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Keys to Cultivating Emotional Intelligence as a Department Chair Part One: Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

by Peter Anderson, Ph.D., ACC

Academia’s leadership challenge is that almost none of us have been trained to manage people, much less other academics; almost none of us have significant, sustained leadership development opportunities; most academic chairs are happy to step back into faculty roles. Emotional Intelligence can help us be more effective and resilient, as leaders and as members of the department team. This article is the first in a series. Here at the outset, I’d like to define awareness (as a foundation for emotional intelligence) and then share a three-stage awareness-building exercise that-while it does entail considerable reflection and emotional work-can be done quickly, even amid all the pressures of a department chair’s week. When I’ve worked through this exercise with other chairs, it has helped develop self-awareness and awareness-of-others. Later, in the articles that follow, I’ll share further ideas and exercises that are intended to help chairs (and other academic leaders) to develop strategies for navigating the workplace in what is hopefully a healthier way-and to build greater resilience over time. “I’m aware of that…” I am a philologist. I say this without too much self-deprecation or, to be truthful, apology, but it is relevant here because – like all of our […]

Distributed Leadership as a Sustainable and Inclusive Leadership Approach

by Vickie S. Cook, Ph.D.

Introduction Distributed leadership is best defined as participatory leadership across an organization. In an organization which practices distributed leadership, both the responsibility and the accountability of leadership is embraced and shared by those who have the expertise and skills to move the institution forward. This is accomplished not singularly as a positional leader, but through a team of accountable leaders. The membership on the leader-team may change as others who hold the expertise needed to address specific situations occur. While it is unlikely that everyone will embrace the practice of distributed leadership, this should not impede the effort of leader-teams to introduce the practice into their institutions. What is distributed leadership and why is it effective? Distributed leadership is providing a culture in which leader-teams can generate solutions and initiatives that will be used to improve the organization and position it for future success. Effective educational leadership today depends upon the ability to lead change effectively and build trust to transform higher education organizations. Leader-teams who invest in building distributed leadership skills, practice development of buy-in with constituents across the organization and find inclusive approaches to working with a wide variety of individual will be rewarded by the outcomes. Distributed […]

A Year in Crisis: Lessons in Communication Learned as a Department Chair

by Brian Shook

Introduction We have just passed the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this experience may have provided opportunities for us to learn and grow, it has also taught us there are critical elements of our life and work where no substitute is sufficient. One of these elements is communication. The extreme safety measures of social distancing, lockdowns, quarantines, remote teaching, and working from home have made communicating with one another increasingly difficult and acutely essential. Let’s not forget, though, there has always been a need for academic leaders to improve communication-many of us have even read books and attended workshops dedicated to this topic. However, the current pandemic has magnified potential weak spots in our communication, providing the opportunity to develop new habits that will benefit those we lead. Allow me to share with you some lessons I have learned recently-some more painful than others-and how they can be applied right now, as well as in a post-pandemic world. Knowing Your Responsibilities Makes You a Better Communicator Being a department chair is the toughest job on campus, and the job does not get any easier during a pandemic. Students, faculty, and staff look to us for magical answers to […]

Persistent Tension in Academic Leadership and How to Make it Productive

by Melissa Padfield, Norma Rodenburg

Leadership is hard Let’s face it, leadership is hard and exhausting. Leadership was hard before the Covid-19 pandemic, and the additional complexities that leaders have been facing over the past year have been significant. Leaders at all levels are increasingly finding themselves making more decisions more quickly, with more significance, and with less information. The risks we are managing have increased. Our teams are looking to us for vision and guidance while we manage all of this new complexity and challenge. And we are doing all of this while working at our kitchen tables and in virtual meetings. We have had to acquire a whole new set of skills to lead in a remote or hybrid environment literally overnight. Leading teams and managing ourselves during these conditions is not for the faint hearted and it necessitates that we build our toolkit to tackle leadership in new ways. Now we are starting to look to the future with hope and optimism, knowing that some things will never return to the way they were before the pandemic. They can’t, and in many ways, they shouldn’t. Acknowledging and validating that the work of leading is hard right now (and really always was) is […]

The Power of A Coaching Mindset and Its Impact on Leadership in Higher Ed

by Dr. Jianping Wang

Coaching and leadership have not always been discussed together. For many leaders, coaching is somewhat of a mystery. I would like to share my journey of discovering coaching as a powerful leadership development tool that has transformed the way I lead, and how I was motivated to become a leadership coach. I will try to demystify coaching by explaining and illustrating its process. Receiving coaching is a way to unleash your leadership potential and become an inspirational leader for your college or university. Adopting the leadership coaching mindset has positively impacted my college’s organizational performance. Moving away from ‘fixing the problem’ mindset” Leadership is important. Leadership development is even more important today, because as organizations we lead face tremendous challenges. Many leaders, including myself, are likely to admit that the formal education we received does not adequately prepare us for the challenges awaiting us. More and more of us crave “on the job help” to do our jobs well. Over the years, I have been helped and have helped others. However, I feel that our leadership mindset is still on “fixing problems.” Such an approach makes organizations highly dependent on their leaders to do the “fixing.” Consequently, leaders are weighed […]

