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The Essential Academic Dean: A Practical Guide to College Leadership

Book
Buller, Jeffrey L.
2007
Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA
LB2341.B743 2007
Topics: Leadership and Faculty Development

Additional Info:
The role of an academic dean is extremely complex, involving budgeting, community relations, personnel decisions, managing a large enterprise, mastering numerous details, fundraising, and guiding a school or college toward a compelling vision for the future. But no academic dean can quickly master all of the intricacies involved in this challenging position. For instance, how do you build support for a shared vision of your unit's future? How do you interact effectively with all of the different internal and external constituencies that a dean must serve? How do you set, supervise, and implement a budget? How do you handle the volume of documents that cross your desk? How do you fire someone, ask a chair to step down, respond to a reporter on the telephone, and settle disputes about intellectual property rights? How do you know when it's time to consider leaving your current position for another opportunity? The Essential Academic Dean is about the "how" of academic leadership. Based on a series of workshops given by the author on college administration and management, each topic deals concisely with the most important information deans need at their fingertips when faced with a particular challenge or opportunity. Written both as a comprehensive guide to the academic deanship and as a ready reference to be consulted when needed, this book emphasizes proven solutions over untested theories and stresses what deans need to know now in order to be most successful as academic leaders. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
About the Author.
Introduction.

Part I: The Dean’s Role.
ch. 1 The View from the Middle.
ch. 2 Preparing for the Dean’s Role.
ch. 3 What Kind of Dean Are You?
ch. 4 Creating a Vision for the College.
ch. 5 Building a Shared Vision for the College.
ch. 6 Launching Initiatives.
ch. 7 Leading Reform.
ch. 8 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Role.

Part II: The Dean’s Constituents.
ch. 9 Students.
ch. 10 Parents.
ch. 11 Faculty.
ch. 12 Challenging Employees.
ch. 13 Department Chairs.
ch. 14 Staff.
ch. 15 Other Deans.
ch. 16 Upper Administrators.
ch. 17 Friends of the College.
ch. 18 Donors and Potential Donors.
ch. 19 Boards, Trustees, and Legislators.
ch. 20 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Constituents.

Part III: The Dean’s Staff.
ch. 21 Searching for and Building a Strong Administrative Team.
ch. 22 Interviewing a Candidate.
ch. 23 Closing the Deal.
ch. 24 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Staff.

Part IV: The Dean’s Budget.
ch. 25 Setting Budgetary Priorities.
ch. 26 Supervising a Budget.
ch. 27 Implementing Budget Cuts.
ch. 28 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Budget.

Part V: The Dean’s Documents.
ch. 29 Budget Proposals.
ch. 30 Faculty Evaluations.
ch. 31 Chair Evaluations.
ch. 32 Position Requests and Descriptions.
ch. 33 Program Reviews.
ch. 34 Policies and Procedures.
ch. 35 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Documents.

Part VI: The Dean’s Leadership.
ch. 36 Leadership When Meeting One on One.
ch. 37 Leadership When Chairing Committees.
ch. 38 Leadership from the Middle.
ch. 39 Leadership in Development and Increasing Revenue.
ch. 40 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Leadership.

Part VII: The Dean’s Challenges.
ch. 41 Terminating a Faculty Member.
ch. 42 Replacing a Chair.
ch. 43 Responding to Emergencies.
ch. 44 Dealing with the Media.
ch. 45 Intellectual Property Disputes.
ch. 46 Addressing Differences with Other Administrators.
ch. 47 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Challenges.

Part VIII: The Dean’s Unique Opportunities.
ch. 48 The Honors College.
ch. 49 The Professional School.
ch. 50 The Graduate School.
ch. 51 Consortia, Centers, and Institutes.
ch. 52 The Unionized Environment.
ch. 53 Promoting Diversity.
ch. 54 The Dean as Chief Academic Officer.
ch. 55 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Unique Opportunities.

Part IX: The Dean’s Next Step.
ch. 56 Knowing When It’s Time to Go.
ch. 57 Changing Institutions.
ch. 58 Returning to the Faculty.
ch. 59 Planning for a Higher Administrative Role.
ch. 60 A Scenario Analysis on the Dean’s Next Step.

Epilogue: A Checklist for the Essential Academic Dean.
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