Dr. Renay M. Scott currently serves as the Vice President of Student Success at New Mexico State University. She began her career at New Mexico State University in 2014, as the 9th president the of Doña Ana Community College, an NMSU branch campus. She moved to the Las Cruces campus in 2018, and from her role in the Division of Student Success has also served as senior womens’ administrator for Athletics plus interim provost and graduate dean. Dr. Scott previously held administrative positions in two-year and four-year, public and private institutions including serving as provost, vice provost and dean. She served as department chair and associate department chair at Central Michigan University where she attained the rank of professor in teacher education. Dr. Scott’s leadership blends service, teaching and coaching. As a servant, she ensures the success of others by communicating expectations, supporting individuals through utilization of their strengths, and developing collaborative, risk-taking spaces to allow for innovation. As a teacher, Dr. Scott supports her team’s development through assessment, feedback, and guidance, leading to reflection to support person growth in leadership, management, decision making, and conflict management. As a coach, Dr. Scott believes in establishing an aspirational vision and supporting […]
Psychological safety is the belief that you will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. When you have psychological safety, you have the freedom to be vulnerable. You can take risks without feeling a sense of failure or ridicule. Teams that have psychological safety are more innovative, creative, and cohesive because vulnerability will not be held against anyone. In times of confusion or conflict, leaders and supervisors often try to bring teams together by creating a common vision or by clarifying goals and processes. But before these steps can be effective, you need to ensure a high level of psychological safety within your team. Without that foundation, your team will not function as cohesively. Join us online for this two-part webcast series to learn how to foster a deeper sense of psychological safety within your team.
Chairs occupy an essential position on our campuses, sitting at the intersection point that connects our faculty to institutional strategy, context, and culture. They also make some of the most impactful decisions that shape the university, overseeing decisions related to hiring, promotion, and curriculum. Yet for most institutions, the support and training available to chairs is minimal. Most of the training provided to chairs is limited to topics like how to work with HR, budgeting, and promotion & tenure. But what truly separates effective chairs from ineffective chairs are their leadership skills, such as: Academic Impressions has been trusted to effectively train department chairs across the U.S. and Canada for over ten years. In this free webcast, we’ll discuss the keys to our success, what works and what doesn’t, and create a space for others to share their best practices. If you need to start or enhance chair development at your own institution, we invite you to join us for this program.
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 […]
During this two-hour virtual workshop, Dr. Sandra Miles, Head of Practice for Team Development at Academic Impressions, will lead us as we explore the ways feelings of defensiveness and discomfort can be very common when engaging in conversations around favoritism and unfairness. Even those who have done extensive reading on topics related to conflict management can find themselves fumbling if they haven’t yet reflected on how their personal feelings may impact the ways they show up in the world—and in these difficult conversations. To get more comfortable engaging in these dialogues, we must first lean into the discomfort of individual reflection and actions that prepare us to enter into them in an open and effective way. Join us for a two-hour virtual training where we will explore four key concepts and how they come into play during conversations around topics that are deeply personal: You will be given a workbook of activities, tools, and resources to help you move beyond simply understanding these key concepts. Throughout the workshop, you will begin the hard work of interpreting how favoritism can show up in every aspect of the work we do, and how an orientation around fairness improves relationships, morale, and trust.
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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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 […]
