Faculty Performance & Conduct: Reframing the Conversation

Faculty conduct has significant implications for the overall morale and climate in a department, division, and institution. Faculty conduct can contribute positively to the success of students, colleagues, and the department. However, faculty conduct issues can impede individual faculty success, as well as the success of others, and disproportionately impact underrepresented groups in academia. Oftentimes, faculty conduct issues go undocumented and/or are never formally addressed, thus passively condoning the continuation of problematic behavior. Faculty affairs and academic leaders responsible for addressing faculty conduct issues need training and the proper infrastructure in order to implement consistent policies and practices that prevent the occurrence of problematic faculty conduct as soon as it starts. Join us for this interactive training about creating an institutional infrastructure for addressing faculty conduct that is consistent, clear, and supportive for those who need to address these issues. You will walk away from this training with valuable tips, tools, and strategies that support faculty accountability.

Deconstructing and Growing from Negative Past Work Environments

As you move between jobs or finish projects, it can be all too easy to carry negative past experiences and the habits associated with those experiences along with you to new roles. This can lead you to unknowingly reinforce counterproductive habits or perceptions that don’t contribute to your continued success or to new opportunities. While it is useful to learn from past experience, it’s important to not let those experiences cause self-doubt or an excess of caution in the new experiences to follow. So, how do you hold on to the lessons you want to take away while letting go of the past negativity? Join us for a two-hour interactive virtual training where you’ll learn how to unpack past experiences, take what you need from them, and focus on your future. Our interpersonal communication expert, Dr. Cié Gee, will walk you through some of the science of perception, professional identity construction, and emotional intelligence around your past experiences. By connecting the science to practical experience, you will learn how to set boundaries, develop a growth mindset, and focus on the lessons learned without bringing the negativity of that experience into your current or future interactions.

Leading and Influencing Change from the Middle: Change Management for Mid-level Leaders

Leading change requires involvement and engagement from people across a wide range of roles and functions, and oftentimes, change initiatives are tasked to people who must lead from the middle. Mid-level leaders serve as connectors, mediators, and navigators between the external stakeholders mandating a change or executive leaders initiating a change, and the faculty and/or staff who are responsible for, or impacted by, implementation. In sum, the team leaders and managers in the middle make change happen. How do you lead change authentically—especially when the change may not be one that resonates with you? How do you lead direct reports who may be resistant to the change? How can you be the voice for your direct reports when tasked with a change initiative? Join us for an interactive training that tackles some of these key questions for mid-level leaders. During this virtual training, we will take a case-study and consultative approach to leading change from the middle.

Advocate For Your Department by Using Data Effectively

Given the current context of higher ed, you are likely defending and justifying your department’s expenses relating to revenue, and you’re having to make important decisions, including budget cuts, that impact people across your department. You know that data can be a powerful tool to help you lead through these decisions and changes because data can help you paint a clear picture of how your budget supports the mission of the organization. However, analyzing and presenting data can be a tricky task, and it’s not always clear how to assess data in a way that helps you to identify the most impactful trends and patterns that matter most to your senior leaders, faculty, and students. Join us online, where you’ll learn how to acquire and assess data in ways that can help you to better advocate for the right changes and resources throughout your department. We’ll begin by highlighting some of the most critical data sets you should be looking at — those that matter the most to senior administration. Through a case-study approach, we’ll discuss how you can assess and understand your data to make more informed and mission-aligned decisions. Most importantly, we’ll explore ways you can effectively communicate […]

Integrating Academic Program Prioritization into Your Current Shared Governance Structure

As a result of the pandemic, academic leaders are being forced to identify which programs are sustainable and those that are not. Program prioritization is not new; but given the pandemic, the changing social perceptions of higher education, the changing student demographics, and the context in which program prioritization is currently happening brings to light new challenges. With faculty today more burned out and disengaged than ever, it is crucial to identify ways to integrate program prioritization into the present shared governance system on your campus, so that faculty members feel empowered to lead the prioritization process, understand the decisions being made, and align their decisions with the mission of the institution. Join us online for an interactive training which combines a panel of instructors from four institutions, and includes a wide variety of case studies and role-plays. Through useful and illuminating group dialogue opportunities, you’ll discuss ways you can make program prioritization an ongoing and sustained part of your shared governance system on campus by addressing how to: Define the integrated role of program prioritization within shared governance. Collect and use qualitative and quantitative data to make decisions. Assess what’s working, what’s not working, and unintended consequences.

