Crisis Leadership In Higher Education

There was a time when crises on college and university campuses were relatively rare and episodic. Much has changed, and it has changed quite rapidly. Drawing upon original research, Crisis Leadership in Higher Education presents a theory-informed framework for academic and administrative leaders who must navigate the institutional and environmental crises that are most germane to institutions of higher education.

Women leaders and the COVID-19 pandemic are currently trending in the news. Major news outlets are all offering their positive opinions on how world-wide women leaders have addressed the crisis and reassured their people. While this sort of press coverage is certainly uplifting, little to no research has been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of women’s leadership decisions and strategies in these difficult times. In concert with these global struggles resulting from the pandemic are the challenges faced by higher education. Many colleges and universities have all but shuttered their doors and are conducting instruction, student support, and day-to-day business almost completely online. Women academic leaders bear a great load during global crises, with the combination of maintaining work responsibilities and caring for families and personal households. It is shown that women leaders may feel overwhelmed but remain heroes in unprecedented times of crisis. Women and Leadership in Higher Education During Global Crises informs readers and expands their understanding about specific challenges, issues, strategies, and solutions that are associated with women leaders in higher education, the implications during the current pandemic and other natural disasters, and how these strategies can be used for future agility and success. The chapters will cover narratives, strategies, and initiatives that women leaders are using to lead their institutions, departments, sectors, and organizations. It ties together the unimaginable challenges, joys, struggles, and successes encountered by women in leadership in higher education and is ideal for higher education administrators, teachers, leaders, faculty, provosts, deans, program leaders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in both the challenges and successes women leaders in higher education face during global crises.

FIRST EDITION SPECIAL RECOGNITION:Winner of the 2018 Sue DeWine Distinguished Scholarly Book Award, National Communication Association, Applied Communication Division REVIEWS OF THE FIRST EDITION“The book provides frameworks and resources that would be highly relevant for new and aspiring department chairs. In fact, this text is ideally designed to serve as a selection for a book discussion group.”—The Department Chair“Succeeds in providing accessible and useful resources to individuals across different leadership roles... As a midpoint between textbook and reference work, it is successful at both and provides a clear and unbiased background to issues facing current leaders.”—Reflective TeachingDuring a time of unprecedented challenges facing higher education, the need for effective leadership – for informal and formal leaders across the organization – has never been more imperative.Since publication of the first edition, the environment for higher education has become more critical and complex. Whether facing falling enrollments, questions of economic sustainability, the changing composition of the faculty and student bodies, differential retention and graduation rates, declining public confidence in the enterprise, or the rise in the use of virtual technologies – not to mention how COVID-19 and an intensified focus on long standing issues of racial and gender representation and equity have impacted institutions and challenged many long-standing assumptions – it is clear that learning on the job no longer suffices. Leadership development in higher education has become essential for advancing institutional effectiveness, which is the focus of this book.Taking into account the imperative issues of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, and the context of institutional mission and culture, this book centers on developing capacities for designing and implementing plans, strategies, and structures; connecting and engaging with colleagues and students; and communicating and collaborating with external constituencies in order to shape decisions and policies. It highlights the need to think broadly about the purposes of higher education and the dynamics of organizational excellence, and to apply these insights effectively in goal setting, planning and change leadership, outcomes assessment, addressing crises, and continuous improvement at both the level of the individual and organization.The concepts and tools in this book are equally valuable for faculty and staff leaders, whether in formal leadership roles, such as deans, chairs, or directors of institutes, committees, or task forces, or those who perform informal leadership functions within their departments, disciplines, or institutions. It can be used as a professional guide, a textbook in graduate courses, or as a resource in leadership training and development programs. Each chapter concludes with a series of case studies and guiding questions.

"Drawing upon the findings of a content analysis of over 1,000 articles from a variety of news outlets, along with the completion of 40 interviews with senior leaders from ten major research universities across the United States, the author presents a crisis leadership framework that can be useful for academic and administrative leaders in navigating those crises that are most germane to institutions of higher education. The book introduces readers from various academic disciplines to the relevant scholarly literature at the intersection of leadership in higher education, crisis management/communication, and organizational communication. Featured in this book are specific models and tools for current leaders in higher education, including a taxonomy of crisis types that are most germane for colleges and universities, a continuum for thinking through communication during crisis situations in higher education, and a scorecard of skills, values, and competencies required for effective crisis leadership"--

This book explores higher education leadership during times of extreme pressures and limited, changing information. Organized around different functional units in higher education institutions, chapters describe the ways in which campus communities were affected by and responded to the early pandemic crisis. By unpacking observations of real leaders from American institutions of higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic, this book provides lessons learned and takeaway strategies for complex decision-making during a crisis. This edited collection explores the unique moment when leaders and teams must make, implement, and adjust plans rapidly to assure delivery of their missions, while still addressing the needs of students, parents, employees, and stakeholders. Shining a bright light on decision-making in the early acute stage of a crisis, this book prepares higher education educators to be effective leaders and successful decision-makers.

