Practical Leadership in Community Colleges

Navigating Today's Challenges

George R. Boggs, Christine J. McPhail

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781119095156
• eBook ISBN: 9781119094883
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Anticipate, manage, and overcome the complex issues facing community colleges

Practical Leadership in Community Colleges offers a path forward through the challenges community colleges face every day. Through field observations, reports, news coverage, and interviews with leaders and policy makers, this book digs deep into the issues confronting college leaders and provides clear direction for managing through the storm. With close examination of both emerging trends and perennial problems, the discussion delves into issues brought about by changing demographics, federal and state mandates, public demand, economic cycles, student unrest, employee groups, trustees, college supporters, and more to provide practical guidance toward optimal outcomes for all stakeholders. Written by former presidents, including a past president of the American Association of Community Colleges, this book provides expert guidance on anticipating and managing the critical issues that affect the entire institution. Both authors serve as consultants, executive coaches, and advisors to top leaders, higher education institutions, and leadership development programs throughout the United States.

Community colleges are facing increasingly complex issues from both without and within. Some can be avoided, others only mitigated—but all must be managed, and college leaders must be fully prepared or risk failing the students and the community. This book provides real-world guidance for current and emerging leaders and trustees seeking more effective management methods, with practical insight and expert perspective.

• Tackle the college completion challenge and performance-based funding initiatives
• Manage through economic cycles, declining support, and calls for accountability
• Delve into the issues of privatization and employee unionization
• Execute strategies to align institutional goals and mission
• Manage organizational change and new ways of thinking that are essential in today's competitive environment
• Manage issues involving diversity, inclusiveness, and equity
• Prepare adequately for campus emergencies

Community colleges are the heartbeat of the nation's higher education system, and bear the tremendous responsibility of serving the needs of a vast and varied student body. Every day may bring new issues, but effective management allows institutions to rise to the challenge rather than falter under pressure. Practical Leadership in Community Colleges goes beyond theory to provide the practical guidance leadership needs to more effectively lead institutions to achieve results and serve the students and the community.

CHAPTER 1
LEADERSHIP ISSUES MANAGEMENT

Thinking About Leadership

Students of leadership theory have been able to follow the evolution of thinking about leaders, starting with the early belief that they are born with unique, undefined abilities that others simply do not have. After several years of studying leadership, scholars began to postulate that leaders possessed certain specific traits—such as high intelligence, creativity, and responsibility—at levels not found in other people. Then researchers developed the hypothesis that leadership traits were behavioral and could be developed. Contingency theory (also called situational leadership) advanced the notion that effective leadership behaviors were dependent upon what the situation called for (Hersey, 1984). Transactional and transformational theories of leadership examined the relationship between leaders and followers and the ability of leaders to motivate followers to make transformational changes (Bass, 1990). Bolman and Deal (1991) developed a framework for classifying leaders, arguing that leaders had strengths in one or more of four frames: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. Leaders can use the frames as a way of assessing their strengths and the strengths and weaknesses of their leadership team. Several other assessments have been used to identify preferred individual and group leadership styles.

Kent Farnsworth (2007) applied the Greenleaf concept of servant leadership to higher education, arguing that leadership is essentially an act of service. Haden and Jenkins (2015) describe nine virtues of exceptional leaders. They make a case that the most effective leaders have in common the virtues of humility, honesty, courage, perseverance, hope, charity, balance, wisdom, and justice. Pairing practitioners and researchers, Campbell (1985) addressed community college leadership in the areas of strategic planning, governance, finance, curriculum, human resources, technology, resource development, and public relations. Myron and colleagues (2003) examined the issues of transformational change, organizational design, policy development, student development, curriculum development and instructional delivery, workforce development, staff development, and resource development as they apply to leadership in community colleges. Also writing specifically for community colleges, Pamela Eddy (2010) made a case for viewing leadership from a multidimensional perspective: that a community college leader requires a variety of competencies—some skill based, some personality based, and others learned through experience. Eddy (2012) followed that publication with an issue of New Directions in Community Colleges that focused on the development, study, and implementation of the leadership competencies published by the American Association of Community Colleges in 2005 with support of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Roueche and Jones (2005) argued for the importance of entrepreneurial leadership and the willingness to take calculated risks to advance an institution, especially in an environment of declining public resources.

Scholars have studied leadership for a clear reason: it makes a difference. Byron McClenney, member of the Colorado Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education and national director of leadership for Achieving the Dream (ATD), told George Boggs in a personal interview in 2011 that the ATD college coaches reached consensus on what matters the most in improving student success: leadership. The leadership that McClenney talked about was not only leadership on the part of the president, but also leadership at the board, faculty, and mid‐level administrative levels.

The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) published its list of competencies for community college leaders in 2005, with a second edition in 2013 (AACC, 2013). The AACC competencies have been studied extensively, and there have been no arguments about their appropriateness. The competencies listed in the revised version include organizational strategy; institutional finance, research, fundraising, and resource management; communication; collaboration; and advocacy. The curricula of leadership development programs and workshops should be reviewed to determine what skills and competencies they intend to develop. It is equally important for leaders to assess the competencies of their leadership teams and to provide development opportunities that build the skills needed to respond effectively to issues and to effect positive organizational change.

