April, 2008

Academic Leader - April, 2008 - Full Issue PDF
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Changing Departmental Culture through Strategic Planning
By Lon Dehnert, PhD
Imagine the following scenario: your faculty and staff are meeting in a conference room to develop a long-range strategic plan. A longtime member of the faculty (and former chair), who is quite outspoken and respected by many, begins by sharing her/his input: “Why are we here? What is it that we are going to do that we haven’t done a dozen times before?

The “Spider-Man Principle” and the “Categorical Imperative”: How to Address the Problem of “Managing Through”
By Jeffrey L. Buller, PhD
“Managing through” is the administrative practice of passing difficult decisions on to a higher level of the organization in order to avoid the consequences of having made an unpopular choice. For instance, a department chair may receive a request from a faculty member that the institutional cap on travel funding be waived in his or her case. If the chair believes that this exemption is unnecessary or inappropriate but that refusing it would cause negative repercussions, the chair might practice managing through by approving the request and hoping that it will be turned down by the dean or provost.

Overcoming Obstacles to Faculty Participation in Distance Education
Teaching online can be daunting for many faculty members. Learning new technology, meeting the needs of online learners, understanding online pedagogy, and managing workload and time are some of the challenges they must deal with. And it is up to academic leaders to provide the support and resources to encourage faculty to teach online and to continue teaching online.

The Changing Nature of Meetings: Hybrid Teleconferencing in Higher Education
By Joan Thormann, PhD, and Isa Kaftal Zimmerman, EdD
We have observed that higher education faculty and administrators are often at different locations so that face-to-face meetings, until recently considered the norm, are becoming less common and more challenging. In the interests of cost-effectiveness and convenience, face-to-face meetings often include one or more telephone or video participants.