Academic Leadership

How to Survive the Next Fad in Academic Leadership

If you’ve worked in higher education long enough, you’ve already had this experience. A supervisor or member of your institution’s governing board calls an administrative retreat, and there, following the inevitable icebreakers, brainstorming, and team-building exercises, you are presented with the “bold new paradigm” that is to determine how you are to reorganize your unit, “reconceptualize” your leadership style, or modify every policy and procedure that is already in place. Someone, it seems, has been reading a management book and has bought into a new approach to how you should do your job.

Jeffrey Buller PhD. November 11, 2009

Laying a Foundation for Success for New Academic Leaders

There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned all-day orientation program to get new academic leaders acclimated and ready to tackle the challenges of their new positions, right? Wrong.

Mary Bart November 4, 2009

Five Ways to Ease the Transition for a New Chair

Given the rate of department chair turnover and the skills and knowledge required to do the job well, it makes sense to consider ways to smooth the transition.

Rob Kelly October 26, 2009

Three Ways to Reduce Tenure Review Workload

Administrators can help inspire much-needed reform of the tenure and promotion processes at their institutions if they begin discussions of reducing the workload of both candidates and committees in the following three ways.

Jeffrey Buller PhD. October 16, 2009

Proof a Shared Leadership Model Can Work

For six years, Cecilia McInnis-Bowers and E. Byron Chew served as dean-partners for the division of business and graduate programs at Birmingham-Southern College, taking shared leadership beyond a simple division of labor by working together on every decision, jointly advising students, and conducting each meeting and telephone call together.

Rob Kelly October 13, 2009

Six Tips for Balancing the Chair’s Role as Teacher, Scholar, and Administrator

To say that my first year as division chair was a “learning experience” filled with “teaching moments” is an understatement. I had no idea what I was getting myself into! In addition to the normal duties of chair, my division was moving to a new building, the college was working on its accreditation self-study, we began collective bargaining, we added two new members to the division, we conducted a search for an additional new member, and I taught a fully online course for the first time.

K. Denise Bane PhD. September 29, 2009

The Evolution of Accountability: Look Who's Accountable Now

We hear a great deal these days about “accountability” in the academy. Many states (including South Carolina, where I try my best to be a “responsible” college administrator) have some kind of state law mandating that public schools—and, in some cases, colleges—demonstrate that they are indeed “accountable.”

Thomas R. McDaniel PhD September 22, 2009

Tips for Implementing Your Strategic Plan

When John Pyle was vice president at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, one of his goals was to focus the campus’s energy on implementing the operational plan. “There was a lot of energy once the strategic plan was developed, but we kind of lost steam in implementing the operational plan,” he says.

Rob Kelly September 8, 2009

The Department Chair’s Role in Dealing with Disruptive Students

Most professors will have to deal with classroom disruptions at some point, from the relatively minor—students who show up for class late or who talk excessively—to the more serious—disrespectful, uncivil, or threatening student behavior. It’s the role of the department chair to create a culture that helps prevent and deal with disruptive behavior effectively.

Rob Kelly August 4, 2009

Academic Leadership Advice: Slow Down

While I am far from a computer guru, I know the great value of technology and have become addicted to email. I am not sure how many hundred email messages I get each week, but my OCD tendencies lead me to an irresistible desire to check and respond to my messages many times a day. Such a compulsion is, I fear, only one symptom of my personal infomania and rushaholism. And I know I am not alone.

Thomas R. McDaniel PhD July 30, 2009

Academic Leadership

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