To address the competition for students, the demand for increasing student enrollments and the pressure for student satisfaction, teaching effectiveness has become an increasingly common discussion on university campuses. The competition for students among universities requires a new approach to teaching. As university campuses continue to compete for students, servant leadership could be the key to both attracting and retaining students for the entirety of their university tenure. This non-experimental, correlational, and comparative quantitative study investigated the relationship between the level of perceived servant leadership and effective teaching and examined the effect of years of teaching experience, age, and gender on the level of perceived servant leadership. The Teacher Leadership Assessment instrument was distributed to 325 instructors who teach in four university educational centers in Texas. Participants completed and returned 68 surveys, representing a 21% return rate. Nonparametric statistical tests called Spearman rank correlation coefficients, Kruskal Wallis, and Mann-Whitney tests were used to analyze the data. The Spearman rank correlation for servant leadership scores and effective teaching was not statistically significant, rs = 0.14, p = 253. The finding was inconsistent with the literature on servant leadership which suggested that servant leadership behaviors in the classroom result in higher levels of student satisfaction. Through a Kruskal-Wallis test, results showed no statistically significant difference in the level of servant leadership in terms of years of teaching experience (p = 0.823) or age of the instructor ( p = 0.102). Through a Mann-Whitney test, it was determined that males and females did not differ in terms of servant leadership (p = 0.457). The results from the study added to the limited literature on servant leadership in the educational setting. Recommendations for future research include conducting the study within different educational settings, such as public and for profit universities, in order to provide additional information on how servant leadership affects teaching in varied environments. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]