Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

It’s been said that no one dreams of someday becoming an academic administrator. It’s a tough job that’s only gotten more challenging as budgets shrink, public scrutiny rises, and responsibilities continue to grow. It requires a unique skill set – part field general, part mediator, part visionary, and part circus barker – to name just a few. But what does it really take to be an effective leader?

Featuring 13 articles from Academic Leader this special report seeks to provide answers to your biggest leadership questions give guidance to anyone in a campus leadership role.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

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Whether you’re an experienced administrator, or just starting out, this report will give you an inside look at what it takes to succeed.

For example, in the article “Leadership and Management: Complementary Skill Sets,” Donna Goss and Don Robertson, explain the differences between management and leadership, and share their thoughts on how to develop leadership skills in yourself and others.

In “Zen and the Art of Higher Education Administration,” author Jeffrey L. Buller shows how the Buddhist practice features many principles for daily life that could benefit academic leaders. Such advice includes “Walk gently, leaving tracks only where they can make a difference.”

In “Techniques of Leadership,” authors Isa Kaftal Zimmerman and Joan Thormann outline specific leadership skills for effectively running meetings, building consensus, and communicating across the institution.

The article “A Formal Approach to Facilitating Change” explains how Northwestern University’s Office of Change Management is structured as well as its operating principles for effectively managing change at the university. The key is to articulate how a change can benefit those directly affected and others not directly affected, to be accountable, and to provide clear criteria for measuring success.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

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Other articles in Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges include:

• Factors That Affect Department Chairs’ Performance
• Changing Roles for Chairs
• Becoming a More Mindful Leader
• Creating a Culture of Leadership
• There’s More to Leadership than Motivation and Ability
• 10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
• Hope-Centered Leadership in Practice

Academic leadership roles are changing constantly. This free report will help you be a more effective leader during these challenging times.

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Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material on all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with strategies, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school, and your work, including:

• Instructional Design
• Faculty Development
• Teaching Strategies
• Distance Learning
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Faculty Evaluation
• Learning Styles
• Curriculum Development
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

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The resources devoted to a center for teaching and learning can help excellent professors become even more effective in the classroom, bring improvement to instructors who face challenges in their teaching duties, assist graduate students with learning how to become effective teachers before they ever enter a classroom, and provide all students with improved strategies for college-level learning.

Despite these successes—or perhaps because of them—it has become ever more apparent that teaching and research are not the only responsibilities in which faculty members engage and for which they need training in how to be more effective.

College professors serve on committees, eventually are asked to chair these bodies, act collectively in faculty assemblies and senates, initiate course proposals and curricular reforms, and challenge policies that are no longer useful or productive. They may go on to become department chairs, division coordinators, program heads, deans, provosts, or even presidents. They are expected to demonstrate leadership in their courses and in their service responsibilities, manage resources responsibly, and supervise student workers or members of the staff.

If many faculty members still receive little formal training in how to teach, most still have almost no access to formal programs in how to lead, even though shared governance requires many members of the faculty to assume leadership roles. For this reason, the time has come for colleges and universities to consider a corollary to their centers for excellence in teaching and learning, the Center for Professional Development and Leadership, which can provide formal training for members of the institution who seek or are asked to accept positions of responsibility over others.

A fully developed center for professional development and training would provide opportunities for:

• undergraduate students to learn parliamentary procedure, budget planning, and other skills they will need in order to be effective leaders in student government, campus organizations, and life after graduation;
• graduate students to learn successful strategies in leadership that will prepare them for their roles as faculty members, lawyers, physicians, managers, and other positions for which they are preparing;
• faculty members to learn effective ways of conducting meetings, developing new initiatives, preparing for an administrative position, supervising others, resolving conflict, and developing their own career plans;
• department chairs and deans to learn best practices in conducting performance evaluations, planning and supervising budgets, developing good morale within their units, moving an area forward, solving personnel problems, and meeting the many other challenges that arise when one is in an administrative position; and
• provosts, other vice presidents, and the president or chancellor to learn advanced approaches to strategic planning, securing additional resources, dealing with the media, developing a vision, promoting diversity, and dealing with the stress that arises from leadership positions.

