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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What to consider when you’re negotiating an administrative compensation package at a typical (nonelite) institution.
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“Working too hard and too long” — a norm for the modern administrator — is contributing to the high turnover rate.
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Serious times call for serious leaders. But every administrator must guard against doom-and-gloom messaging.
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As an administrator, you will refuse plenty of requests. But part of the job is knowing how to be professional when your own ideas are spurned.
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Your faculty members say they are struggling to teach disengaged students. Can administrators be part of the solution and not part of the problem?
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Creating a culture of trust is vital for your effectiveness as an administrator — but many forces work against it.
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Five ways for academic administrators to make sure they are paying attention to work that matters.
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Good mentors can be hard to find in this era of stress, uncertainty, and paranoia in higher education.
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As an interim administrator, you’re only “standing in.” What can you do to win the job for a full term?
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What you do on Day 1 will set the tone for your short tenure, and, potentially, for your administrative career to come.
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How to be savvy in your logistical preparations as you take on a leadership post.
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How to cope with the psychological jolts that will greet you when you move into a leadership post on short notice.
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What to consider before you accept (or reject) a surprise appointment to become an administrator.
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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.
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Being in performance mode is required as much for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as for any other part of a finalist visit.
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For candidates, the dual-hiring process is part bureaucratic procedure and part political gauntlet.
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What to consider when candidates you’ve recruited ask about finding a staff position for their partner.
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Retaining academic couples is less time-consuming than recruiting them but should not be left to chance.
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What devils in the details you should look out for in finalizing contracts for an academic couple.
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How to anticipate and manage any potential blowback to hiring an academic couple.
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How to prepare for the complicated, politically fraught process of hiring an academic couple.
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The days of trying to keep families at arm’s length and resenting their “interference” are over.
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Since the pandemic began, we have updated the administrative-hiring playbook — and it’s not a temporary patch.
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You can’t look after others if the intense stresses of the job are threatening your own mental or physical health.
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Be wary of rock-star recommenders, over-the-top praise, and glaring omissions.
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As a hiring administrator, your goal is to efficiently, presciently, and justly read applicants’ cover letters.
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A close examination of the vita improves the prospects of fairness and success in faculty searches.
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Traditional search practices are inadequate to the modern age and one of the culprits behind a lack of faculty diversity.
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So you have won the go-ahead to hire. You can still fail to recruit someone if the job ad is vague or overambitious.
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Even getting the money to fill an existing faculty position is no small feat in these grim budget days.
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Overwhelm professors with too much institutional data and you cause confusion. But giving too little only sparks suspicion.
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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.
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The Covid-19 crisis is forcing academic administrators to pivot from their usual reliance on face-to-face engagement with donors.
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As an academic leader, your style of asking for things must fit what works — politically, culturally — at your institution.
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Administrators who conflate alumni outreach with fund raising do so at the risk of their own programs and careers.
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Sure, you can think innovatively in higher education, but there are lots of obstacles to acting on your ideas.
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By all means, trumpet the successes of your strategic plan, but don’t cover up the warts.
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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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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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One of the biggest logjams in strategic planning occurs when the process begins without any agreement on how decisions will be made.
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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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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.
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Academics are used to doing lots of talking, but administration requires learning how to listen well.
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It’s all too easy for a senior administrator’s incidental remark to be misinterpreted as a new demand.
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It’s one of the most challenging, miserable, and politically dangerous aspects of any job in academic administration.
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Whether you are a chair, a dean, or a provost, the academic freedom that you defend vociferously for others is constricted for you.
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Emotion, ego, and ideology jumble with finances, and the solutions are never simple and self-evident.
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Being aware of how you, your words, and your actions are perceived is not vanity — it’s common sense.
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To be effective in senior administration, you have to think about the how of communication delivery, not just the what.
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To succeed as an academic leader you must become a bean counter, but a sensitive one.
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What to do as you prepare to be in charge.
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During the campus interview, your “vision presentation” should balance the quantitative with a human touch.
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How to project a positive image during a campus interview.
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What devils in the details you should look out for in finalizing contracts for an academic couple.
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Here are some of the reasons why you might want to decline that campus interview.
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Whether it happens at an airport or via Skype, here’s what candidates need to know.
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What has to happen before you are invited to a first-round interview for an academic-leadership position.
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Sorry, there’s no avoiding the tedious, heavy paperwork involved in seeking an academic-leadership post.
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Like it or not, consultants are part of the process, so set aside your antipathy and learn from them.
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The political risk is weighty and the preparations are burdensome, so make sure you are ready.
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Are you prepared for the types, scale, and severity of management challenges?
