top down, all the way to people who worked in the warehouse, just to see if that concept really emulated throughout the whole organization. It’s one thing for the president of the company to say that, but it’s another thing to see if people who are further down the chain really experience and practice that.”
With a really interesting topic, and the support of the president, she was able to survey almost everybody at once. The president of the organization gave her time to hand out her surveys during one of the company’s monthly meetings. Without this help, the whole dissertation process would’ve taken longer.
Dr. Arfsten was always interested in leadership, so when she took this course, she was already somewhat knowledgeable, she just didn’t know that this topic could be studied. So, she went for it and is now successful in a field that she truly enjoys.
It also helps her a lot and this type of leadership is something she tried to practice in her everyday life as a professor. Her research has also helped contribute to others’ research who are also focusing on servant leadership.