An effective center for professional development and training should offer workshops and Web courses for those who wish to develop their leadership skills, individual consultations for those who are experiencing specific challenges, remediation when a supervisor has received evaluations indicating that improvements are necessary, and a highly visible proof of an institution’s commitment to visionary leadership and the best principles of management.

Jeffrey L. Buller is dean of the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of The Essential Department Chair: A Practical Guide to College Administration (2006), The Essential Academic Dean: A Practical Guide to College Leadership (2007), and The Essential College Professor: A Practical Guide to an Academic Career (forthcoming). (All are published by Jossey-Bass.)

Excerpted from Academic Leader, July 2008.

While this is encouraging, it is crucial to acknowledge that most of the effort and literature on the learner-centered paradigm and the scholarship of teaching have necessarily focused on strategies for faculty. It is equally important for administrators to consider the impact of the paradigm shift on their roles. Specifically, the Futures Project called for institutions to meet the changes and challenge for survival by investing more in leadership. They note that “higher education is one of the few sectors of society that does not focus on a constant effort to find and develop leaders.” (Newman, Courtier, & Scurry, p. 199)

Research on leadership is closely aligned with the research on learning, and this suggests that professional development of administrators should focus on the key attributes of both. To take a term from learning theory research, we need to look for deep learning among our administrators, to be assured that they are truly prepared for the challenges involved in completing this paradigm shift. In 2007, the report from the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) called for principled and determined leadership if we are to achieve excellence in the American education system. (Crutcher, O’Brien, Corrigan, & Schneider, p. 47)

Essentially the LEAP National Leadership Council is calling for a shift to a learner-centered curriculum, one that emphasizes active learning and deep learning through collaboration, first-year seminars, learning communities, undergraduate research, writing-intensive courses, service learning, internships, etc. (pp. 53–54) These practices must be supported and assessed within the learner-centered framework or we run the risk of simply creating a storefront that appears to be learner-centered but is shallow and superficial, one that is the old paradigm with new window dressing.

Leaders must do more than simply say that the institution’s goal is to become learning-centered. For those still immersed in the teaching paradigm as opposed to the learning paradigm, this pronouncement simply means that the institution will focus on teaching or educating students with no deep understanding of what the difference is between teaching and learning and no substantial change in current practice. As stated in the Futures Project report, “If an institution is to change and become learning-centered, tinkering at the edges won’t do it. Several basic shifts in the organizational culture are essential.” (Newman, Courtier & Scurry 2004, 141) These shifts include moving from rhetoric to performance, moving from denial to acceptance of responsibility, and moving from a focus on prestige to a focus on learning.

The call to shift from rhetoric to performance is fundamental to realizing a true transformation. Countless institutions currently employ the rhetoric of the new paradigm in their mission statements, yet very few, if any, institutions can verify that performance has changed. A review of several institutions’ mission statements and the individual mission statements of their colleges revealed an inconsistency of purpose. One university that espoused the goal of becoming learning-centered displayed college mission statements that were quite the contrary. The College of Education at this institution used the phrase “deliver high quality instruction” in its mission, and the College of Arts and Sciences at the same institution used the phrase “receive instruction from professional faculty.” This inconsistency in language suggests an inconsistency of purpose.

Administrators must have a deep understanding of and commitment to the challenge in order to adequately support and guide faculty initiatives. Deep learning is active by nature; it requires searching and assimilating new knowledge into old frameworks and making connections. It is best achieved through community, through the interaction of peers thinking about thinking. This should be our guide for leadership training: developing communities of inquiry in order to fully understand the learner-centered paradigm, and work collaboratively, not just among administrators, but with faculty and policy makers to discover the implications of this shift for higher education. It is for that reason that professional development and leadership training are keys to the success of the transition of higher education to a new paradigm.

References
Crutcher, R., O’Brien, P., Corrigan, R. & Schneider, C. (2007) College Learning for the New Global Century: A Report from the National Leadership Council for Liberal Education & America’s Promise. Washington, D.C.: AASCU.

Newman, F., Courtier, L. & Scurry, J. (2004) The Future of Higher Education: Rhetoric, Reality and the Risks of the Market. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Michael Harris is provost and vice president for academic affairs at Kettering University, and Roxanne Cullen is a professor of English at Ferris State University.

Excerpted from Investing in Leadership, Academic Leader, September 2007.

