Overview:

This project is sponsored by The Foundation of Coaching and their Research Division.

This project addresses the building of an academic discipline for organizational and executive coaching by identifying a shared body of knowledge within the community. More than a dozen academic institutions have formed and joined the Graduate School Alliance for Executive Coaching (GSAEC). GSAEC has proposed definitions and a draft guidelines document for graduate education and practice of coaching. In a pilot study within the United States, 123 academic institutions that provide graduate coaching programs were identified.

This project identifies additional academic institutions within the United States, as well as in Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, and New Zealand, and disseminates the draft document to those institutions for review, feedback and participation in the development of agreed-upon standards for graduate education in executive coaching. Specifically, the project (a) identifies and adds additional institutions; (b) offers a web-based production-level hosting service that permits representatives of academic institutions to present information about their coaching programs; and (c) gathers feedback from these institutions to build consensus toward academic coaching guidelines. Results will be made available without restrictions to identified institutions in order to gain continuous feedback and consensus on the resulting standards for graduate academic education. These on-line resources will help in the ongoing development of graduate programs in coaching, students to find programs best suited to their needs, and possible future accreditation of graduate education in academic institutions.