4 Principles to Manage a Variety of Administrative Issues
In his role as vice president of learning and student success at John Tyler Community College, Bill Fiege faces a wide variety of issues—dealing with student concerns, allocating resources, and managing change. All issues have the potential for more significant conflict, and one of his goals is to address issues...
Preparing Future Academic Leaders in Graduate School
Doctoral students typically do not receive preparation for future academic leadership roles, a shortcoming of graduate education that Rutgers University’s PreDoctoral Leadership Development Institute (PLDI) is seeking to fix. In an interview with Academic Leader, Brent Ruben, PLDI director and executive director of the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership,...
The Wrong Way to Talk about Higher Ed
Picture a day when you’ve gathered your faculty together to have a substantive conversation about some pressing issue facing the institution. You explain the situation using terms such as revenue, the business of education, efficiencies, degree production, throughput, and the like. This may seem sensible given that, in part, universities function like businesses. As with...
How to Have a Difficult Conversation: 7 Rules
Difficult conversations are inevitable in any organization. Understanding how they arise and how they play out can help minimize the disruption without avoiding the issue or alienating those involved. The way an academic leader handles a difficult conversation can have a major effect on how the issue gets resolved. In...
How to Create a Successful TA Program in 5 Steps
A teaching assistantship program is a critical part of most graduate degree programs. Assistantships attract students and provide them with valuable experience, generate funding, and allow units to meet the demand for their courses. However, most students given assistantships have little or no formal teacher training. Any academic program relying...
Best Practices in Preparing Academic Leaders
It's increasingly common for colleges and universities to offer programs designed to help chairs, deans, and other academic leaders become more effective. Sometimes falling under a center for teaching and learning, at other times existing as an independent office for leadership and professional development, these programs reflect the recognition that...
Three Things You Need as a New Dean
Set yourself on the path to academic leadership success with three things you need to equip yourself with in your first days as the new dean.
Take a Vacation – Please! Maintaining Work-Life Balance
Although workshops on academic leadership frequently devote sessions to the topic of “work-life balance,” that phrase is really misleading. It seems to imply that we’re either working or living but never doing both at the same time.
Proven Tools for Academic Leaders to Successfully Lead Change
Department chairs and deans find that campuswide and unit strategic plans expect them to be change leaders. Add on the complexity of engaging in processes that involve politics, negotiation, persuasion, and inspiration, and change leadership can seem overwhelming.
Five Recommendations to Advance Careers in Enrollment and Retention Management
Whether you are an entry-level admission officer or an assistant or associate enrollment manager, you will, at some point in your career, desire to move to the next professional level, either at your current school or at another college or university. These five recommendations may help you make a successful...
