Day 1 - ACE Leadership Academy for Department Chairs

As I mentioned yesterday, I am attending a leadership workshop for department chairs. Today was the first of two days, and I was very impressed with the content and approach. There is much too much information to discuss here, but I will provide some of the highlights of the experience. The workshop is facilitated by several former department chairs who have taken on higher positions as Deans, Vice Presidents, and Provosts at various universities across the United States. Their insights have been very interesting and exceedingly valuable.

Day 1 of the ACE Leadership Academy for Department Chairs.

• Pressure Over Time is often the only method you can use to achieve your goals. Just like the Grand Canyon was formed over many years, the results of your work may emerge over several years. Just constantly apply gentle pressure toward your desired outcomes. It requires patience, persistence, and a focus on the outcomes and results needed for your organization. 
• You have to plan your week so that you have time that cannot be interrupted (accept by your boss or her boss). This should be time that you use to focus on the things that are important but get crowded out by the urgent things that always arise. 
• There will never  be enough resources. Get over it and get to work. Don't waste your time complaining or lamenting the lack of resources. Use your energy to get to work.
• You are paid to think, not to fill the copier toner. 
• Delegate administrative things (e.g. scheduling and budget monitoring) to others whenever possible.
• Be a brave department chair. Have the tough conversations. Expect excellence from your faculty and staff. Lead toward excellence.

4 Words

We were encouraged to create four words that describe us as leaders. I chose the following, after some reflection: Results-Oriented, Respectful, Hard-Working, and Patient.

Strategies for Moving Up to a Dean or Provost Position

The question was asked about what strategies should be employed to continue to move up the administrative ranks. Below are the strategies given by our facilitators (who have done it):

• Make the decision that you are going to do it. This can be scary, but you must decide and own it.
• Research what it takes to be a Dean.
• Talk to Deans - ask them what it is like, what they do on a daily basis.
• Read the literature on what they do, what they grapple with. Read up on academic leadership.
• Look at job postings to understand the parameters in greater detail.
• Do a Gap Analysis. Analyze several dean positions and identify what it takes to be a dean. Then analyze how you hold up against those requirements. Identify the knowledge, skills, and experience you need to develop and gain so that you are prepared for the position.
• Prepare yourself for the position:
• Gain diverse experience. Strategically engage on the committees that will make you an excellent candidate for a dean position.
• Serve on a President or Provost search committee.
• Participate in a fellows program such as the ACE Fellows program which allows you to interact with many university presidents and gives you a broad, enriched perspective. Some universities also have these kinds of programs internally.
• Apprentice with a Provost or a President.
• Simply spend time with Deans, Provosts, and Presidents. Become familiar with the issues they struggle with, their way of leading and communicating, their approaches to their work. 
• Become very familiar with budgeting and financial structures. This is critical to effective leadership.
• Build your fundraising experience and expertise. Deans do a lot of fundraising.
• Ask Deans and Provosts their advice for moving forward.

 Again, it has been a wonderful experience. Great ideas and insights, and I feel blessed to be among such an amazing group of academic administrators!

ACE Leadership Academy for Department Chairs

UPDATE: Here are my notes and insights from the two days at the ACE Leadership Academy:

• Day 1 Notes and Insights
• Day 2 Notes and Insights

This week I am attending the ACE Leadership Academy for Department Chairs, a two-day workshop facilitated by the American Council on Education. The workshop "focuses on the chair not only as a unit leader but also as an academic leader in service to the institution and its mission." It appears that it will be a hands-on workshop including interaction with other participants and case-based activities. 

From what I have gathered, there will be around 70 attendees, and the facilitators come from a wide variety of universities and backgrounds. I am impressed with the credentials and experience of the facilitators, and I anticipate a positive experience!

Why This Conference?
I have recently been promoted at Franklin University to the position of Department Chair in the Department of Design and Assessment. This department is housed within the International Institute for Innovative Instruction, which provides leadership in instructional design, teaching, and assessment both locally (at Franklin University) and internationally (among our many partner institutions).

With this appointment I am working with and leading eight outstanding faculty members, and my goal is to be as effective as possible in my administration - hence my attendance at this workshop.