Actually, there is a better way. It’s a much longer, more structured process that goes well beyond the type of orientation academic leaders typically receive when they step foot onto a new campus, or get promoted to a new leadership position. It’s called onboarding and while it got its start in the corporate world, some universities have started to adapt its principles to the higher education community.

In the recent online seminar A Good Start: Institutional Support for New Academic Leaders, Anne Massaro, project manager and organizational design consultant to The Ohio State University, outlined the key distinctions between orientation and onboarding, and explained how Ohio State has structured its onboarding program.

For example, while orientation is about learning the written rules, onboarding is about learning the written and unwritten rules that make up the campus culture. Also, while orientation is a one-time event, onboarding is a process that could last from one month to one year depending on the person’s leadership position, and includes a variety of formal and informal learning opportunities.

Ohio State provides onboarding for provosts and vice presidents, and plans to launch a program for department chairs soon. For the senior executives, it’s a 12-month process where each new leader works with a “transition coach” to build relationships, understand culture, and achieve results at individual, unit, and institutional levels.

Massaro notes that the transition coach is a critical resource because new leaders need “a safe place where they can go and reflect on what they need to do in order to be an effective leader, and have an open dialogue about what they’re learning and what their plans are.”

The onboarding process also ensures the new leader receives regular feedback regarding how well he or she is performing on the established objectives – at the two-month mark from the person’s hiring manager, and anonymously at the six-month mark from the person’s direct reports.

Massaro says the benefits of onboarding include it:

• Minimizes the possibility of derailment;
• Accelerates performance results;
• Facilitates smoother integration experience; and
• Ensures the new leader understands the organizational norms and performance expectations; integrates into the new university; and is highly productive and engaged.

How did I do it all? I’d like to say that I have learned the secret to balancing the teacher, scholar, and administrator roles of my position. I’d like to say that, but it simply is not true. I found, in this first year, that I spent almost all of my time on the “administrator” role. Teaching and scholarship came in a very distant second and third.
Here are a few things I wish I had done and what I plan to do in the future.

1. Just say “no” – Easier than it sounds, especially when the person asking is a dean, vice president, or president, but sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself and your division is to say “no” to new commitments so that you can focus on the ones you have already made.

2. Top five – I have learned that I tend to work better when I have a “to do” list; however, I never get through all the items on the list because of meetings, classes, interruptions, and so on. So I have started creating a list of the five most important things that I want to accomplish each day. I feel a much greater sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, and it forces me to prioritize.

3. Delegate – Being division chair does not mean that you have to do everything yourself. This is a particularly hard lesson to learn for those of us who are perfectionists and control freaks! What can you ask others to do? In our division, each discipline has a coordinator. I have asked my secretary to reroute all discipline-specific issues to the appropriate coordinator. This frees me up to deal with those issues that truly affect the entire division. Along these same lines, the chair does not have to be the division representative at every meeting. Ask for volunteers among your division colleagues.

4. Schedule time for scholarship – This is one of those tips that I plan to start implementing next year. I am going to schedule time to write and conduct research. I will actually schedule this time in Outlook. The “trick” is to keep the commitment to myself the same way I would keep it to others. That means that if I say that I will devote 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. each day to scholarship, I need to hold that time sacred. If someone asks to meet during that time, I can say I already have an appointment (rather than “that’s my writing time”). I know that the only way this will work will be to spend this time outside my office, not in it.

5. Revise your teaching – This will be another challenge for me. I simply do not have the same amount of time to devote to my classes that I had in the past. So how can I maintain my integrity in the classroom while maintaining my sanity? First, I will take a course release rather than a course overload as compensation for my work as chair. More money is not as valuable as more time. I will examine the assignments I require so that students are getting the same quality of education but are not generating the same quantity of assignments to be graded. I will consider group projects, oral presentations, and different exam formats. I will try not to schedule brand-new preps for the spring semester, so that I have the summer to prepare for new material.

6. Schedule “artist’s dates” – This idea comes from The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, one of the oft-cited self-help gurus. It truly is important to schedule time for yourself, by yourself, each week. She calls this spending time with your inner “artist.” Visit a museum, go for a walk in the park, take a drawing class, practice the violin—it doesn’t matter. Just do something that takes you away from your work and is focused entirely on you. Research on both stress management and creativity suggest that this time away from work can bring positive results including stress reduction, increased creativity, and increased productivity when you do return to work.

