By: Edna B. Chun, DM and Alvin Evans
In a polarized national climate, free speech and First Amendment protections have drawn increasing attention on college campuses. With the advent of open white nationalism, expressions of white supremacy, and the potential for hate speech, campuses have sought to protect…
Most academic leaders will serve more than one institution across their careers. In fact, it will be rare that many do not work for at least four or five institutions. If one must create and then recreate an academic team…
By: Monique Baucham, MBA, EdS, and Tanjula Petty, EdD
Academic Affairs and Institutional Effectiveness are two of the most important units within any higher education entity and are necessary to ensure an institution is focused on accomplishing the mission. Academic Affairs is familiar to those who have functioned in…
Talking with faculty about end-of-course ratings is generally a high-stakes conversation where merit raises, promotions, or permanent contracts are on the line or at least hovering in the background of the exchange. Most chairs, program coordinators, or division heads would…
For many new hires, tenure-track or not, there isn’t a road map for navigating that challenging first year of teaching. A faculty mentor program can help ensure every new hire has a guide, friend, confidante, and role model. The end…
By: Simon J. Rhodes, PhD, and N.Douglas Lees, PhD
In Part 1 of this two-part series on strengthening the relationship between chairs and deans, we discussed prioritizing student success and satisfaction, capitalizing on the institution’s greatest investment—the faculty— and developing a vision that goes beyond departmental considerations. Here we…
By: Simon J. Rhodes, PhD, and N.Douglas Lees, PhD
In viewing the organizational structure of our colleges and universities, there is a common hierarchy of faculty, chairs, deans, and higher administration that includes a president or campus leader and may include a provost or the equivalent. Much has been…
By: Patricia L. Kelly Spurles, PhD
A positive and productive departmental climate can often seem like love. We might admire it from afar and wish we had that luck, although we can learn to cope by developing a hobby, lowering our expectations, or cultivating other relationships.…
t the University of Maine, my colleagues and I have conducted a lot of research on faculty mentoring. The campus-wide Rising Tide Center—funded originally by a National Science Foundation ADVANCE grant—has helped implement several kinds of mentoring programs across our…
According to recent research, women in higher education continue to consistently be underrepresented at the administrative levels of dean, chief academic officers, provost, and president (Gallant, 2014). There are numerous motives identified by researchers for the persistence of the underrepresentation…