I plan to write about my experiences and insights gained in this workshop over the coming to days and will share my insights in blog posts each night. I am excited for the knowledge and skills this workshop will provide and I look forward to the experience!

Day 2 of Chairpersons Conference

Leadership Transitions Training and Development
Workshop by Katherine Frank, Margarte Thomas Evans, Cathy Foos, Rob Tolley and Mark Pomper

The focus of this workshop was the development of faculty during large transitions within a college. There are very often big changes in an organization's structure, and it is important to continually develop a chairperson as they fit their role. There were a couple of points that I thought were particularly important:

• It is vital that an organization fosters leadership from the beginning. Very often an organization is reactive when a new chair position opens up. Instead, training and development should be a key part of faculty development so that a succession of leadership can take place.
• Personal relations with faculty are the most important aspect of leading as a chair. If you can have a positive working relationship with the people you lead, you will be much more effective as a leader, even if there is disagreement on decisions made.

Notes on Progressing as an Administrator
I am a relatively young faculty member - probably the youngest faculty member at my university. Moving to a chair position as early as I did was probably a little early in my career. However, it also gives me the benefit of learning a great deal in a short amount of time. I am still not totally sure of my career direction, but one of the possibilities is to work in my career as an administrator in higher education. I have enjoyed my work as chair, though it can be quite difficult, at times. And I think I have some of the skills and abilities that would make me a good academic leader.

I met with Dr. Kent Crookston, professor at Brigham Young University, for a brief one-on-one that the conference arranged for its attendees. Dr. Crookston and I discussed  potential career avenuse I might take, and we ended up discussing the possibility of working toward becoming a dean or even a provost. During our discussion, he gave me the following pieces of advice:

• Be strategic -have a goal in mind. Where do you want to end up?
• Decide what kind of institution you would like to work in. My experience as a faculty member has been in smaller, teaching-focused universities. If I want to move to larger research universities, I will likely need to earn tenure before I can become an administrator at those larger universities.
• Find a mentor who has done some of the things you want to do. This mentor can help you begin to prepare for the next position.
• Study administration. Read leadership journals and magazines. Get deep into the literature. Dr. Crookston recommended the Harvard Business Review as one of the best. 
• Stand out in your current position as a leader without appearing overly-ambitious. Do your best to shine at what you are doing now.

Truthfully, I am still not sure exactly where I would like to end up in my career. I am happy where I am now and feel good about the work I am doing. I can see that I might excel as an administrator, but I have a passion for teaching and writing that I would like to hold on to. Whatever I decide to do, this  knowledge gives me an idea of the kinds of things I might do to really move forward in my goals.

Navigating Waves of Change

Jeremy Buckner, Christine Dalton, Kara Stooksbury, Laura Wadlington

The final presentation I attended was about peer-led professional development for academic chairs.A group of fairly new department chairs were confronted with a need for developing themselves as chairs and decided to create a series of workshops for doing so. They created for workshops for themselves and their peers within their college around the following topics:

1. Personality, work style and communication - In this session the participants all took the Jung typology test, which helped them to start looking at themselves and how the prefer working and communicating. They discussed their results with their peers and planned out ways to work with their strengths.
2. S.W.O.T. Analysis of own departments - In this session, participants performed a S.W.O.T. Analysis of their own departments. This is an exercise in which the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to the department are analyzed and articulated.
3. A Session with the Chief Financial Officer - In this session, the CFO of the university presented the reality of the financial state for the departments in the college. She answered their questions and helped them see how their work related to the college's budget.
4. Departmental Strategic Planning - This session has not yet occurred, but it will involved planning for the coming 5 years. This is something that I believe could be very valuable for me and my program. We are on a good path, and I believe that we could really move the program forward with some disciplined work.

The presenters said that they found that there was a greater sense of collaboration among the participants, and the participants were surprised to find that there were some great similarities between the departments.

I am excited to see what I learn tomorrow - looks like another set of good presentations.

Notes from New Chair Alliance Workshop

As I noted in a previous post, this week I am attending the 30th Annual Academic Chairpersons Conference. Today I attended a full-day pre-conference workshop for new academic chairs called the New Chair Alliance. It is a workshop designed to provide new academic chairs with ideas and strategies for completing their work as academic administrators.

