University Leadership and Management

As you will see throughout this program, leaders and managers in higher education can have a profound influence on a work group. They can also play a significant role in promoting better systems, practices and performance. Our goal is to help you reach a new level as someone who others choose to support and follow, and who guides their community towards optimal outcomes. Enjoy the journey.

1: Welcome to ‘University Leadership and Management’

2: The higher education context

3: Your personal development

The university context: An introduction contains 4 hours of optional activity content and 1.5 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Shelda Debowski
Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Head of Campus, University of Notre Dame Australia

University culture influences the way people interpret and respond to their work setting. It guides the beliefs and even the most ordinary tasks that people perform. As head of your team, you may be experiencing some obstacles in changing people’s behaviors and values. A better understanding of culture and its enactment in university settings can explain why some behaviors subvert and others support the university’s desired priorities and your attempts to lead and manage. Whilst you play a major part in shaping the culture within your department, you also need to understand the other influences that can affect the community.

1: Understanding university cultures

2: Leading organisational change

3: Building an effective organisational culture

4: Dealing with conflict in your department

Understanding University Cultures contains 13 hours of optional activity content and 4 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Shelda Debowski
Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Head of Campus, University of Notre Dame Australia

For universities and colleges, strategic planning is a relatively new activity, helping to clearly identify:

1. Mission, vision and objectives
2. Priorities and targets for improvement
3. The actions to be taken to achieve them.

Despite its relative novelty, the importance of good strategic planning is widely recognized throughout the higher education sector – and the need for good strategic planning has arguably never been greater.

1: The role of strategic planning

2: Developing the strategic plan

3: Implementing your strategic plan

4: Integrating effective planning

Strategic Planning contains 9 hours of optional activity content and 3.5 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Peter McCaffery
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, London Metropolitan University

It is widely recognised that a higher education institution’s people are its most precious resource: the key to achieving its strategic plan, the basis on which its reputation lies – and more. The management of people is therefore a crucial responsibility for all higher education leaders and managers if we are to achieve the aspiration of establishing well-motivated and high-performing departments. But let us not fool ourselves either: exhortations about the value of staff are often met with scepticism, often because staff themselves feel that their institution fails to practise what it preaches. It is here, then, that you can make a real and substantial difference in your role. As a head, you play the key role in motivating your staff, developing their competence, improving their performance, realising their potential and maximising their contribution. The aim of this course is to help you do just that.

1: The HR challenge for HE managers

2: Motivating staff

3: Recruiting and inducting staff

4: Optimizing high performance

Managing People contains 6 hours of optional self development activity content

Professor Peter McCaffery
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, London Metropolitan University

Your skill in managing the fiscal, facilities and human resources available to your administrative unit will be essential to your success as a manager and to the success of the department. As the fiscal issues surrounding higher education become more complex so does the role of the resource manager within a department at a college or university. The challenges are many and include an increase in the competition for funds in both the public and private sectors of the economy. Governments are faced with demands for increasing expenditure on infrastructure, as well as increasing demands for governmental services. In addition, higher education is becoming increasingly dependent on private funding to meet needs formerly met through government funding. Concurrently, operational costs for institutions have risen, including – but not limited to – the cost of technology, other goods and services, and the increased competition for qualified academic staff.

1: Responsibilities and roles of a head of department

2: Resource management: governance, mission, strategic plan

3: Understanding departmental finances

4: Managing departmental budgets

Managing Resources contains 7 hours of optional activity content and 3 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities

Professor Margaret Barr
Professor Emeritus, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University

Dr George McClellan
Vice-Chancellor for Student Affairs, Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne

Academic and teaching departments and support or service units are the core of your university institution. They are the first-line units through which your institution fulfils its mission, serves its students and the community, and most directly engages in discovering and disseminating knowledge. These units do the ‘work’ of the university, and in many ways the major purpose of much of the rest of the university is to support them.

In the four modules of this course we hope to give you some ideas and suggestions on how to improve the functioning of your department and your institution, while at the same time making your role more satisfying and rewarding.

1: Introduction to academic management and leadership

2: Becoming an effective academic manager

3: Becoming an effective academic leader

4: Maintaining influence

Making the most of discussion contains 6.5 hours of optional activity content and 5 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Robert Birnbaum
Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Maryland, College Park