Excerpted from The Balancing Act: Managing the Chair’s Role as Teacher, Scholar, and Administrator, Academic Leader, July 2007.

“I had been teaching for 21 or 22 years and had sworn never to get into administration. The history program chair wasn’t doing such a good job, so the dean said, ‘Monte, why don’t you do it?’ I said, ‘Fine, I’ll try it out for a while. It will give me something to else to do’ because I was kind of getting bored with the classroom,” Finkelstein says.

Soon after, the division dean unexpectedly announced his retirement, and Finkelstein made an uncharacteristic spur-of-the-moment decision to apply for the position. Looking back, his career to that point had prepared him somewhat for the challenges he faced; as program chair he worked with adjunct faculty members and often dealt with student issues. He also served as faculty senate chair, which enabled him to see the big picture beyond the history program.

Some things he was not prepared for, such as the change in the way that others viewed him. “When I opened my mouth as dean for the first time, it was like that E.F. Hutton commercial—everybody all of a sudden started looking at me as if anything I said was the gospel. I think that was the biggest challenge for me. People were looking to me for leadership, and it continues. I sit on a bunch of study groups, and the tendency is for others to look at me and listen to me closely,” Finkelstein says.

Another difficult issue has been managing the changing relationships with long-time colleagues. One of the advantages of moving from faculty member to dean is that Finkelstein knows everybody and the specific challenges that faculty members face on campus. On the other hand, some of the people he’s now leading were long-time friends and colleagues, even a former roommate.

Finkelstein offers the following advice for faculty members making the transition to administration.

• Understand why you want to do it. Finkelstein took an administrative position because he wanted a new challenge. “I’ve heard others say that they got into administration because of the money. It’s not worth it because it can be a real headache. It can exhaust you,” Finkelstein says.
• Understand your new role. There are different levels of deans, and the roles vary among institutions. It’s important to understand what the position entails and how it will change your daily activities. The transition from faculty member to administrator entails a shift in perspective, autonomy, and recognition.
• Give yourself time to learn the job, and monitor your progress and satisfaction. When Finkelstein took the job in 2004, he decided to allow three years to learn the job and another two years to determine if he was doing an effective job and felt comfortable with it. He constantly asks, “Am I making progress?” “Do I feel better?” “Am I growing into my skin, or do I hate coming to work every morning?” “When the day comes where I say, I’m not satisfied anymore, I’ll walk away and probably go back to the classroom,” Finkelstein says.

Excerpted from The Transition from Faculty to Administrator, Academic Leader, December 2006.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

Inadequate preparation, unrealistic expectations, and increased workload can create undue stress on faculty members making the transition to department chair or other levels of administration. All too often new administrators are left to fend for themselves when it comes to discovering and developing the skills they need to succeed in their new position.

Making the leap from faculty to administration will never be easy, but this report will help new administrators navigate the potential minefields and find their voice when it comes to leading effectively.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

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Remember how you felt during your first semester of teaching? Excited? Nervous? A little over-whelmed? At times you even might have wondered how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.

Now you’re a seasoned educator making the move from faculty to administration. And guess what? You’re excited, nervous, and a little overwhelmed. And, once again, you wonder how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator will get you on the right track for long-term success.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

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Here are some of the articles you will find in Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator:

• Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration
• It Seems Like Only Yesterday … The Challenges Face by Recently Appointed Administrators
• Translating Teaching Skills to Leadership Roles
• The First 1,000 Steps: Walking the Road from Academic to Administrator
• Why New Department Chairs Need Coaching
• 10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
• A Practitioner Model for Ethical Leadership
• Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration

This report will help new administrators find their way, while shedding new light on leadership styles, myths and responsibilities. It also may remind experienced leaders what it was like that first year in hopes that they might reach out to help make someone else’s transition a little easier.

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Faculty Focus is packed with innovative ideas, best practices, and other information you can use right away on the topics that impact your students, your school and your work, including:

• Teaching and Learning
• Instructional Design
• Faculty Development
• Distance Learning
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Teaching Strategies
• Faculty Evaluation
• Learning Styles
• Curriculum Development
• Community College Issues
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator is the perfect example of the free, high-value we offer on Faculty Focus.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

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