A Few Thoughts for the New Chief Academic Officer
After a number of years as CAO of a small southeastern college, I was asked to participate in the Council of Independent Colleges’ workshop for new CAOs. The organizers asked if I would lead group discussions on the theme of “Surviving and Thriving as a New CAO.” I agreed, though...
A Matter of Good Form
That paperless academic environment we’ve been promised for the past few decades never quite seems to arrive. Each year, academic leaders find themselves inundated with more and more forms. Although many of these can now be completed online, a surprising amount of paperwork that has to be completed by hand...
Restructuring Academic Programs into Larger Divisions
Since 2013, economists and financial strategists have insisted that higher education must reduce its costs. In fact, the Moody’s perception of mounting fiscal pressure on all key university revenue sources led to the 2013 downgrade of the credit rating for the entire sector (Moody’s, 2013). But even before the 2008-09...
Filling an Empty Toolbox
The convention in many video games is for the players to begin with only a few rudimentary tools or weapons and then increase their arsenal as they complete more complex challenges. Administrative positions are amazingly similar. Most of us start out with few, if any, tools in our leadership toolboxes...
Approaches to Building and Sustaining a Diverse Adjunct Workforce
With nontenure-track faculty now comprising 70 percent of the faculty workforce, academic leaders face daunting challenges in creating proactive workplace strategies that address this new reality. Even though more than a quarter of nontenure-track faculty are now in full-time nontenure-track appointments, the majority still teach part time. Despite the urgency...
Surviving a Leadership Transition
Leadership changes in the upper administration can be stressful for chairs and deans. We’ve all seen situations in which a new chancellor or president arrives, and between six months and a year later, there’s an entirely new team of vice presidents. Sometimes entire divisions are reorganized. Offices are moved from...
Peacemaking 101
You are the chair of a department of six full-time faculty members. You have been chair for three years, are tenured, and hold the rank of full professor. Four of your faculty members are tenured, three hold the rank of associate professor, and one, Dr. Bill Dudas, is a full...
How to Lead Assessment in Your Unit
Being in charge of assessment within one’s unit involves more than measuring student learning outcomes. It’s about leading cultural change, a process that is best undertaken in collaboration with those who know the discipline, program, and students best—the faculty and staff. In an interview with Academic Leader, Linda Neavel Dickens,...
Preparing Academic Leaders Through Simulation and Role-Play
When it comes to how we interact with our students, most of us have made the transition from teaching to learning. We understand that, in order for students to master a subject, they can’t be spectators; they have to engage actively and consistently in the learning process. Even when we...
Five Newbie Mistakes Made by Academic Leaders
The first six months (or even year) of a position is often called an academic leader’s “honeymoon period.” People are more likely to overlook an administrator’s mistakes and to cut the person a little bit of slack about taking the institution or program in a new direction. That’s a good...
