Academic Leadership

Day by Day

21 to 25 October
st th
 October 21: Show someone you care
 most chairs, deans, and senior administrators care quite deeply about students, faculty
members, and the overall importance of higher education.

Practice:
 Today, make it clear to a faculty member at your college or university that you care
sincerely, not just about academic achievement in general, but about that person’s
teaching, learning, or research.

 Illustrate that you’ve taken the time to discover what’s important to that professor

 that you value the work he or she is doing.

 Remember that today’s goal isn’t to pretend an interest or concern that you don’t
really have but rather to demonstrate the amount of involvement you have every
day.
 October 22
Whatever we do in life must be based on our assumptions.

Today, see if you can identify five or more of your own basic assumptions, and then
proceed to question at least one of them.

Practice:
• What real evidence is there that smaller class size leads to improved student learning?
• Have there been any studies to prove whether professors who are highly active in
research tend also to be more effective teachers?
• Who has examined the correlation between participation in a living-learning community
and the likelihood of graduating within four years?
• Would our curriculum be significantly weakened if we decreased the number of required
courses?

Questioning assumptions in this way may not always lead you to change your mind, but it
will help you understand the line of reasoning that leads to your conclusions what you
practise..
 October 23: Define leadership
Observe your leadership style while working & Think for yourself:
Define leadership for yourself.
Is leadership something a person is born with, or can anyone become effective as a leader?
How is leadership similar to and different from such concepts as power, authority, and management?
A person is a leader because he or she is in control or because he or she empowers others?
If the leaders are trying to benefit themselves, the institution, specific stakeholders, society, or something else?
The relationship that an academic leader develops with others and how it differs from a commanding officer,
traditional boss, parent, manager, or coach.

Practice:
• Having the clear differences in mind helps administrators understand better how to respond to various
situations and how to advance the goals of their college or university.
• Try expressing your own ideas in a sentence or two, and then review your actions throughout the day to
determine how well you live up to the values that you’ve described
 October 24: Stay on message

Address that same issue meeting after meeting has far greater impact than taking about it
just ones.
Staying on message helps you to convey to others that this issue is yours. You may feel like a
broken record at times, fearing that you’ll be perceived as too insular or boring. But coming
to be identified with a topic allows you to focus your energy and to achieve greater things
as a result.
Example of parents demanding or expressing some habits in their children like book
reading, over a period of times they develop it even if the parents are no more there. It
becomes their priority too.
Practice:
1- identify the topic that will be your most important message in the weeks and months
to come.
2- plan ways of gradually instilling your remarks with references to this idea.
 October 25: Celebrate something

Identify a cause for celebration so that others can develop

their own enthusiasm for it.
Example,
1- celebrate this year’s enrollment figures. Regard it as an achievement to be recognized
no matter whether they’re going up, have stopped going down, are declining at a lower
rate than in previous years, or have helped you improve your student-to-faculty ratio.
2- Celebrate a grant regardless of whether it was recently awarded,
the proposal has just been completed,
3- Honor recent faculty publications, conference presentations, innovative contributions
to instruction, exceptional examples of service, or whatever else has made a difference in
your area.
there’s always something to celebrate, and most of us don’t stop frequently enough to
recognize the important achievements that are going on all around us.