Understanding and communication between the off-campus culture of practicing professionals and the on-campus culture of academic research and education require special skills of the professional school dean including maintaining a sense of fairness, insisting on excellence, encouraging collaboration, demonstrating respect for faculty governance…

A general education reform initiative, emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach, is being developed at the State University of New York-Geneseo by a team of faculty and administrators as the result of a national conference. Emphasis is placed on the process by which the initiative evolved, team membership, the role of the conference, and timing.…

Universities are entering the information age with outdated organizational structures. The college president's role is to establish a process promoting integration of new technologies, with each other and with the institution's mission, especially in the library. This means giving faculty tools to deliver the new instruction being asked of them.…

Even minor changes in the college curriculum, especially across disciplinary boundaries, can have profound effects on the organization of the institution and roles of faculty and administrators. A typology of eight kinds of campus organizational change outlines the implications of each, and a checklist of considerations surrounding change is…

A college dean who has returned to full-time college teaching reflects on the differences in roles of administrator and faculty member, comparative benefits and disadvantages of the two positions, skills that transfer well, and his changed perspective on students. He recommends more and better communication between faculty and administration. (MSE)

Leadership in church-related colleges is particularly challenging because of decentralization of authority and responsibility in colleges in general, the particular moral imperative of the church-affiliated institution, declining enrollment, changing methods and approaches in higher education, societal secularization, and institution-specific…

Presents three essays examining topics that community college leaders should consider in utilizing advanced technologies to meet constituents' needs. Considers installing new technology, ownership of technology created by faculty and students, and the implications of using new technologies in the context of the requirements of the Americans with…

Three former senior academic officers, all later to become college presidents, offer best practices for governing board members and chief academic officers (CAOs) on participatory governance, strategic resource planning, and relationships among the CAO, the trustees, and the president. Topics addressed include an effective institutional governance…

The role of student financial aid has shifted from promoting access to higher education for the needy to shaping the entering freshman class. This realignment requires a shift in focus for student aid staff, creating an even greater institutional leadership role and placing the aid director in the fore of enrollment-management theory and practice.…

Examines the extent to which community college midlevel managers use power and influence tactics. Results show tactics were not used uniformly and were mostly directed toward lateral levels. Community college administrators employed influence tactics more often than did corporate, with both ranking tactics in almost identical order of use. (19…

An American Council on Education study investigated the extent to which college faculty and presidents share common views on comprehensive educational and organizational change strategies. Results show presidents and faculty agree more often than conventional wisdom suggests and reaffirm common beliefs that they disagree on who should be doing…

The president of one campus of the newly decentralized, multicampus Houston Community College System (Texas) found herself immediately facing many problems of reorganization, including making program decisions, finding necessary resources, and developing essential community support. The role of the president that developed during this process was…

New college presidents are inundated with requests for their time, and their private life is often sacrificed. Each administrator must decide what is the appropriate balance among various aspects of his/her position. Physical separation of public and private lives is essential, and the role of the spouse, who may have other professional…

A framework is offered for college presidents to establish new leadership during the first two years of tenure, with time frames and tasks for engaging the community. Postinauguration strategies include addressing a long-standing need decisively, identifying/achieving one success within the new vision, developing a broadly participatory and…

American higher education continues to expect college presidents to take on an extraordinarily broad array of responsibilities, although the complexity of each responsibility has grown considerably. Many institutions give up on their presidents too quickly, never gaining the benefits that accrue from a longer tenure; most presidents serve less…