Culturally Responsive Customer Service: A Holistic Approach to Student Retention

Service excellence requires an ethic of care and cultural sensitivity that recognizes students’ strengths and unique backgrounds to allow you to meet them where they are. Combining these two approaches into a culturally responsive customer service initiative allows an institution to provide holistic support throughout students’ academic journey, which in turn has a direct impact […]

Intentionally Build Your Executive Presence

Executive presence is an amalgamation of your emotional, aesthetic, and communication behaviors, and it influences your ability to successfully grow as a leader. While your accomplishments, expertise, and experience are the bedrock of your career, building skills to enhance your executive presence can further support your professional reputation and growth. This workshop will help you […]

Advancing Your DEI Strategy Across Viewpoints

Leaders of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are continually charged with spearheading initiatives that require them to navigate critical conversations with stakeholders who may have divergent or even radically different views and opinions than their own. In some cases, these views can run counter to the goals of the initiative at hand. In these possibly […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]