Failing Gracefully
Make no mistake about it: If you serve long enough as a university administrator, sooner or later you will fail at something—massively, undeniably, and embarrassingly. Either the result that you intended from an initiative never came close to being achieved, or you’ll have a new supervisor who feels you’ve wasted...
Zen and the Art of Higher Education Administration
One of the best books on how to be an academic leader actually has nothing to do with higher education administration. Daniel Levin’s The Zen Book (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2005) is a combination of introduction to Buddhist practice and guide to daily life. It is also a wonderful summary...
Using Stress to Create Change, Just as Nature Intended
Organizations are often anthropomorphized— attributed with the characteristics of living things. One might describe an organization as strong or weak. Organizations might be said to flourish or wither. They might be said to experience periods of peace or other periods in which they are under attack and in a position...
Bridging the Digital Divide
The following is a conversation between Dr. David Probst, a senior administrator who is trying to encourage his senior staff to integrate technology into the classroom, and Dr. Jesus Fidelio Garza, a young technology coordinator who uses technology daily.
Reading the Boss’ Mind: When Less Really Is Less
“No, that’s still not what I had in mind. You need to do it over again.” If we ever hear those words (or similar ones) coming out of our own mouths, a bright red flag should go up immediately for one of the following two reasons...
Developing a Leadership Philosophy
In the busy, sometimes chaotic world of academic leadership, it’s all too easy to be overwhelmed by the managerial tasks of the position and not give adequate attention to the broader, more important leadership duties. To be an effective leader, it helps to have a set of principles—a leadership philosophy—to...
What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Faculty Buy In’
At a recent meeting with fellow community college administrators, I found myself increasingly bothered by the repeated invocation of a certain term: faculty buy-in. At this particular meeting, the term was included as part of some well-intentioned advice (“If you want this program to succeed at your campus, you absolutely...
Deans’ Interpersonal/Negotiating Skills
The ever-present “revolving door” syndrome, where education deans leave their posts within four to five years, served as the impetus for our research. We wanted to understand what we were doing as veteran deans that enabled us to exhibit a certain degree of resiliency with our job responsibilities. We adapted...
The Two (Organizational) Cultures of the University
In a now legendary lecture at Cambridge’s Senate House in 1959, C.P. Snow coined the expression “the two cultures” as a way of characterizing what he saw as an increasing rift between science and the humanities in modern academic life. Since Snow’s time, we’ve seen even greater isolation of many...
Locating the (Leadership) Land Mines
Beginning a position as an academic leader can be challenging under any circumstances. But those challenges increase exponentially when you’re hired into an institution from the outside. You enter a world where nearly everyone knows more about most local issues than you do. Alliances have already been formed. Coalitions that...
