Handling complaints is one of the defining roles of academic administration. It demands perseverance, good listening skills, tact, and adherence to institutional policies and legal requirements. In an interview…
Academic Leadership
With the spate of books and articles that deal with the issue of incivility in higher education, it’s easy to conclude that destructive disharmony is the single biggest problem…
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Institutions are beginning to create jobs that recognize by name the importance of student engagement in and out of the classroom. These positions are based on the idea that…
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Faculty Hiring: Guidelines for Promoting Diversity
February 28, 2011 Bonnie Snyder
There are many reasons for wishing to increase the diversity of your faculty. They include improving recruitment and retention, raising student engagement, increasing innovation, building stronger communities and helping…
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As an academic leader, each decision you make has the potential to have a lasting impact within your unit and beyond. Competing viewpoints, priorities and strong personalities contribute to…
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In Academic Leadership, Faculty Development
Beware of Faculty Promotion and Tenure Pitfalls
December 14, 2010 Rob Kelly
Controversies surrounding promotion and tenure can lead to legal trouble for departments and institutions. It’s up to academic leaders to guard against possible pitfalls by adopting, disseminating, and implementing…
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As institutions increase their reliance on part-time and non-tenure-track faculty, the issues of equity and instructional quality take on more importance. One way to address these issues is to…
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Dealing with Problem Faculty in Seven Not-So-Easy Steps
November 17, 2010 Mary Bart
Much attention has been given to the “difficult” or “disruptive” student, and rightly so. However, colleges and universities aren’t just institutions of learning, they’re workplaces as well. And like…
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Interviewing Strategies for Hiring New Faculty
October 29, 2010 Mary Clement EdD.
The stakes are high when hiring a new faculty member who can teach, publish, and serve your institution. Since most vitae make the candidates sound wonderful, is there a…
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When Internal Candidates Apply for a Position
October 21, 2010 Jeffrey Buller PhD.
Any process that involves the hiring of a new member of the faculty or staff has to be taken very seriously. Yet when a search involves an incumbent (i.e.,…
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The literature has made us aware of the importance of a student's connection with a faculty member, advisor, or other significant adult and its impact on academic success and…
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Onboarding vs. Orientation: Getting New Leaders on a Path to Success
September 23, 2010 Rob Kelly
The transition to a new academic leadership position is full of complexities, unwritten rules, and new challenges. Whether the new provost, dean, or chair is new to the institution…
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Eight Things Campus Leaders Can Do to Support Academic Departments
September 3, 2010 Doyle D. Carter EdD
As a department head, I initiate or respond to seemingly endless phone calls, emails, and letters to and from almost every corner of the campus, the community, state agencies,…
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Over the past few years, I have realized that most of the preparation for academic leadership is focused on how to effect institutional change and make a positive difference.…
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My responsibilities as associate provost and dean of instruction position me to serve as a sort of academic ombudsman, a person who receives concerns raised by both faculty and…
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When you think about your school’s strategic plan, what words come to mind? Academic exercise? Waste of time? Dust collector? Paper weight?
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Killing Institutional Zombies: Strategies for Effective Leadership
July 23, 2010 Jeffrey Buller PhD.
In popular fiction, zombies are often described as “the undead,” once lifeless bodies that have been reanimated through supernatural forces. Since they are essentially walking corpses, fictional zombies are…
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In the now famous presentation at the 2008 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Long Beach, California, Benjamin Zander, the music director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, spoke of…
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10 Keys to Effectively Handling Campus Complaints and Complainers
June 28, 2010 Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
As the new department chair, you are pleased when a graduate student comes to you to discuss her career. That pleasure fades, however, when you find that the conversation…
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In Academic Leadership, Faculty Development
The Faculty Hiring Process: Steps to Finding the Right Candidate
June 21, 2010 Mary Bart
Finding the right candidate for a faculty position is a critical decision, and selecting the right person can involve a complex search for the perfect combination of qualifications and…
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An increasing part of any academic dean’s week is fielding calls (and sometimes unannounced visits) from concerned parents. These so-called “helicopter parents” are well-known to student life professionals. In…
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Most higher education institutions are not organized to encourage, support, and reward collaboration. Yet, collaboration—across disciplines, functional units, institutions, and organizations—is a highly effective way of dealing with complex…
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Leading During Difficult Times: Improving Morale and Enhancing Communication
April 23, 2010 Jeffrey Buller PhD.
One of the goals of any academic leader is the ability to improve morale. But how do you do that in difficult times? How do you make members of…
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Five Tips for Surviving Accreditation: A Tongue-in-Cheek Reflection
March 22, 2010 Thomas R. McDaniel PhD
Many academic leaders are involved in regional accreditations, and I am no exception. The six regional accrediting agencies are becoming increasingly stringent in the application and interpretation of their…
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As every academic leader can attest, the current generation of college students has been blessed with parents who remain highly invested in every aspect of their children’s education. It…
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A 10-Point Survival Guide to Being, and Staying, an Academic Leader – Part 2
March 4, 2010 Robert Greenstreet PhD.
Editor’s Note: Today we feature part 2 of Dr. Greenstreet’s “10-Point Survival Guide to Being, and Staying, an Academic Leader.” If you missed part 1, please click here for…
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A 10-Point Survival Guide to Being, and Staying, an Academic Leader
March 3, 2010 Robert Greenstreet PhD.
While entering the administrative ranks of academia might seem a formidable task, staying there presents a whole other series of challenges. The average length of stay for a dean,…
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Colleges and universities have realized increasingly that effective teaching by instructors and successful learning by students does not occur through serendipity. Even though more and more graduate programs are…
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In Academic Leadership, Faculty Development
Hiring, Promotion, and Tenure: Understanding and Avoiding the Pitfalls
January 20, 2010 Mary Bart
Hiring, promotion, and tenure activities are full of risk and potential landmines. Poor hiring decisions are not only costly, but the hiring process itself opens the institution up to…
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In Academic Leadership, Faculty Development
Are Senior Faculty Members Still Effective Teachers?
January 15, 2010 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Now that I’m one of those “senior” faculty, I hear a lot of digs about faculty who need to retire … deadwood, still standing but hopefully about to topple.…
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Making the Shift from Rhetoric to Performance
December 10, 2009 Michael Harris PhD and Roxanne Cullen PhD
Discussion of teaching and learning as an academic, scholarly endeavor has become an acceptable conversation on college campuses. A shift is beginning to take place whereby the scholarship of…
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Stress Management Strategies for Academic Leaders and Faculty
November 30, 2009 Mary Bart
During the past year or so the poor economy has forced everyone to do more with less. Now it’s almost December and we’re in the thick of the end-of-semester…
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How to Survive the Next Fad in Academic Leadership
November 11, 2009 Jeffrey Buller PhD.
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…
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Laying a Foundation for Success for New Academic Leaders
November 4, 2009 Mary Bart
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.
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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.
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Three Ways to Reduce Tenure Review Workload
October 16, 2009 Jeffrey Buller PhD.
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…
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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…
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Six Tips for Balancing the Chair’s Role as Teacher, Scholar, and Administrator
September 29, 2009 K. Denise Bane PhD.
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…
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The Evolution of Accountability: Look Who's Accountable Now
September 22, 2009 Thomas R. McDaniel PhD
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…
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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…