Higher Education Leadership in a Changing World

The coronavirus pandemic remains one of the most significant and unpredictable global public health crises. The disease (COVID-19) caused by the virus represents a complex and ambiguous adaptive crisis that prompted the rise of the allostatic higher education leader. These leaders were able to learn from the pandemic and inspire faculty to exhibit similar leadership behaviors such as connecting with people, distributing leadership, and communicating clearly. COVID-19 provided higher education leadership with the opportunity for mission-driven changes related to course delivery models, pedagogy, student choices, affordability, access, and opportunity, and the post-COVID-19 institute of higher education will be a better place to work, and more student-centric. Those academic leaders with the adaptive capacity to see the crisis as an opportunity will envision a continued role for new and disruptive technologies. The pandemic has also provided faculty leaders with an opportunity for self-reflection that in many cases was long overdue.