It's more than fair to say that everyone is going through a time of unprecedented obstacles and uncertain outcomes.Higher education is certainly of no exception.Now, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and related challenges to educating students on campus, the need for leadership, crisis response, and change management from academic leadership, in this currently volatile landscape, is increasingly urgent.Compiled from Academic Leader articles, Leading through Crisis, Conflict, and Change in Higher Education brings you direct advice, from qualified subject matter experts from a variety of campuses, on wide-ranging nuanced aspects of managing difficult issues and topics.Leading through Crisis, Conflict, and Change in Higher Education emphasizes three key areas of higher education leadership and provides in-depth and extensive insights into each topic: Leading through Crisis Leading through Conflict Leading through Change Begin with valuable strategies and relevant guidance on navigating crucial topics, such as COVID-19, the #MeToo movement, and social injustice, among others, while steadily supporting your faculty, staff, and students.Next, receive a wealth of knowledge about managing conflicts on your campus. From the positive effects of conflict, to creating emotionally intelligent conversations, to managing intradepartmental conflict, to dealing with toxic leadership, and just understanding how to deal with those who just won't work cohesively with others, leading educators and leaders nationwide share how they directly deal with these issues and more.Finally, you'll discover numerous approaches about how to continuously improve and keep up with the constant changes of higher education, including innovation and technology, online education, inclusion and accessibility, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Open Educational Resources, and more.Leading through Crisis, Conflict, and Change in Higher Education is your compilation of strong and compelling guidance from leaders and educators who have gone through and are currently going through the same difficult moments you are. Make this your tool for discovering the multiple facets of crisis communication, conflict management, and change leadership in higher education.Get your thorough guide to the foremost facets of leading through unprecedented times.

A new playbook for effective crisis management in higher education. Unlike other industries, in higher education an institution's most important asset is its reputation. Yet as fundamental as it is, many leaders continue to view managing reputation as dishonest and counterproductive, a suspect process that undermines the very idea of reputation as an organic outcome of reality. When leadership credibility is on the line, though, and an institution's reputation is facing potentially irreparable damage, the concept of reputational risk moves from being nebulous to all too tangible. In Preventing Crises at Your University, Simon Barker demonstrates how critical it is for colleges and universities to align strategy and values with decision-making during times of crisis. Arguing that leaders must stop considering the discussion of reputational risk as unseemly, he demonstrates that this discussion is in fact a strategic imperative for every leader. Significant reputational damage, Barker asserts, is not the inevitable outcome of a crisis but of a poor response. Defining a new crisis leadership playbook to deal with self-inflicted crises, he also • explains what typically goes wrong in a crisis; • describes how to prevent crises from escalating; • demonstrates how a stakeholder-centric model of communications can help mitigate reputational damage; and • introduces a number of original concepts, including a Reputational Risk Management Framework, a Reputational Risk Maturity Model, and a Culture and Capability matrix. Moving beyond the theoretical by presenting case studies of real crises involving sexual assault, freedom of speech, student protests, faculty misconduct, and a broad range of financial, social, and ethical issues, the book highlights and underscore key concepts around effective management of reputational risk. Ultimately, Preventing Crises at Your University serves as a wake-up call for all higher education leaders and board members.

This handbook provides a frame of reference for the global challenges facing higher education leadership today. Focusing on recommendations and directions for the future rather than simply a recap of measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, the contributors also delve into contexts such as the climate crisis, issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, digitalisation, funding and marketisation, the war in Ukraine and China-Taiwan and Hong Kong tensions. They collate a systematic, global view of higher education systems during the pandemic and beyond, and explore possibilities for the future, providing recommendations for ‘the new normal’. With contributions from across six continents, the book will be of interest to students and scholars of higher education and governance, university leaders, government and accreditation bodies, and anyone else interested in reflecting on the past few years in higher education and the road ahead.