Intercollegiate athletics occupies a unique place in higher education, but little is known about administrators working in this area. This chapter proposes a functional definition of "mid-level" in the context of college sports, describes the prevalence of these jobs nationally, and summarizes key factors associated with mid-level…

Mid-level managers have the difficult task of juggling needs and direction of entry-level staff with the demanding outcomes from their supervisors and senior leadership. To be successful, they must maneuver through demanding expectations from their supervisors while simultaneously garnering buy-in from those they directly supervise in order to…

This chapter continues the discussion of what leadership education is and highlights the importance of emotionally intelligent leadership. The authors assert the need for deliberate practice and better collaboration between student affairs, academic affairs, and academic departments to develop emotionally intelligent leaders.

This chapter explores the work-life experiences of administrators as well as whether and how the ideal worker model affects those experiences. Departmental and supervisory differences and technology complicate administrators' work-life experiences.

The Lipscomb University Adult Degree Program exemplifies how a centralized governance system can benefit nontraditional college students and promote cross-departmental interactions. The two-person staff of the adult program at Lipscomb University envisions a number of potential benefits of having a much larger staff. However, such a programmatic…

North Park University's adult program has moved steadily from a centralized governance structure toward a more distributed structure in many ways. The School of Adult Learning hires its own faculty, some of whom are full time in the adult program. The school also has autonomy over academic policy. Ultimately, this academic autonomy has fostered…

The reputation of UC Merced as a student centered research university rested on administration's success in attracting top-flight faculty. This chapter describes how this process started, through choosing the deans, then recruiting the faculty. As faculty arrived, the academic picture came into focus. Not surprisingly, the initial ideas about …

Case studies show the capacity of chairpersons to make distinct improvement in their departmental management. This would occur more often if there were systematic attention to the evaluation of institutions, departments, and chairpersons so that the objectives for decision making in departments are clarified. A chairperson evaluation form is…

Describes the development of a mission statement for the biology department at Morehouse College, and discusses how mission statements at the departmental level can frame strategic planning and assessment efforts, build community, and focus teaching and research activities. (EV)

What is perceived as poor fit between liberal arts and the individual disciplines results not from narrow subject matter or analytical focus but from the disciplines keeping too many of the interesting questions to themselves. College students are not exposed enough to the reasons their teachers find their fields compelling. (MSE)

Reviews National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and American College Personnel Association involvement in fostering student and academic affairs partnerships. Summarizes work of national organizations to foster this movement and suggests future directions for partnerships. Contains a reprint of "Powerful Partnerships,"…

Summarizes results of a national study of academic and student affairs that examined reasons for collaboration, number of institutions engaged in partnerships and types of collaboration, successful approaches, and barriers to and facilitators of collaboration. (EV)

Presents lessons illustrating that academic-student affairs partnerships must be more strategic if they are to be sustained. Successful partnerships take an opportunistic approach, commit ongoing financial resources, manage staff turnover, mitigate culture clashes, link to campus assessment, publicize their successes, obtain board-level support,…

Describes creation of a full partnership between academic and student affairs at a new institution, the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts. (EV)

At Carnegie Mellon University, collaborative strategic planning promotes institutional distinction through the development of focused departments that exploit university strengths and opportunities. Implications of decentralized university organization and the need for centralized leadership are discussed. (MLW)