As a Department Chair, you play a pivotal role in shaping a culture of growth, accountability, and trust within your units—but delivering meaningful feedback can be challenging, especially when navigating complex peer relationships and institutional expectations. This course equips you with practical strategies to give and receive feedback confidently and effectively, moving beyond traditional annual evaluations to create ongoing, development-focused conversations. You’ll learn how to approach feedback with clarity, empathy, and professionalism, ensuring that it strengthens relationships rather than creating tension. You’ll leave with actionable techniques for providing constructive, timely feedback in one-on-one discussions, written evaluations, or informal exchanges—and for responding to feedback with humility and insight. By grounding these skills in the realities of higher education leadership, you’ll be ready to create a culture where learning, growth, and teamwork thrive—even amidst institutional pressures.
The Old Dominion University Academic Affairs Leadership Academy aims to prepare identified faculty and staff as future leaders of the University by fostering growth in personal leadership, strengthening management of others, and supporting succession planning for higher-level roles. Through this investment, the program seeks to enhance retention of key talent and cultivate a more vibrant, positive institutional culture and climate.
Higher education needs leaders who are versatile and self-aware. The Five Paths to Leadership® Self-Assessment provides a way for leaders to dive deep into their leadership strengths and areas for improvement, understand their teams’ needs and motivations, and communicate more effectively across the board. This self-paced course is designed to provide just-in-time support and practical tools to help you apply the Five Paths to different aspects of your leadership. We’ll cover topics ranging from leading yourself, to leading others and your team, to leading systems. Whether you’re focused on improving your own leadership in an individual or one-on-one setting or leading a large team or division, this course will help you lead more effectively and confidently in specific situations.
Session 1| The Balancing Acts of Academic Leadership (Date: Group A – Thursday, October 30; Group B – Friday, October 31) Facilitator: Gwen Cash-James, Associate Vice Provost – Academic Affairs Leadership requires the constant evaluation of a series of trade-offs. For instance, you may ask yourself questions like, “Do I lead as a faculty member or as a department head?” “Do I focus on the immediate or the long-term?” “Am I a colleague or a supervisor?” This session introduces the “balancing act” or “seesaw” as a framing device that will help you to navigate these inherent trade-offs by orienting your leadership choices and helping you to customize your choices to the situation, opportunity, and problem at hand. Pre-WorkBefore the session: Resources to Bring with You to the SessionMake sure you have: After the session: The three Seesaw videos shown during the session can be re-visited as needed in the Table of Contents section above. Session 2 | Five Paths to Leadership℠ (Group A: Thursday, November 20; Group B: Friday, November 21) Facilitators: Terry Coleman and Rabia Khan Harvey Our second session focuses on understanding your leadership strengths and gaps via Academic Impressions’ Five Paths to Leadership® Self-Assessment. Its purpose is to […]
Chairs Leadership Program – 2025-26’ September 19, 2025 | The Five Paths to Leadership® As a department chair, you play a pivotal role in advancing your department’s goals in partnership with your faculty, staff, and academic leadership. To lead effectively in this role, you need a clear understanding of yourself and how you show up as a leader. In this session, you’ll use the Academic Impressions Five Paths to Leadership℠ Self-Assessment to explore your leadership strengths and gaps. You’ll gain insight into how your natural leadership style surfaces in both everyday and high-stress situations, and learn strategies for adapting your approach to meet the needs of different individuals and contexts. By increasing your self-awareness and leadership agility, you’ll be better equipped to foster engagement, build alignment, and lead your department with confidence. October 17, 2025 | Embrace Your Leadership: The Balancing Acts of Academic Leadership Leadership requires the constant evaluation of a series of trade-offs. For instance, you may ask yourself questions like, “Do I lead as a faculty member or as a department head?” “Do I focus on the immediate or the long-term?” “Am I a colleague or a supervisor?” This session introduces the “balancing act” or “seesaw” as […]
In a time when higher education is navigating persistent uncertainty and complex stakeholder dynamics, bold leadership isn’t just aspirational—it’s essential. This session invites you to pause and reflect: What is the future of higher ed that we want to see? How can we work toward that future? Building on the powerful themes in The Best Gift Higher Education Never Asked For, this interactive webcast will introduce practical ways to help leaders create space for meaningful, forward-looking dialogue. You’ll learn how to structure sessions that surface real concerns, mobilize your teams around a shared vision, and move from reactive planning to strategic investment. Whether you’re just beginning to rethink what’s next or are already leading change efforts on your campus, this hands-on experience will leave you equipped to initiate critical conversations with clarity, intention, and momentum. Come prepared to reflect, explore, and take the next bold step. Can’t join us live? Watch the recording and reach out to us to learn more about how we can support you in hosting these conversations on your campus.
Higher education needs leaders who are versatile and self-aware. The Five Paths to Leadership® Self-Assessment provides a way for leaders to dive deep into their leadership strengths and areas for improvement, understand their teams’ needs and motivations, and communicate more effectively across the board. This self-paced course is designed to provide just-in-time support and practical tools to help you apply the Five Paths to different aspects of your leadership. We’ll cover topics ranging from leading yourself, to leading others and your team, to leading systems. Whether you’re focused on improving your own leadership in an individual or one-on-one setting or leading a large team or division, this course will help you lead more effectively and confidently in specific situations.
Higher education leaders are constantly called upon to make tough, high-stakes decisions—often without complete information, under tight timelines, and in environments marked by competing priorities. The pressure is real, and it can lead to feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure of the best path forward. This self-paced course is designed to provide just-in-time support and practical tools to help you regain clarity and momentum in your decision-making. Whether you’re struggling to make an individual decision or navigating a complex decision with others, this course will equip you with both personal and collaborative strategies to move forward more confidently.
you look to move into the workplace, it is more important than ever to expand your leadership abilities in order to be successful. Although you will have learned key content and practiced skills like creativity and collaboration in your classes, employers often report that graduates do not possess the level of preparedness in leadership skills needed to be successful in their careers. This course is designed to reinforce and help you to demonstrate your ability to work in increasingly global and collaborative work environments. This course covers the following topics: This course consists of five modules encompassing leadership skills that will benefit you in the workplace. Each module includes several short videos and accompanying workbook prompts and activities, with each designed to take you about 50-75 minutes per module. We recommend pacing them out to one module per week, but you can complete the activities at your own pace!
Writing external review letters for faculty’s tenure and promotion cases is a vital piece of service to the profession. But guidelines around them can be unclear and vague. If you’ve been asked to write an external review letter, and you’re unsure of how to start, this course will help. How It Works This course incorporates written resources, labeled by topic. To view the resources in a topic, click on the topic heading. If you’re completely new to writing external review letters, it may make the most sense to go through the topics in order. If you’ve written letters before, you may want to jump to topics that are most applicable to you in the moment.
