EDHE 6710

04.22.2009

discussion of last week's presentation at NCTC

(Dr. Lee Ann Nutt, VP of Instruction)

• "a great place to start, a great place to start over"
• organizational structure (chart)
• all upper admin reports directly to the president--unusual (for bureaucratic)--shows the colleagial model
• posted organizational chart without lines!!  that's telling: it shows how informal, colleagial it is
• she also mentioned how people don't have to report just to their direct superior
• can't necessarily group community colleges into bureaucracy that easily

project outline

for the presentation and the paper

management principles

• leadership as vision, management as people/action/coordination
• leaders who manage are often seen as micro-managers
• but they should be aware of management principles
• why is management important?
• trends: academic
  • market-based (strategic planning, marketing, control)
• trends: business (moved more toward academic world)
  • soft techniques (socializing employees, culture and values)
• contraditions: current academic management trends are based on things we would associate with business, and vice-versa
• critical points:
  • question the longer-term effectiveness of strategic planning (does it just become an exercise)
  • increased attention to Japanese organizations
  • necessary to focus on human development and organizational culture
• what are differences?
  • academia: complex cultural organization
  • common institutional tradition and shared symbols
  • collected academic profession
  • academic disciplines
• academic culture is declining
  • eroded enterprise structure (rapid growth of systems, orientation toward discipline base)
  • academic profession in decline (finances--used to be more money around, isolation--we promote isolation in many ways, including isolating teaching from research)
  • rather than promote "renegade" or free academic thought, tenure can be seen as shaping faculty into a specific mold
• recommendations:
  • renew symbolic life and skills of the social organization: what were the joys of academia 20 years ago?
  • think of the whole, not the parts (difficult in a "multiversity")
  • attempt to bring interdisciplinary projects and programs together
• organizational adaptation
  • changes motivated by the external environment (finance is one of the biggest factors)
  • looks at conditions and sources of change
  • how often do we see revolution in education?
• building learning organizations (help org. become learnig communities)
  • new tools...
  • systems archetypes (understand what happens in systems, so that we can know how to change them; these are assumptions of how things work, that we may not be very conscious of)
    • delay, limits to growth, shift burden, eroding goals, escalation, commons, growth and underinvestment
  • charting strategic dilemmas (can we determine what dilemmas we face, and how we face them?)
    • elicit potential dilemmas, map, process, frame, sequence, wave, synergize
  • "the Left-Hand Column" (handout)
    • brings hidden assumptions to the surface (or even hidden thoughts--what's going on inside the head of each party)
    • it takes a lot of time to help some individuals develop in their initiative and job skills
    • may be capable, but have been rejected from multiple areas on campus--you must work harder as a manager and evaluate your assumptions/thoughts closely in your interactions
    • if your goal is to build a learning community, you have to NOT function on assumptions
    • difficult part of management is realizing your assumptions

presidency

• data from the American Council on Education

• regarding the human element of the presidency

• who are the presidents in colleges & universities in the US? (gender, race, ethnicity, etc.)
• what does the pathway to the presidency look like?  who's being prepped to follow them?
• leadership & presidency
• traditionally, the senior leaders have been those directly in line for the presidency
• particularly certain positions of senior leadership
• aging of presidents: 1986 to 2006: much older presidents in 2006; about half are 61 or older
• only 8% age 31 to 50!!! (was 42% in 1986--big shift)
• there's an assumption that senior leaders are or want to become president at some point
• women presidents: 10% in 1986, 23% in 2006 (of all presidents)
• to what extent have current leaders benefitted from succession planning?
• used a lot of HR information (surveys, databases)
• new presidents' most recent prior position: provost (40%; 2006)
• also: other senior positions (16%), non-academic executives (23%), non-academics (17%)
• women are more likely to be senior administrators (in pipeline to become president)
• percentages of women in senior administrator positions (esp. chief of staff, chief diversity officer)
• percentages for people of color are much lower than women
• minorities are most likely to hold positions of Diversity and Student Affairs (Diversity, 84%)
• in four minority groups, Asians least equal in leadership positions according to population--very large representation in senior faculty, very small in leadership positions
• more women presidents at community colleges
• avg. tenure for presidents has increased to 8.5 years
• half of senior administrators were promoted internally; only 28% of presidents were promoted internally

• ACE Fellow
• premiere professional development program for presidents
• they select senior administrators or others who would like to presidents; for a year are fellows
• and placed on campuses where they are mentored by presidents
• rigorous selection process