Leadership for Academic Units (LFAU)

A detailed and integrated approach to improving an academic unit

Leadership for Academic Units:

A Performance Improvement Model for Department Chairs, Deans, and Academic Vice Presidents (and those who aspire to be)

By William Swart, PhD

In this illuminating guide for academic leaders and those aspiring to be, Dr. William Swart offers insightful advice on how to lead academic departments and divisions on a journey of continuous performance improvement. If you’re interested in positive change and you’re not afraid of conflict, this text presents a solid beginning point.

Leadership for Academic Units introduces an integrated leadership model that repeatedly has been shown to improve performance at different universities and in different disciplines. The author draws on a highly successful career in academia during which he progressed from being a department chair through two deanships to being a provost. He presents proven methods he has continually refined over 30 years and are widely applicable in the college setting, whether you’re leading a small academic department or an entire division. 

You’ll learn how to:

• Define and measure success in your unit
• Develop strategic and tactical improvement concepts
• Develop improvement alternatives using needs assessment and analysis
• Achieve results and fairly and consistently reward contributions
• Allocate and right size staff, faculty, operating and equipment budgets and resources
• Implement improvements
• Deal with faculty and administrative resistance to change
• Prepare and educate teams and bring everyone on board
• And much more

Leadership for Academic Units is formatted in a way that any busy academic leader will appreciate. Each chapter contains an introduction, key terms, focus questions and references. The book also includes many fascinating case studies that demonstrate how change must be inspired from the top down, but accomplished from the bottom up.  The result is a detailed and eye-opening text full of ideas for overcoming barriers and achieving changes that are sustainable.

254 pp