Presidential Leadership Institute Sessions

Women and gender diverse individuals, and particularly women of color and those who identify as LGBTQ+, have faced inequities in academic leadership for decades (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2014; Johnson, 2016) and the disproportionate weight placed on these groups has only been exacerbated in recent years (Gonzalez & Griffin, 2020). Providing intentional support for these individuals is necessary if we are to build a valuable and equitable future for academia. This session will focus on both why peer networks are valuable for collaboration and intentional leadership and how to build, sustain, and prioritize them as leaders who support other women and gender diverse individuals.

Peer networks have been shown to enhance agency for women and gender-diverse professionals at all ranks in academia, and can be especially valuable for historically marginalized groups, including women of color and non-tenure track faculty (O’Meara et al., 2019; Templeton & O’Meara, 2018). They have also been shown to serve as ‘third spaces’ outside of home and work where individuals can process challenges (O’Meara et al., 2019). Understanding the value of peer networks as third spaces and how women and gender-diverse leaders can build and sustain these networks as a form of support is thus an important endeavor. This session will explore the benefits of internal and external peer networks for women in academic leadership as spaces to thrive, consider challenges facing higher education, and support the well-being of historically marginalized faculty and staff. The presenters will also discuss specific strategies for intentionally building peer networks with examples from organizations focused on supporting academic leaders in practice.

Higher education needs leaders who build and illuminate new spaces rather than reproduce the status quo. Further, we need systems that are reconfigured to support that transformational leadership.

Within this keynote address, Dr. Riddell will invite us to imagine educational structures as “hope circuits,” places that accommodate wonder, curiosity, and new ways of knowing and being. She will encourage us, as leaders, to rewire our mindsets, perspectives, and behaviors, to, in turn, re-wire and renew the educational systems within which we learn, live, work, and lead. She will provide conceptual tools to help us rethink higher education systems for the better by creatively putting university-design theory into practice. These conceptual tools engender local, embodied, and embedded solutions to some of the academy's most pressing issues.

Amid the challenges facing higher education, leadership roles can be both lonely and grueling. As the CEO of a college or university, you frequently bear the full weight of difficult decisions and less often benefit from the comradery and commiseration of “work friends.” The multiple and competing demands for your leadership time, attention, and energy can easily exceed the capacity of even the most talented leaders.

This session will discuss the role of a Chief of Staff, and their potential for lessening your isolation, amplifying your leadership impact, managing the intense pace of the work, supporting your humanity, and fostering the institutional mission through inevitable leadership transitions. Several experienced Chiefs of Staff from various institutional contexts will join to discuss how they have contributed to a team of support within the Office of the President. Each will specifically reflect on the realities of supporting women and gender-diverse individuals holding the role of president, acknowledging that patriarchal assumptions about power and authority continue to shape the realities of leadership.

Students on campuses across the country are increasingly hesitant and fearful to engage with others about contentious issues, especially with those who disagree with them. Simultaneously, presidents are being called into the spotlight to explain, defend, or denounce student and administrative actions related to politicized issues and events. International conflicts and the 2024 presidential election are also intensifying polarization nationally. These confluence of these challenges have elevated the need for leaders to be equipped to proactively build cultures of civil discourse on their campuses. In this session, attendees will examine the larger societal forces shaping civil discourse on college campuses, examine successful models for campus dialogue, and explore the role of college presidents in shaping discourse both on and off campus.

This closed door / open forum session offers an opportunity for presidents to confidentially bring issues to the table that they are navigating, gaining the input and experiences of their colleagues and other experts in the room. Topics for exploration include but are not limited to your board of trustees, your leadership cabinet, strategic and operational issues, presidential contract negotiations, donor relationships, and presidential support systems. Additionally, lightning rounds of quick feedback from the group could include things like most meaningful leadership reads, favorite apps or services that reduce mental load, and practices that increase leadership capacity. Topics will be solicited in advance as well as in the moment.

In the face of an increasingly negative national narrative about the value of a college degree, leaders across the country are working overtime to build trust across key constituencies – prospective students and families, local communities, donors, and even their own faculty and staff. The fact remains that trust is built between people, not between entities or organizations. As such, to recover the public’s trust, we must first examine the state of trust in our campus environments, and consider how leaders and colleagues can show up for each other most meaningfully. Using a practical framework, this session will explore the factors of trust that inform our professional and stakeholder relationships, with special attention to building trusting relationships across the president’s cabinet.