Managing Change as an Inclusive Leader

Inclusive leadership requires that today’s leaders think about and understand change differently. Change is no longer a once-in-a-while ‘initiative’ that needs managing but is instead a constantly occurring process. And not everyone sits on a level playing field along the way: inclusive leaders must develop a greater awareness of their own blind spots and attend to the process they follow when leading change. Whose perspectives are being sought and heard, and whose aren’t? Who is the change serving, and who is it impacting? How can you invite and productively navigate through disagreement and conflict as change unfolds? Join us online to explore what managing change looks like in today’s higher education context for inclusive leaders. You will come away with:

Mindful Leadership for Chairs

When separated from its contemplative framework, mindfulness boils down to three core principles that are essential to effective leadership: gaining perspective, making intentional decisions, and setting clear boundaries with others. Department Chairs need all of these skills to be successful in their roles, yet amid today’s chaotic environment, the space and time to develop them can be hard to come by. Join us for an online training designed to help you lead with a clearer mind and sense of intention. We’ll break the concept of mindful leadership down into practical, approachable terms and offer tools to help you navigate the daily challenges of leading as a Chair, such as: Clarifying issues with your faculty, diffusing emotions around them, and holding the line. Drawing clear boundaries around your role and what is and is not possible. Recognizing complex organizational challenges and putting them into perspective. Understanding the tensions inherent within your decisions.

Setting up the Supervisory Relationship: Understanding and Adapting Your Supervisory Style

Developing a strong supervisory relationship with each staff member goes a long way in ensuring future success for both the individual and the team. In order to accomplish this, you must understand and be able to articulate your own supervisory style—and learn how to adapt it to the styles and work preferences of your team. Having this shared understanding of styles on both sides will help to anchor the supervisory relationship and fortify it in the face of the challenges that naturally occur in our day-to-day work. You will leave this two-hour virtual training with a deeper understanding of your preferred supervisory style, of how and why you might adapt it for individual staff members, and how to engage in productive conversations with new or existing direct reports to build a strong supervisory relationship. You will also complete a useful pre-event exercise to better understand yourself as a supervisor to ground the work of the training. We will explore key questions like the following: How do you identify and articulate your own supervisory style? How can you come to understand the work styles of your direct reports? How do you have a productive conversation with a new (or existing) direct […]

Selecting a Vendor to Augment Your Student Success Efforts

As institutions increasingly use data and technology to drive decision-making, it is important to have ways to efficiently collect, store, and parse that data. But with so much information to store and manage, institutions often need good partners and solutions to aid in managing their data. Many institutions have therefore turned to working with outside software vendors to help manage student retention and engagement. Institutions often have more than one of these outside vendors and work with campus IT professionals to integrate those software tools into their daily work. But how do institutions decide which vendors will help them to be the most successful? Join us for a 90-minute virtual training where you’ll learn the considerations that go into selecting and communicating with a new vendor for student success. Our expert Joseph Connell will discuss what questions you should ask of potential vendors and your on-campus staff to help you decide what the best support looks like for you. You will also learn to create a timeline for onboarding a new vendor for your institution.

Optimize Your Success as an External Dean

As an externally appointed dean, you are expected to hit the ground running, making quick and impactful decisions from Day One. Leading through this change can be tricky, as you will often need to navigate conflicting perspectives from the administration and faculty on which direction to go, as you also define your role in shared governance, identify trusted allies, and make decisions even with incomplete information. Join us for a 90-minute discussion that will provide you with insights and lessons learned from other external deans. Our instructor panel includes two different speakers — one who has served in a variety of external leadership roles at multiple institutions — and the other who just completed her first semester as external dean. If you’ve been asking any of the following questions, this training is for you: How do I research and understand the issues, challenges and opportunities within my college? How do I determine my role in shared governance? Who should I trust, and how do I figure that out as early as possible? Where should I invest my time, and how do I balance listening and learning with getting important work done? What are some of the considerations I need to […]