Succession Planning in Rural Community Colleges

Competent leadership is essential for institutions of any size to respond to the challenges facing post-secondary institutions. However, rural community colleges are especially vulnerable to the forces of change due to aging infrastructure, accelerated retirements, and geographic isolation that often limits competent and diverse applicant pools for future leaders. As senior administrators retire at rapid rates, geographic location and scarce resources can hamper leadership continuity. Few studies have explored how the leadership pipeline is established and maintained in rural community colleges and how institutional and community values shape that process. The study highlights the extent to which the co-dependent relationship between community stakeholders and the rural community college shapes its institutional culture and leadership development.

Setting the Vision for Campus Outreach and Engagement

Outreach and engagement are essential functions of American higher education. Despite having historical commitment and missions aligned to community engagement, many colleges and universities struggle to prioritize community engagement efforts within and across institutions. Community engagement is often viewed as a lesser priority behind teaching and research and is thus an afterthought. This chapter explores the development of community engagement in American higher education in the 20th century and key initiatives that underscore its importance to fulfilling college and university missions and goals. Motivation and rewards for faculty along with student benefits are also explored. Finally, actions that should be taken by college and university leaders to ensure that community engagement is prioritized are discussed.

Mentoring the Next Generation of Leaders

This chapter explores how college presidents and college student government association presidents interact and communicate, including how they can build strong working relationships and how they can collaborate to address and meet the needs of the student body. Drawing on existing literature, the chapter provides an overview of the college presidency, student involvement, student government, student government leadership, and expectations college presidents have of student government association presidents.

The Evolution of the Community College President in the 21st Century

The college presidency is in a state of disarray in the 21st century. In the past, community college presidents could focus their efforts on academic programs, community relations, and donor engagement. College presidents could be the visionary leaders of their communities by providing educational programs to help students transfer to a university or allow them to enter the workforce. The job has become more of a reactionary role in which they are required to make quick decisions in a crisis. They are now forced to focus on cybersecurity, pandemic outbreaks, faculty unions, local and state governance issues, and little-to-no state funding.

Presidents' Role in Broadening Participation in STEM

To represent its population, the nation should have a diverse science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce. It is known that Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) serve as key producers of minority STEM graduates. As such, HBCUs have contributed to the diverse workforce. Therefore, this chapter examined the role of presidents at HBCUs in broadening participation in STEM fields. Presidents at four HBCUs participated in a semi-structured interview. The four academic leadership frames (structural, human resources, political, and symbolic) were used to explain the factors that have contributed to HBCUs' success rates. Identified factors were providing students with research and internship opportunities, having an adequate STEM curriculum, having appropriate faculty and personnel at the institution, having financial resources, and creating an environment that was nurturing and supportive of students.

The College Presidency

This chapter explores the defining events and leaders in American higher education during the past 75 years. Special attention is directed at the defining events and leaders of the 1960s and 1970s that have shaped so much of the current landscape of higher education. The chapter begins by exploring the idea of a 'career president', a recent trend during the past four or five decades, and includes both influential leaders who have spent significant time at one institution, to those who move to different institutions throughout their career entirely in the role of president. The chapter concludes by offering critical questions about the future of the academy.

Pathways to the Presidency

There is no singular way to prepare for the unique challenges of a college or university presidency. College and university presidents, as well as those who aspire to the position, utilize a myriad of professional experiences as they navigate the complexities of the role. The purpose of this chapter is to review the traditional and nontraditional career pathways of college and university presidents, discuss the preparation practices utilized by higher education leaders to be successful in the presidency, and offer advice for aspiring college and university presidents.

The Community College Presidency

The breadth of issues faced by community college presidents today cannot be overstated. While the importance of the position has remained since the creation of community colleges, the roles they play, types of challenges they face, and how they influence and lead their institutions have changed throughout the decades. The roles of presidents today can be examined under four categories: financial officer, community representative, political representative, and academic officer. Through each of these lenses, this chapter explores how presidents lead their institutions under these roles, the responsibility of each role, and the challenges facing contemporary and future community college presidents.

Navigating the New Normal

The higher education world within the US changed markedly and permanently with the COVID-19 shutdown in March of 2020. The exact impact of this change will vary by institution and be evolving for years, but higher education leaders will need to negotiate this changed environment in the most effective way possible for their individual institution. Unlike previous major changes, the COVID-19 shutdown greatly restricted options and resources at the disposal of higher education leaders. This presents an unprecedented challenge to those who are tasked with preserving and furthering their institutions. However, in the midst of this unexpected challenge to the very existence of some institutions, many now have developed the necessary capabilities to carry out their missions more broadly than ever before. It is the purpose of this chapter to explore the changes that are influencing colleges and universities in the US and to propose ways that chancellors and presidents can navigate these conditions to allow their institutions to survive and even thrive.

University Administrators as Caring Academic Leaders in an HBCU Setting

This chapter examines caring university administrative leadership within a bureaucratic reality of authentic university academic caring (AUAC). AUAC is regarded as a university's formal intent to provide genuine academic caring: caring about (emotive attention; motive), care for (disciplined nurturing), caregiving (institutional guardianship), and care receiving (student as customers). In the bureaucratic realm, caring administrative leadership is an administrative capacity to guide, influence, inspire, and motivate an institution to achieve the goals of AUAC. This chapter opens by providing scholarly support for caring administrative leadership as a critical element of AUAC. This chapter also includes an account of a research study and empirical analysis that investigated the association between caring administrative leadership and AUAC at the University of the Virgin Islands, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Ultimately, this chapter identifies direction for future research in authentic caring university leadership.