Prior to her current role, Gypsy most recently served as the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at VCU. Prior to joining VCU, she served as Dean of the College of Education and Human Services at West Virginia University, where she also served as Associate Provost for Community Engagement and Outreach. During her 17 years at Northern Arizona University, she served as Assistant Vice Provost for the Professional Education Unit, Dean of the College of Education, as well as in other administrative roles. Gypsy also worked in Student Affairs during her time at the University of California at Berkeley and East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. She is a past national president of The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, and she served on the executive board of the Council of Academic Deans of Research Institutions in Education. Her PhD is in Educational Psychology from the University of Northern Colorado. Gypsy earned an MA in Counseling and Leadership from the University of Texas at El Paso and a BS in Social Work from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Her formal coaching training is from the College of Executive Coaching, and she provides coaching to current and aspiring higher education administrators. […]
Department Chairs Success Program Equip Your Department Chairs with the Skills, Confidence, and Support to Lead Effectively Compare Us to Other Programs Curious about how Academic Impressions stands out among leadership development programs? Download our comprehensive guide to see why institutions around the world trust us to empower their department chairs. SEE THE GUIDE Department chairs often lead with minimal formal leadership experience, facing the complexities of departmental politics and long-standing histories without structured support. Academic Impressions has empowered hundreds of department chairs globally to develop a clear leadership philosophy and essential interpersonal skills for navigating conflict and managing relationships at all levels. With the Department Chairs Success Program, your chairs will: Run More Effective and Collaborative Meetings, so they can achieve greater outcomes for their departments. Manage Negative or Resistant Faculty and Staff who may be slowing progress toward institutional priorities. Negotiate “Win-Win” Outcomes with stakeholders who have competing interests. Develop more effective, resilient chairs with the Department Chairs Success Program. What is Included in the Department Chairs Success Program? 01. Custom design session: You’ll start with a personalized design session where we work closely with you to tailor the program to the specific needs of your chairs. Together, we’ll […]
MEMBER EXCLUSIVE Emotional Intelligence for Academic Teams: A 5-Day Course Join our program to receive bite-sized lessons on emotional intelligence daily for 5 business days. The next cohort starts on Monday. Learn how to recognize emotions in yourself and others to improve your productivity or prepare for a promotion. Academic leaders and faculty members often cite the importance of interpersonal skills when leading an academic unit, managing a research team, or functioning as a productive member of any team or unit in academia. However, emotional intelligence and self-awareness are less commonly mentioned as predictors of success among academic teams. In this video course, department chairs and faculty will discover the connection between emotional intelligence and individual, team, and department results. Through Daniel Goleman’s four pillars of emotional intelligence, you will get ideas for how to: Manage graduate students, research teams, or labs more effectively Handle conflict and difficult personalities with more ease Mentor and manage graduate students You will learn Daniel Goleman’s four pillars of emotional intelligence and informally assess your skill in each of these pillars. Once you have a greater awareness of how you “show up” for yourself and others, we’ll offer simple suggestions for how you can […]
One of the biggest barriers we face in our work with institutions is the constant refrain that leaders don’t have time to do leadership development. We hear this about both faculty and staff leaders, but it’s most acute with Department Chairs. Even when institutions are willing to invest in providing leadership development to Chairs, they have a hard time getting them to participate. Some institutions have resorted to paying stipends for Chairs to participate in professional development. I think paying people to do leadership training sends the wrong message and is ultimately ineffective at producing better leaders. To be an effective leader requires a commitment to ongoing learning, not a “check the box” approach. So, What Can Institutions Do to Engage Chairs? For starters, senior leaders like Provosts and Deans need to model the way. They need to signal their commitment by investing in their own leadership through ongoing professional development, participating in 360-degree feedback processes, and using leadership coaches. These signals aren’t just symbolic; they will yield an improved culture of leadership from the top down. Academic Impressions’ research has found that when leaders model the way by investing in their own leadership and professional development, their direct […]
With 15 years of fundraising and volunteer management experience, Leitha has built a career on cultivating strong relationships, developing and leading dynamic teams, and establishing foundational programs that result in high performing teams and philanthropic growth. As a development professional with a background in organizational leadership and executive coaching, she enjoys training, inspiring, and cultivating staff, volunteers, executives, and boards in order to bring out the best in people and reach new philanthropic heights. Leitha has experience with all aspects of fundraising including annual funds, events, planned giving, capital projects, comprehensive campaigns, and major and principal gifts within national organizations, private education, and public post-secondary institutions. Her passion is twofold: developing solid fundraising skills within a team (including her own) and making truly rewarding philanthropic matches between donors and the causes they care most about. Most recently, she worked for seven years at the University of Calgary on the Energize Campaign. The institution raised $1.4 billion and Energize was Canada’s third largest post-secondary campaign at the time. She joined the University of Victoria in June 2021 and returned to her beautiful home province of British Columbia. Leitha’s passion for education is realized in her work at the University of Victoria […]
