If Only I Had Known More About …

Dealing With Tragedy

By Barry Glassner and Morton Schapiro

At the start of this academic year, one of us learned that a multiweek search operation had been called off for a beloved student who went missing while hiking in the mountains. The other saw his campus shaken on the third day of classes by the death of a first-year student in an accident.

Thankfully, the loss of a student is an infrequent occurrence. But with more than two decades as presidents, we have seen too many of them. And without a doubt, these losses are the toughest challenges of our jobs.

Seldom are we without words, but invariably we find ourselves confounded about what to say at the memorial service. How does one even know what to call a gathering for someone so young and vital? A remembrance? A celebration of life? And how are we to pull ourselves together and “act presidential” when our minds are filled with sorrow for the family? Would we ever recover, we wonder, were this our child?

We worry, too, about the student’s friends and classmates. Presidents can usually find ways to cheer up students who feel alone or abandoned. We invite them to dinner at our homes and befriend them in the dining halls. But to allay the grief and confusion of a 19-year-old who lost the person she expected to be a confidant for life requires expertise that most of us lack. Perhaps presidents who come from the clergy or from counseling professions have an advantage on these occasions. But the rest of us can rarely call on our academic training for useful advice on what to say or how to act.

Fortunately, staff members in our student-affairs and religious-life offices are trained professionals who care deeply about our students, families, and campus communities. They’re the ones who bring us the news that a student has died, and we have learned to rely upon them to counsel us in the weeks that follow.

Our days are full of joyous celebrations — reunions, graduations, award ceremonies — but how we deal with tragedies matters as much as anything else we do.

Barry Glassner is a professor of sociology and president of Lewis & Clark College. Morton Schapiro is a professor of economics and president of Northwestern University.

Campus Master Planning

By Susan Herbst

Presidents are accountable stewards of the precious space they occupy. Colleges and universities are places where young people become adults and find their passion, but also places deeply held in the hearts and memories of our alumni. So it is important that our campuses are functional, academically effective, of value to the local area, and also beautifully unique.

One of the areas I wish I had understood with more sophistication is the process of campus master planning — how we must use our space in the most powerful ways possible.

Every new president inherits a complex space, typically with a hodgepodge of existing buildings, projects in process, significant deferred maintenance, and elusive “dream projects.” We can’t tackle it all, no matter how long we are in office, but we can look out 10 years, and even 20, to work on projected space needs, accommodating the changing nature of our students, the future of particular research areas, sustainability, and, of course, adequate parking.

As I learned, a variety of extraordinarily talented master-planning firms specialize in helping institutions map their future. That’s terrific and crucial, but a president must know enough to be a shrewd and creative client when working with a chosen firm. The firms will tend to advocate for plans that have worked elsewhere. But a president must — putting aside budget constraints and priorities — be the keeper of his or her campus culture. To join history and future, the president must be a first-rate, demanding client, with some basic understanding of architecture, building functionality, campus coherence, and landscape.

Idea Lab: New Presidents

Chronicle photo by Julia Schmalz

The top job has grown more demanding. Several college leaders offer their experience-based advice.

Nearly everyone has a dream project. Promises were made by past administrations and abandoned. It is extraordinarily important that presidents understand and acknowledge these promises, even if they can’t quite be met. But, through effective master planning, a newer president can avoid making empty pledges. Time will pass; that is the only surety we have in higher education. And with a compelling master plan, vetted with all who care about a campus, time will indeed turn dreams into living, breathing features of a campus.

Susan Herbst is president of the University of Connecticut.

Working With the Media

By Walter M. Kimbrough

All new presidents would benefit from at least a half-day of media training. I continue to watch presidents struggle to work with reporters in the traditional media, so an understanding of how that industry works would be of great importance. One of the best sessions I participated in was part of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ Millennium Leadership Initiative. It focused on working with the media, with an emphasis on how to give interviews. A broader understanding of the industry, which includes lessons on how to work with and establish relationships with local reporters, as well as how to write and pitch editorials, would be a tremendous program for new presidents.

In addition, the training must include an understanding of how social media works and ways in which presidents can lend their authentic voice via those platforms. Presidents are still caught off guard when stories spread rapidly via social media. That rapid spreading can create a great, feel-good story that shows the institution in its best light, or it can highlight an ugly incident that causes the institution to go into damage-control mode.

I became a president the year Facebook launched, so I have had to learn via trial and error as new social-media platforms have emerged. But now there is enough knowledge of how social media works, and plenty of examples of presidents and institutions that use it to their benefit, that a new president can learn the basics and leverage it positively.

Walter M. Kimbrough is president of Dillard University.

Managing People

By Patricia McGuire

People. How to motivate them, how to take care of their needs, how to win their trust, how to deal with their shenanigans and celebrate their successes. At the start of my presidency, I had no idea that people would be my biggest challenge. The search committee stressed fund raising, strategic planning, budget management. Nobody mentioned the people part.

