Shedding the Chrysalis

Black Women Leading in Higher Education

Olga M. Welch, Carolyn R. Hodges

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9781626711402
• Print ISBN:
  9781626711396
  9781626711389
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Shedding the Chrysalis: Black Women Leading in Higher Education features the voices of six experienced and emerging Black females in a variety of academic leadership roles. This book provides a Black feminist perspective, highlighting the need to address racial realism within higher education administration. These personal testimonies focus on a variety of levels in the academic hierarchy to emphasize the continuum across the lived experiences of these women, some of whom have served in multiple upper-level administrative roles. The contributors' positions range from postdoctoral research fellows to positions reporting to central administration at predominantly white institutions. Shedding the Chrysalis underscores what these women have learned from mentors, allies, and adversaries that can help us all—executive-level leaders, faculty and staff at all ranks, and those aspiring to leadership positions—to build and sustain a more stable terrain in academic leadership for a variety of minoritized groups.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Navigating Careers in Higher Education
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Voices of Black Women from the Contested Terrain of Higher Education Leadership
• 1 Conquering the Glass Cliff and Riding Deceptive Escalators: Black Women Leading with and beyond Difference
• 2 The DEI Conundrum for Black Women Leaders
• 3 The Reason Universities Don’t Have More Black Women in Higher Education Academic Leadership is Because They Don’t Want Them!: Revisiting the Past to Reshape the Present
• 4 From Gatekeeping to Groundskeeping: Cultivating Seeds of Black Women Emerging Leaders
• 5 Intercultural Dimensions and Higher Education Leadership: Barriers and Stepping Stones for Black Women Professionals in Unique Predominantly White Institutions
• From the Chrysalis to the Long Green Table: Closing Thoughts
• Afterword: “They Wouldn’t Let Us Lead…”
• Index
• Contributors