Author: Thomas McDaniel
The situation: You are an academic dean. Your president is one of the new-breed leaders, a nonacademic administrator whose expertise is in business management, alumni affairs, social life, or development. Further, your faculty is a ...
My son the political philosopher, who works under a devilish dean at a here-unnamed state university, assures me that Stanley Bing’s new book, What Would Machiavelli Do?, misses the essence of the great political thinker’s ...
Nearly everyone finds twins interesting. That is so, in part, because twins are relatively rare, with only three or four out of 1,000 births producing twins and only about 25 percent of those being monozygotic—the ...
Yogi Berra said a lot of stupid things that had a ring of truth about them, such as “Even the future ain’t what it used to be,” “You can observe a lot just by watching,” ...
College amenities have long been a topic of concern for college administrators as well as students and parents. What should college and university administrators know about such concerns as they examine policies and practices ...
To serve a college or university as a dean or provost is a special honor and responsibility. I had the pleasure to be in such offices—from department chair, to division head, to dean, to vice ...
Last year, I wrote an essay for Academic Leader suggesting that new deans should examine the administrative implements in their metaphorical ”toolbox” to make sure they were ready for the job at hand: providing leadership ...
Those of us who have served our institutions as deans or provosts know that leadership requires many skills—some of which we bring to the job and some of which we develop in office. I think ...
“There is nothing so practical as a good theory,” said John Dewey, one of America’s most important philosophers. And I say there is nothing so practical as a sound liberal arts education. Academic leaders are ...
Today’s college campus is a laboratory for the US Constitution’s First Amendment provision declaring that government may not “abridge” a citizen’s individual rights with respect to five related freedoms: religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. ...