In this post, I will share some of my notes from this workshop. It will really be just a list of some of my thoughts, notes and observations as I worked through the workshop.

New Chair Alliance Workshop

On Managing a Difficult Workload
One of the themes that continued to come up during the workshop was the issue of an overwhelming workload. I have noticed that my work has increased exponentially as the program chair, and I feel like I am constantly working just to keep up with what is going on. Here are some ideas on how to manage this workload effectively.

• Categorize your tasks into the following categories: important/not important, and urgent/not urgent. This will help you focus on what is important.
• If you can delegate a task to someone else, then do it.
• If you can, automate some tasks by having someone else or technology do it.
• Check emails only periodically (2-3 times a day) so that you can focus your time on the projects at hand.
• Minimize interruptions. Block out time on your calendar to keep time for yourself. Screen people from interrupting you (close your door, have a secretary screen you, etc.)
• Use the 4D principles to handle tasks - do, delegate, defer, delete.
• Do the most important tasks and let the less-important fall to the wayside.

On Finding Balance
Another theme that came up was finding balance in your life. This includes professional balance as well as personal and family balance. I find it difficult to balance my teaching, course design, and interactions with students and faculty so that I can spend time on my research and writing agenda. I also have a hard time making sure I can spend time with my beautiful girls at home.

Personal health is the most important thing a chair can prioritize. Without health, the ability to succeed as chair is ruined, so taking care of physical, mental, and spiritual health is vital. I've found that I have to go to the gym in the morning before work if I want to have a healthy day, so I make that daily workout a priority.

Strategic Planning
The workshop facilitators also discussed the importance of creating a strategic plan for each department or program. I have dome some of this for the IDPT program but feel like a more robust strategic plan for the program, including participation from all major stakeholders, could be a powerful way to move the program forward. I plan to begin this initiative sometime in early summer.

Random Quotes In the Workshop (some are rather humorous)

• "If someone can do it 80% as well as you can, have them do it."
• "If you see a turtle sitting on a fence-post, you can be pretty sure it didn't get there by itself."
• "If you're not comfortable with multi-tasking, don't become an administrator."
• "All I do is shoot the closest wolf."
• "don't let other peoples' problems become your problems."
• "If you can't live with the conclusions someone has come to, seek a second opinion."
• "I don't want to shuffle the deck chairs of the Titanic if I know it is going to sink."
• "The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives." (Sioux Proverb)

There was certainly a great deal more discussed, but I think these were the highlights for me. I have generated a lot of notes on how I can begin to use what I have learned and I am excited to see how I can keep things moving forward for the IDPT program.

Arriving at The Hyatt Regency San Antonio

I flew from Columbus to San Antonio with a brief (somewhat delayed) stop in Houston. The trip was largely uneventful. I am attending the 30th Annual Academic Chairpersons Conference with my Department Chair Dr. Kody Kuehnl. My goal is to gain some perspective on how I can more effectively lead my program as the program chair of the IDPT program at Franklin University.

Dr. Joel Gardner at Hyatt Regency Hotel, San Antonio, Texas

The rooms are very nice and I am grateful for the opportunity I have to take advantage of professional development opportunities such as this conference. In my experience, Franklin University and its leadership are generous in their development of their faculty, and I have greatly benefited from this generosity.

Tomorrow we will attend a full-day pre-conference workshop for new academic chairs called the New Chair Alliance. It should be a good introduction to the practice of academic administration. I am not sure what to expect, but I am hopeful that it will be a meaningful experience that will help me move forward as an effective leader and administrator of my program.

Upcoming Conference: 30th Annual Academic Chairpersons Conference

This week I am attending the 30th Annual Academic Chairpersons Conference. Because I was recently appointed the Program Chair of the Instructional Design and Performance Technology Master program at Franklin University, I am excited to learn even more effective strategies and approaches for managing and leading this program.

The conference will be held in San Antonio, Texas. I have never been to San Antonio before, and apparently we will be very close to the River Walk and also to the famed Alamo.

As always, I plan to write about my experiences at the conference, and I look forward to learning how I can improve myself and move the IDPT program forward.