Seven Big Ideas for Academic Leaders: How You Lead Matters!
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on May 2, 2018 © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. During my time as a dean, I’ve learned a lot about budgets, fundraising, strategy, recruitment, retention, and personnel matters, but I’ve also discovered seven big ideas about how my outlook and approach influence my leadership....
Mind Your Ps and Qs: A Guide for New Administrators
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on August 1, 2019 © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. Have you ever been told to mind your Ps and Qs? The expression is often used to admonish children to be on their best behavior, to be polite. Thus, some say the P stands for...
Becoming a Mindful Leader
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on April 30, 2015 © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. We live in a world of distraction. Technology bombards us with new information every second of the day, making it hard to focus on any one thing. Yet one of the most critical leadership skills...
Interim Administrative Appointments in Higher Education: Considerations for Potential Applicants
In a recent article, we delineated several institutional motivations for and benefits of interim administrative appointments. Initially, the appointing administrator elects to immediately launch a full search or to make an internal (or even external) interim appointment. Relevant considerations might include the costs of a search, including adding a new...
Academic Administrative Teams: Forming, Sustaining, and Changing
Most academic leaders will serve more than one institution across their careers. In fact, it will be rare that many do not work for at least four or five institutions. If one must create and then recreate an academic team in different institutional circumstances and under differing scenarios of succeeding...
Stepping Out of Silos: Building Best Practices for Academic Affairs and Institutional Effectiveness
Academic Affairs and Institutional Effectiveness are two of the most important units within any higher education entity and are necessary to ensure an institution is focused on accomplishing the mission. Academic Affairs is familiar to those who have functioned in the college environment. Traditionally, Academic Affairs is the division known...
Establishing and Supporting a Faculty Mentoring Program
For many new hires, tenure-track or not, there isn’t a road map for navigating that challenging first year of teaching. A faculty mentor program can help ensure every new hire has a guide, friend, confidante, and role model. The end result of such a program should be a more confident...
Creating a Strong Chair-Dean Partnership: What Chairs Can Do from Their End (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this two-part series on strengthening the relationship between chairs and deans, we discussed prioritizing student success and satisfaction, capitalizing on the institution’s greatest investment—the faculty— and developing a vision that goes beyond departmental considerations. Here we will continue with three additional points detailing what a chair...
Creating a Strong Chair-Dean Partnership: What Chairs Can Do from Their End (Part 1)
In viewing the organizational structure of our colleges and universities, there is a common hierarchy of faculty, chairs, deans, and higher administration that includes a president or campus leader and may include a provost or the equivalent. Much has been written about the interaction of chairs with their faculty. Inherent...
Auditing Diversity: Academic Leadership’s Instrumental Role
In an era of rapid demographic change in the U.S. population coupled with declining demand for higher education, many colleges and universities are grappling with the urgent need to attract and retain diverse student, faculty, and staff populations and provide an inclusive learning, living, and working environment on campus. Such...
