In 2018, Case Western’s new provost, Ben Vinson III, initiated and led a strategic planning effort that was designed intentionally to engage the full campus in the planning process, infusing the campus with cross-disciplinary, cross-unit thinking and approaches, and encouraging leaders among faculty and staff to think together as one campus community about the institution’s future and their opportunities to contribute to it. The challenge then was to find a way to sustain this momentum and creativity once the plan was written up and after the planning process was complete. Vinson also believed that leaders existed in all levels of the institution and across all disciplines and all units. He wanted to put resources in the hands of people who are not just the “usual suspects” or the most visible “high potential” leaders; he wanted to invest in the leadership and creativity of all faculty and staff; he felt this was essential to carrying forward the momentum of the strategic plan.

To help make this happen, Vinson established a partnership with Academic Impressions that included an enterprise-wide membership (all faculty and staff on campus have access) managed by the provost’s office. Academic Impressions spent time on the Case Western campus, meeting with the provost, the cabinet, the deans, HR, and faculty and staff leadership to help ensure we could get the right resources into the hands of the people in the institution who need it most—and that their membership is tailored to their needs. Vinson invited Academic Impressions to facilitate the provost’s monthly leadership roundtables. Each month, leaders from across the institution are provided with a research paper, an article on leadership, a recorded webcast, or an assessment (such as the 5 Paths to Leadership assessment), and Academic Impressions then facilitates a practical dialogue based on those resources. This keeps people throughout Case Western engaged in their leadership development every month, and rather than simply provide access to the resources, Case Western and Academic Impressions partner to guide them through the trainings and readings in their member library and how they can use each of these in a relevant and timely way.