I soon realized that I needed to learn more about how to manage people. It was not about personnel management at the human-resources level — we had a good HR staff to carry out those tasks. My need was different: to learn how to be more intuitive about what a faculty member was really saying when she would oppose just about any plan I tried to put forth; or how to discern why students were so guarded when I visited residence halls; or what the silence meant when I met with alumnae leaders and asked for their engagement with plans to change our advancement structure. I needed to know how to read the body language of trustees in meetings when their nods did not always match their words; or how to motivate older alumnae living a thousand miles away to open their purses to create scholarships for the new black and Latina students flocking into Trinity.

I’m largely self-taught; I like to think that I’m more discerning about people today. But search committees and boards need to do more to develop a new president’s ability to understand and motivate people to move collectively to reach institutional goals. Some may call this leadership, but it’s often more psychology than performance, more thinking than doing. In my experience, being smart about people makes all the difference in success for the president and the college.

Patricia McGuire is president of Trinity Washington University.

Facing Media Glare During a Crisis

By Santa J. Ono

I am one of the lucky ones. I have studied or taught at some of the world’s greatest universities and have been mentored by some of the most prominent presidents of our time. I attended the Harvard Seminar for New Presidents and participated in leadership-development programs put on by the American Council on Education. All of this provides strong foundational knowledge about leading an educational institution. But much of this information is already known to most prospective or new presidents. Most have already spent decades in the academy and have direct or indirect experience with these matters. What do I wish I knew before stepping into my first presidency? What kind of training might have been helpful?

One challenge that is unique to the college presidency is dealing with the glare of global-news interest during a major crisis. Whether this stems from actual or alleged misconduct by a professor, coach, or athlete; racial unrest on campus; a natural disaster; or a shooting on campus, few new presidents receive training on how to navigate such situations.

Some argue that there is no way to train for them. Indeed, no case study or role-playing exercise comes close to approximating the intense pressure and time sensitivity presented to a college during times of crisis. The media interest is unrelenting and often suffocating.

But I do believe that modules on how to deal with such situations and compulsory media training would be invaluable as standardized training for new presidents. Believe me, this would be much better than “on-the-job training,” in which one misstep or one unintended comment can push the institution into a tailspin. That is the state of affairs for far too many presidents, at far too many institutions. When the media interest is at its most intense, you often get only one shot to get it right. Let’s prepare our future presidents to be ready for the moment when the whole world is watching.

Santa J. Ono is president of the University of British Columbia.

Needing Soft Skills

By Eduardo J. Padrón

As I reflect on my first few years of leadership at Miami Dade College, I realize that I definitely would have benefited from learning more soft skills. As a young leader, I was expected to lead with empathy, confidence, and grit. From solving personnel issues to creating programs and funding streams that helped the college evolve, my position challenged me every day. Often it was only through trial and error that I mastered the skills I needed to succeed.

I believe that leaders need to learn early on how to effectively use listening and speaking to convey a message, and how to approach a problem through critical, creative thinking and even scientific reasoning. Equally important is the ability to apply emerging technologies effectively to your professional career and learn to appreciate aesthetics and creative activities in one’s field. At the start of my career, I was fortunate to encounter professors and mentors at Miami Dade who passed along some of these invaluable leadership lessons. From them I learned that a successful president must be surrounded by capable individuals, and that employees need a sense of ownership that only the president can inspire.

My mentors saw the potential in me and helped me prepare to lead one of the nation’s largest and most diverse institutions of higher education. I am grateful for those who guided me along the way. My hope for the next generation of college leaders is that as they prepare for careers in academic leadership, they have the opportunity to learn some of these invaluable lessons. They will undoubtedly become stronger and more effective leaders, prepared to transform our college campuses into havens of progress, innovation, and creativity.

Eduardo J. Padrón is president of Miami Dade College.

Handling Finances and Accreditation

By Lawrence M. Schall

While I came to my presidency 11 years ago with a reasonably sophisticated understanding of higher-education finances, the immediate crisis before me was financial, and it was absolutely of crisis proportion. While it took me all of two weeks on the job to discover the extent of the problem, trying to figure out a path to financial health that would both be acceptable to our community and actually work was an immense challenge.

I relied on a handful of trustees and one presidential colleague whom I knew only casually for guidance and counsel. It would have been helpful to have some more structured program of support. I know now that many of my peers have gone through similar experiences, and I try my best to reach out informally to new presidents facing similar issues, but there ought to be a better way for new leaders to find the support they need. While there are new-president training programs, these tend to be one-time events rather than something that provides continuing mentoring.

My second big surprise was that our university was just about to go through its 10-year accreditation process. (I’m not sure why this never came up in the interview process, but I can guess.) It took the better part of three years to fight our way through this, with finances being our primary issue. I swore I’d retire before I had to go through anything like that again.

A decade later, we just completed our review, and while the amount of work required by our team remained enormous, we sailed thorough unscathed. I’m glad I decided to hang around. But the first time around for me, very much a rookie president, was traumatic, and I could have used a lot of support rather than flying near-blind. Again, some structured program of education and mentorship would have been a wonderful thing.

Lawrence M. Schall is president of Oglethorpe University.