Current Challenges in Higher Education Leadership
The start of a new year seems like a good time to scan the higher education landscape and identify a few of the issues that academic leaders will need to deal with in the months ahead. To be sure, all of us will have our own set of issues at...
Making Progress in Challenging Fiscal Times
There is something uncomfortable about bringing the topic of money into a conversation about how to best serve our college and university students while preserving the values, integrity, and relevance of our higher education institutions. However, there is virtually nothing we do in the realm of education that does not...
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...
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,...
Vision Statements as Empowerment Tools
Do the words “vision statement” make you wince? Us too! They make all of us wince when they are developed “on high” and “checked off” the to-do list without another thought. But . . . and it seems that in higher education there is always a “but” . . .
5 Qualities of Successful Change Efforts
Because circumstances vary among disciplines, departments, and institutions, there is no formula for bringing about change, says Jill Perry, program director of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate at Duquesne University School of Education. However, she has observed that successful change efforts share the following characteristics: Collaborative decision making. Decide...
“Spider-Man Principle” and the “Categorical Imperative”: How to Address the Problem of “Managing Through”
"Managing through" is the administrative practice of passing difficult decisions on to a higher level of the organization in order to avoid the consequences of having made an unpopular choice. For instance, a department chair may receive a request from a faculty member that the institutional cap on travel funding...
