Shared Leadership in Higher Education : A Framework and Models for Responding to a Changing World

Today’s higher education challenges necessitate new forms of leadership. A volatile financial environment and the need for new business models and partnerships to address the impact of new technologies, changing demographics, and emerging societal needs, demand more effective and innovative forms of leadership. This book focusses on a leadership approach that has emerged as particularly effective for organizations facing complex challenges: shared leadership.

Rather than concentrating power and authority in an individual leader at the top of an organization, shared leadership involves multiple people influencing one another across varying levels and at different times. It is a flexible, collective, and non-hierarchical approach to leadership. Organizations that have implemented shared leadership have been better able to learn, innovate, perform, and adapt to the types of external challenges that campuses now face and that will continue to shape higher education in the future.

This book brings together the two foremost scholars of higher education who have studied, described and evaluated the impact of shared leadership, a university chancellor with prior experience of facilitating systemic institutional change at two university systems, and the former president of three universities where she coordinated processes that led to the transformational changes needed renew institutional mission and purpose.

Opening with four chapters that define the nature of shared leadership, describe its key characteristics, and how to build institutional capacity, the book then presents ten institutional cases. Ranging from institution-wide initiatives at four year colleges and a community college, to examples of managing change in a college, a center, and across STEM departments, the contributing authors describe the context and drivers of the need for change, the building of shared vision to create coalitions, lessons learned, and outcomes.

Intended as a resource for leaders at the highest levels such as Presidents and Provosts as well as mid-level leaders such as deans, directors, and department chairs, the book is also addressed to faculty and staff who are interested in collaborating with campus leaders on institutional decision-making or creating new change initiatives. It is intended to build capacity for shared leadership across institutions and for use in leadership courses and programs.

Elizabeth M. Holcombe is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Southern California’s Pullias Centerfor Higher Education.

Adrianna Kezar is a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California and codirector of the Pullias Center for Higher Education. Kezar is a national expert of student success, equity and diversity, the changing faculty, change, governance, and leadership in higher education.

Kezar is well published with 18 books and monographs, more than 100 journal articles, and more than 100 book chapters and reports. Recent books include Envisioning the Faculty of the 21st Century (Rutgers University Press, 2016), How Colleges Change (Routledge, 2013), Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership (Stanford Press, 2011) and Organizing for Collaboration (Jossey-Bass, 2009).

She is the project director for the Delphi Project on the changing faculty and student success and was just awarded a grant from the Teagle Foundation for institutions that better support faculty and create new faculty models.

Susan Elrod servesas the sixth chancellor of Indiana University South Bend. She has served as aprovost, dean, and in various academic leadership positions in the CaliforniaState University and the University of Wisconsin systems.

Judith A. Ramaley is President of Winona State University. Prior to coming to Minnesota, Dr. Ramaley held a presidential professorship in biomedical sciences at the University of Maine and was a Fellow of the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy. She also completed a residency as a Visiting Senior Scientist at the National Academy of Sciences.From 2001 to 2004, Dr. Ramaley was Assistant Director, Education and Human Resources Directorate (EHR) at the National Science Foundation (NSF).Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Ramaley was president and professor of biology at the University of Vermont.Dr. Ramaley has a special interest in higher education reform and has played a significant role in designing regional alliances to promote educational cooperation. She has contributed to national discussions about the changing nature of work and the workforce. She plays a national role in the exploration of civic responsibility and the role of higher education in promoting good citizenship. She also has published extensively on educational reform; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education; and the leadership of organizational change.