In his role as vice president of learning and student success at John Tyler Community College, Bill Fiege faces a wide variety of issues—dealing with student concerns, allocating resources, and
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
Last November, I gave an invited plenary session at the Lilly International Conference on College Teaching on how we transformed Sierra Nevada College (SNC) to embrace active learning, undergraduate research,
An amazing metamorphosis sometimes affects academic leaders between the time they interview for the job and the time they begin their position. As candidates for the position, prospective administrators are
According to organizational life cycle theory, institutions and units within institutions progress through a sequence of stages—inception, growth, maturity, and decline or revitalization. Understanding the challenges specific to each stage
When Jeffrey Yergler became chair of the undergraduate management department at Golden Gate University, one of his priorities was to establish a values-driven department that emphasized improving faculty members’ well-being,
If recent responses to the STEM fad by many academic leaders from liberal arts disciplines—i.e., claiming that admissions offices just aren’t working hard enough to recruit students in the arts
Significant change within higher education institutions requires the input and cooperation of a wide variety of stakeholders. You can’t simply compel change. Successful change requires careful preparation and effective communication.
While all would agree that intra-department tasks (assigning teaching, hiring adjuncts, recruiting new faculty, completing reports and other paperwork, evaluating faculty and staff, mentoring, advocating, etc.) are important and need
In the view of legislators, governing boards, and certain administrators, higher education needs to assign a much greater emphasis to the STEM disciplines. That’s where the jobs are, the argument