University Comprehensive Naming Reviews

by Kathleen Diemer

During the last decade, a few high-profile donor stories throughout the country have heightened public awareness of university namings. In response, “reputational risk” or “morality” clauses started popping up more frequently in university gift agreements. These clauses generally stipulate that an institution can remove a naming should the institution’s association with the name prove problematic in the future. The hope was that these clauses would allow institutions to disassociate themselves with the names of those who might become mired in scandal or criminal activity at some point in the future. But times are changing, and our institutions have been forced to consider how those changes impact the expectations of our internal and external community. Higher education institutions were forced to alter just about everything in response to the Covid pandemic. Seemingly overnight, classes moved to virtual formats, faculty and staff switched to remote work, buildings locked down, and in-person activities ceased. At the same time, our nation’s calls for justice and equality left many wondering if it was time for some of the names at our universities to go. Although our campuses sat empty, the names associated with our institutions became much more significant. The pandemic required swift work and […]

Integrating Internationalization Strategies and DEI Initiatives at US Universities: What’s to be Gained?

by Dr. Ashley Green

Introduction Until recently at many US universities, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and internationalization programs were considered to be separate undertakings responding to different university goals. Today collaboration between the two is still the exception to the rule. This article makes a case for more and stronger collaboration between DEI and internationalization by considering what can be gained by bringing them closer together. It provides examples of such initiatives drawn from the experiences of Michigan State University. There are compelling reasons to explore the nexus between these two efforts. As state governments have withdrawn significant funding from institutions of higher education over the past decades, universities have become much more dependent on international and out-of-state tuition. Prior to COVID-19, which brought about large drops in enrollment of international and in some places, domestic out-of-state students, the US was already falling behind in its recruitment and retention of international students and faculty. There is reason to be optimistic that this trend can be reversed, but for this to occur new DEI-inspired strategies aimed at creating a more welcoming, equitable and inclusive climate will be required. Background Traditionally, DEI initiatives responded to urgent domestic needs to address racism and sexism on campus […]

FLIPping the Script on Course Design: Integrating UDL and Student Centeredness into the Course Design Table

By Dr. Leslie Madsen, Teresa Focarile, Dr. Tasha Souza, Dr. Lisa Berry After the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted the spring 2020 semester, Boise State University faculty looked toward an uncertain fall with some trepidation. Because students might have to quarantine for weeks or miss several classes due to illness, instructors realized they would not only need to be ready to shift modalities as they had during spring semester, but potentially teach in multiple modalities simultaneously. To help faculty plan their fall classes, the campus units responsible for supporting instructors’ course design, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and eCampus Center (eC2), worked together to create a three-week Flexible Teaching for Student Success Institute (FTSS). While the collaboration between the two units led to several locally novel developments in the design and delivery of the summer Institute, a simple document template at the heart of the effort proved to be its most significant-and useful-innovation. Drawing on the tenets of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), the Flexible Learning and Instruction Plan, or FLIP, expands on the traditional course-design table by: asking instructors to build in adjustability and to provide students with multiple ways to access course content; allow for students to […]

Identifying Opportunities in Your Department’s DEI Strategy: One Alumni Department’s Perspective

by Ryan Barnhart, DHSc

Are you wanting to create more opportunities for diversity, equity, and inclusion for your constituents, but not sure where to begin? Here’s how one Alumni Relations and Development Office started. We started from the bottom At California University of Pennsylvania, our Office of Alumni Relations has been working collaboratively with departments across campus to paint a true picture of what diversity, equity, and inclusion means for our students, our alumni, and our institution’s history and future. Examining DEI concepts through a variety of lenses is essential to success. For many of us in higher education, our campuses are at times the first, and unfortunately the only, opportunity to have an open, meaningful dialogue around diversity, equity, and inclusion for our students. Our institution has a history of acknowledging and embracing our diverse populations across campus. For example, we’ve always celebrated the legacy of Jennie Adams Carter, our first Black alumna, and her impact on education and her family’s legacy, (Cal U was founded originally as a normal school for teacher education). Other examples include yearly dedicated outreach and programming honoring international students and their heritage. Much of this programming is student-centric. However, as the director of alumni relations, I felt […]

Navigating a virtual provost search during the pandemic

by David Forgues, Carolyn Thomas

The below piece tells the story of Cal State Fullerton’s experience conducting a provost search virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. The story is written from two perspectives: the first from the institution’s Vice President of Human Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion and Search Committee Chair; and the second from the now sitting provost. By sharing their experience, the article authors hope other institutions that find themselves embarking on a search in this continued virtual environment can gain ideas that positively impact the process. Perspective #1: David Forgues, Search Committee Chair and Vice President of Human Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion Pre-pandemic: Starting a provost search When our interim president was made permanent by the board in May of 2019, high on his list of priorities was to search for and appoint a new provost. Three interim provosts had served in the position since the last permanent provost departed. As we moved into fall and kicked off the search, we had no idea what was in store. We planned for this search along the normal cycle with groundwork to be completed in fall and advertising and recruitment over winter break and into the start of the spring semester. That would set us up […]

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