In its most recent reports, Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation's Future (2012) and Empowering Community Colleges to Build the Nation's Future: An Implementation Guide (2014), AACC has laid out an ambitious agenda that requires strong college leadership and institutional transformation. The reports are a critical analysis of the colleges and call on college leaders to be more accountable for student success outcomes.

Although there has been a great deal of research about leadership in general, some publications dealing specifically with community college functions that require leadership, and competencies required for effective community college leadership, there has not been much focus on the practical issues that community college leaders face—often on a daily basis—and the impact that their responses can have. Leaders need to understand the different points of view that constituents bring to issues and how these issues can best be dealt with—or how an improper response can create significant problems for an institution and its leadership.

Thinking About Issues

The list of issues facing today's community college leaders is extensive: student unrest, racial and ethnic tensions, campus emergencies, guns on campus, safety and security, cybersecurity threats, increased calls for accountability, college completion rates, developmental education outcomes, athletic injuries, sexual assault, academic integrity, and many others. Leaders face a variety of circumstances that provide options to consciously or unconsciously respond. The situations in which leaders find themselves often lead to questions, challenges, or matters that can be contested. For the purposes of this book, leadership issues are matters that involve people—both internal and external to the campus—and their beliefs and values. Leaders need to understand that there can be legitimate differences of opinion about how the issues should be managed. Many of these issues can be dealt with by referring to existing policies, procedures, regulations, contracts, or laws. Others are more intricate and require careful thought and preparation. Community colleges are multifaceted, complex, and diverse organizations, and the issues faced by students, faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees are often both difficult and sensitive. There are many methods used to analyze leadership and styles of leadership, but the true test of a leader can best be measured by how the leader anticipates and manages the issues that emerge every day at every community college.

Origin of Issues

College issues frequently arise internally. They can be the result of an unexpected crisis, an accident, or interactions between and among students, faculty, and staff—or perhaps a difference of opinion in how a policy should be interpreted or how resources should be allocated. Divisions within the college, because of departmental structure or the separation of academic programs, technical programs, student services, and administrative services, are often sources of disagreement caused by differing perspectives. Personality, behavioral, and style differences can cause employment issues. Even such issues as assignment of offices or classroom space can cause dissention. Decisions by an administrator in one area of a college might create issues for administrators in another area. Perceptions of fairness—or lack of it—can affect campus climate. Administrators who want to respond quickly to a community or business need for a program might clash with faculty who want to move more slowly to ensure quality. Cultural or racial differences or insensitivities can lead to difficult and persistent issues. The negotiating strategies of employee unions and advocacy groups often create issues for college leadership.

College employees can best contribute to the success of the college when they receive proper orientation and are provided professional development opportunities that are aligned with the college's mission and vision. In too many instances, inadequate or misdirected orientation and development programs leave employees with an insufficient understanding of how their roles and the roles of other employees contribute to the overall college mission. This lack of understanding is often the source of internal issues that confront college leaders.

Sometimes issues emerge externally from the community, from local businesses, from city or county officials, or at the state or national levels. Community members might complain about noise coming from college facilities, traffic caused by the college, or students parking in residential areas. Business owners might ask the college to find better ways to meet their need for skilled workers, or they might complain about unfair competition from college food services, child care programs, or the college bookstore. State policy makers might make decisions that affect college funding or operations—or they may establish scorecards to publically highlight specific measures of college effectiveness. Accreditors might recommend changes in practices and policies or require the college to develop improved measures of student learning. National policy makers might challenge colleges to improve graduation rates or to lower loan default rates, or they make decisions to change regulations that affect colleges and their students. Foundations and the organizations they fund can challenge colleges to improve rates of student success in developmental and college programs. Relationships with the school districts that host concurrent enrollment programs or send graduates to the college can sometimes create issues for leaders. Challenges often originate from relationships with other higher education institutions that accept community college transfers or with the institutions that compete with community colleges for students.

Issues in the larger society often spill over to college campuses. Protests of the continued police shootings of African American males and the “Black Lives Matter” movement have led to racial demonstrations on campuses that are reminiscent of the student activism of the 1960s. In fact, the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles reported that the fall 2016 entering freshman class is the most likely to protest in half a century (Kueppers, 2016). Students are demanding more racial diversity in the faculty and leadership of colleges and the removal of symbols and names and images of college founders or former presidents whom they brand as racist. At the University of Missouri, the November 2015 student protests led to the resignation of the university pre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Chapter 1: Leadership Issues Management
• Chapter 2: Mission
• Chapter 3: Accountability, Scorecards, Regulations, and Accreditation
• Chapter 4: Finance, Cost, and the Economy
• Chapter 5: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Chapter 6: Governance, Communication, and Media Relations
• Chapter 7: Organizational Change to Promote Student Success
• Chapter 8: Safety and Security
• Conclusion
• Index
• End User License Agreement