I n this series, David D. Perlmutter writes about pursuing a career in academic administration and about surviving and thriving as a leader – whether you are a chair, a dean, a provost, and or any of the positions in between and beyond. The tasks of, say, a dean of sciences at a major public research university are very different from those of a department chair in foreign languages at a small liberal-arts college. Yet there are also many commonalities across leadership posts in academe. Perlmutter explores them in these columns.
Kevin Van Aelst for The Chronicle
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AdviceAdmin 101: Should You Take This Unexpected Job Offer?
What to consider before you accept (or reject) a surprise appointment to become an administrator. -
Advice
Admin 101: Ready to Lead on Short Notice?
Plenty of professors become administrators overnight with an unexpected offer. Here’s how to prepare for “the call” and make it more likely that you will be tapped. -
Advice
Meals Matter in the Campus Interview
Being in performance mode is required as much for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as for any other part of a finalist visit. -
Advice
What to Expect When You Are the ‘Partner Accommodation’
For candidates, the dual-hiring process is part bureaucratic procedure and part political gauntlet. -
Advice
Admin 101: Partner Hiring for Staff Members
What to consider when candidates you’ve recruited ask about finding a staff position for their partner. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Keep Partner Hires Happy (Even When They Split Up)
Retaining academic couples is less time-consuming than recruiting them but should not be left to chance. -
Advice
Admin 101: The Art of Partner-Hire Negotiations
What devils in the details you should look out for in finalizing contracts for an academic couple. -
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Admin 101: The Delicate Politics of Partner Hires
How to anticipate and manage any potential blowback to hiring an academic couple. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Lay the Groundwork for a Spousal/Partner Hire
How to prepare for the complicated, politically fraught process of hiring an academic couple. -
Advice
Admin 101: Why You Should Meet the Parents
The days of trying to keep families at arm’s length and resenting their “interference” are over. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Design a Leadership Search in Crisis Times
Since the pandemic began, we have updated the administrative-hiring playbook — and it’s not a temporary patch. -
Advice
Admin 101: Campus Administrators Need Self-Care, Too
You can’t look after others if the intense stresses of the job are threatening your own mental or physical health. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Interpret Reference Letters
Be wary of rock-star recommenders, over-the-top praise, and glaring omissions. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Interpret a Job Candidate’s Cover Letter
As a hiring administrator, your goal is to efficiently, presciently, and justly read applicants’ cover letters. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to ‘Read’ a Job Candidate’s CV
A close examination of the vita improves the prospects of fairness and success in faculty searches. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Actively Recruit Faculty Members
Traditional search practices are inadequate to the modern age and one of the culprits behind a lack of faculty diversity. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Write a Realistic Faculty Job Description
So you have won the go-ahead to hire. You can still fail to recruit someone if the job ad is vague or overambitious. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Request a Faculty Line
Even getting the money to fill an existing faculty position is no small feat in these grim budget days. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Explain the Complicated to the Brilliant
Overwhelm professors with too much institutional data and you cause confusion. But giving too little only sparks suspicion. -
Advice
Admin 101: How Good Leaders Say No
The economic fallout from Covid-19 means administrators will be killing more ideas than they approve. But you can lessen the odds that your “no” will be taken as a personal or political affront. -
Advice
Admin 101: Our Shift to Remote Fund Raising
The Covid-19 crisis is forcing academic administrators to pivot from their usual reliance on face-to-face engagement with donors. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Make the ‘Big Ask’ on Campus
As an academic leader, your style of asking for things must fit what works — politically, culturally — at your institution. -
Advice
Admin 101: What to Know About Alumni Relations
Administrators who conflate alumni outreach with fund raising do so at the risk of their own programs and careers. -
Advice
Admin 101: Why It’s Hard to Operate ‘Outside the Box’ in Academe
Sure, you can think innovatively in higher education, but there are lots of obstacles to acting on your ideas. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Properly Wrap Up a Strategic Plan (and Why That Matters)
By all means, trumpet the successes of your strategic plan, but don’t cover up the warts. -
Advice
Admin 101: Tips on Carrying Out Your Strategic Plan
Don’t be afraid to give up on a goal that has proved overly ambitious, and other advice for administrators on strategic planning. -
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Admin 101: How to Manage the Strategic-Planning Process
Some strategic plans fail because they are perceived as top-down mandates. Others collapse under the weight of too much input from too many committees. Here’s how to navigate the middle ground. -
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Admin 101: How to Plan for Strategic Planning
One of the biggest logjams in strategic planning occurs when the process begins without any agreement on how decisions will be made. -
Advice
Admin 101: Which Metrics Are Actually Useful, and How Can You Tell?
Learning how to use digital dashboards is vital for newcomers to administration, both to do your job every day and to ward off future problems. -
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Admin 101: It’s About Time — or Rather, Time Management
When you become an administrator, you have to force yourself to think of time — everybody’s, not just your own — with a hint of urgency. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Become a Better Listener
Academics are used to doing lots of talking, but administration requires learning how to listen well. -
Advice
Admin 101: How to Make Sure They Heard What You Actually Said
It’s all too easy for a senior administrator’s incidental remark to be misinterpreted as a new demand. -
Advice
Admin 101: Time to Overcome Your Evaluation Avoidance
It’s one of the most challenging, miserable, and politically dangerous aspects of any job in academic administration. -
Advice
Administration 101: 4 Phrases Academic Administrators Should Never Say
Whether you are a chair, a dean, or a provost, the academic freedom that you defend vociferously for others is constricted for you. -
Advice
Administration 101: How Do You Decide Which ‘Great Idea’ to Back?
Emotion, ego, and ideology jumble with finances, and the solutions are never simple and self-evident. -
Advice
Administration 101: Good Administrators Care About ‘How It Will Look’
Being aware of how you, your words, and your actions are perceived is not vanity — it’s common sense. -
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Administration 101: What Do You Have to Do to Become a ‘Great Communicator’?
To be effective in senior administration, you have to think about the how of communication delivery, not just the what. -
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Administration 101: Learn How to Follow the Money
To succeed as an academic leader you must become a bean counter, but a sensitive one. -
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Administration 101: The Work Starts Before You Start
What to do as you prepare to be in charge. -
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Administration 101: The Vision Thing
During the campus interview, your “vision presentation” should balance the quantitative with a human touch. -
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Administration 101: Mind Your Manner
How to project a positive image during a campus interview. -
Advice
Admin 101: The Art of Partner-Hire Negotiations
What devils in the details you should look out for in finalizing contracts for an academic couple. -
Advice
Administration 101: Why You Shouldn’t Be a Finalist
Here are some of the reasons why you might want to decline that campus interview. -
Career Confidential
Administration 101: The First-Round Interview
Whether it happens at an airport or via Skype, here’s what candidates need to know. -
Advice
Administration 101: Part 5, Getting Your Name in the Real Pool
What has to happen before you are invited to a first-round interview for an academic-leadership position. -
Advice
Administration 101: Assembling the Application
Sorry, there’s no avoiding the tedious, heavy paperwork involved in seeking an academic-leadership post. -
Career Confidential
Administration 101: Working With Executive Search Firms
Like it or not, consultants are part of the process, so set aside your antipathy and learn from them. -
Career Confidential
Administration 101: Prepping for the Job Hunt
The political risk is weighty and the preparations are burdensome, so make sure you are ready. -
Career Confidential
Administration 101: Deciding to Lead
Are you prepared for the types, scale, and severity of management challenges?