A SERIES ON INNOVATIONS IN FUNDING ACADEMIC RESEARCH Ed Mason, president of EMNR & Associates, is writing this series to assist academic leaders in finding creative strategies to merge public/private funding for existing and new research initiatives. Mason has studied an array of collaborative partnerships between the two offices most focused on external funding (the development office and research & grants), and he will be sharing some of the models he has observed, as well as directions for the future. We hope you will join us for this innovative series: In the traditional model for funding academic research at universities, multiple offices and departments interact with faculty in the administration of grants and gifts from external donors. Commonly, these offices do not interact frequently or communicate effectively with each other, which tends to create a “silo” effect. By moving instead to a team science model for defining and funding research initiatives, you will: What is Team Science, and What Does it Mean to Researchers and Development Officers? Team science is a proven model that creates partnerships between researchers, advancement professionals, and other key stakeholders at your institution. It involves developing strong collaborative teams who will be able to compete and successfully procure funding for high-priority research […]
The silo mentality that often exists on our campuses often limits our collective actions, and creates redundancy and replication. Given shrinking resources and the rapid pace of change, the siloed approach to team building and decision making is neither strategic nor feasible. We must work collaboratively to utilize the collective talents of our campus stakeholders. And learning to build high performing teams is one of the most effective ways we can meet the many challenges that confront us. If a senior leader can build a stellar team, the organizational leverage that can be achieved is powerful and can be a game changer for a campus. In this scenario: Stakeholders understand that cross-boundary collaboration is expected and supported by the actions of the senior team, because they model the way. Campuses are able to solve complex challenges because people work together to manage these challenges. People share resources, ideas, attention and effort, recognizing that the team, not just some individuals on it, really matter in serving the mission and vision of their campus. We have had the opportunity to work with scores of senior teams in higher education. Almost always, these teams were comprised of highly intelligent, dedicated, honest, and mission-driven individuals. But […]
A SERIES ON INNOVATIONS IN FUNDING ACADEMIC RESEARCH We hope you will join us for this innovative series: The “3C” Strategy for More Effective Fundraising Advancement and research offices can optimize their strategies to compete successfully for external funds by utilizing the “3C” approach. The “3C” approach is: Strategies for Enhanced Communication Over several decades, advancement and research offices have developed distinctly different approaches for fundraising. Advancement’s role is to procure gifts from donors who have very specific interests in funding priorities. Research works with faculty to compete for grants for specific scientific, outreach and training programs. Also, there are distinct “global” perspectives on each office role in working with their constituencies. Planning, facilitation and open discussions are vital to creating enhanced communication between the two offices. This is a new endeavor for many institutions, so take the time — whether it is 3 months or 1 year — to develop good rapport between your offices. To bridge this gap: Effective Collaboration Strategies Improved communication between advancement and research offices creates opportunities to pursue new funding sources. An effective collaborative model is composed of: Coordination Strategies for Advancement and Research The goal of successfully coordinating grants and gifts is to […]
Especially for those who are deliberate planners by nature, the rapid velocity and pressure of the current crisis can be turbulent. In this article, the president of the Hollins University offers higher-ed leaders the perspective of five leadership lessons or gifts that we can (re)learn in the midst of this chaotic moment. by Mary Hinton, President, Hollins University (recently President of the College of Saint Benedict) Existing in a Space of Chaos I am, by nature, a planner. As a college president, and in many other jobs I’ve held, strategic planning has been central to my work. Visioning, thoughtful deliberation and the opportunity to engage in proactive scenario planning and pitfall analysis are my favorite types of work. Suffice it to say, this year has challenged my nature in every way. Like many leaders, I find myself not only needing to rapidly think through what is best for my own campus community but also needing to react quickly to declarations and decisions coming from the federal and state governments, the state department of health, and other college leaders. For nearly everyone, and especially for those of us who thrive on deliberate planning, this season has been punishing. This crisis has […]
“We’re already seeing … you tell someone to cover their nose with their mask and they roll their eyes at you. Our staff have a lot of anxiety. But we’re all in this together.” “We need students to physically distance and stay safe, and to wear masks, but the academic library is not set up to be, and doesn’t need to be, the ‘COVID police’; what do we do?” by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions In mid-August, we held a four-hour virtual workshop in which academic library leaders from across North America convened to share challenges and strategies as they prepare for the fall. Amid all the uncertainty and unpredictability, one thing is clear: For many institutions, the academic library – long core to both the academic and social life of the campus – is only going to be more critical this fall. This is the case both for institutions that have a reopened physical campus and for institutions that are primarily virtual, at which the academic library may be one of the few sites on campus that remains open to the campus community. Our virtual workshops are unique in providing a space where participants can connect with their peers and leading […]
