Leading Colleges and Universities: Lessons from Higher Education Leaders

How experienced college and university leaders guide successful institutions―and why they sometimes lose their way.

Today's college and university leaders face complex problems that test their political acumen as well as their judgment, intellect, empathy, and ability to plan and improvise. How do they thoughtfully and creatively rise to the challenge? In Leading Colleges and Universities, editors Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, Gerald B. Kauvar, and E. Gordon Gee bring together a host of presidents and other leaders in higher education who describe how they dealt with the issues.

Each contributor has been effective as a president or other significant leader in postsecondary education. In this book they share real-life examples and stories that illustrate how they have dealt with the challenges they encountered. Together they answer these and other core questions:
• How do you manage college athletics, faculty, a governing board, donors, and a local community?
• What do you need to know about crisis management and legal affairs?
• When should you be outspoken in the media and when should you be quiet?

The book does not shy away from hot contemporary issues, tackling such controversial matters as free speech, Title IX, athletics, fraternities, student and faculty diversity, and board relations. Presidents and would-be presidents―as well as boards, search committees, state boards, legislators, and others involved in higher education―will find much helpful guidance in this timely book.

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg was a long-serving president of George Washington University and the former president of the University of Hartford. He is the author of Big Man on Campus: A University President Speaks Out on Higher Education, Reflections on Higher Education, and Speaking His Mind: Five Years of Commentary on Higher Education.

Gerald B. Kauvar is the special assistant to the president emeritus and a research professor of public policy and public administration at George Washington University. He is a coauthor of Presidencies Derailed: Why University Leaders Fail and How to Prevent It.

E. Gordon Gee is the president of West Virginia University. He is the coeditor of Leading Colleges and Universities: Lessons from Higher Education Leaders, and a the coauthor of Land-Grant Universities for the Future.