Leadership through Collaboration: The Role of the Chief Academic Officer (review)
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Joining the ranks of guidebooks for academic administrators, Leadership through Collaboration: The Role of the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) aims to help CAOs work more collaboratively, effectively, and comfortably with their vice presidential peers—particularly the chief financial and administrative officers—who collectively hold responsibility for leading and managing campus infrastructures. Framed in the context of strategic planning and management, the book outlines what the CAO's role should be in these processes, what decisions he or she might face, and what critical questions CAOs should ask in order to provide informed institutional leadership.
The chapters also review core functions in the business side of academic affairs as well as several important nonacademic administrative areas that significantly affect the instructional program. This book, while intended for CAOs, is also appropriate for informing academic administrators, those who work closely with academic affairs, and graduate students studying higher education administration. Faculty who take their shared governance responsibilities seriously will also find this book worthwhile reading, although it may provoke their indignation (as explained below).
Chapter 1, "Academic Leadership," defines the role of the CAO in institutional decision making and leading collaboratively across divisions and within academic affairs. The CAO, who is responsible for the institution's core academic function, typically has oversight of more than half the institution's operating budget and leads in the context of a consultative, shared-governance culture. Chapters 2–5 broadly describe institutional strategic planning and the support of unit planning for facilities, technology, and finances. Basic elements of each type of planning are covered, as well as critical issues and strategies necessary for effective management. The chapters focus on the CAO's role in aligning various forms of planning and budgeting with the institution's academic purpose and priorities.
Chapters 6–8 examine the CAO's primary role in heading the instructional division and specifically focus on program review, continuous improvement, and academic entrepreneurship. Responsiveness to societal and community needs, strengthened student learning, and enhanced academic quality and value are underlying themes. The authors suggest that CAOs must lead for evolutionary change and have courage to improve programs and eliminate underperforming programs. They emphasize the integratedness of campus systems and the need for effective collaboration within and across divisions.
Chapters 9–10 attend to the CAO's role as provost, centering on issues of faculty workload, productivity, and compensation. The authors suggest ways to align faculty activities with strategic priorities and the academic mission of the institution, use faculty workload information for management decisions, and link faculty compensation to both institutional and individual quality. Policies, equity, and the needs and concerns of faculty, the institution, and external stakeholders are considered.
Chapter 11, the conclusion, advocates a deep partnership between the office of institutional research and the chief academic officer. CAOs need accurate, timely, and appropriate data to understand the complex relationships among priorities, resources, processes, and outcomes. Improved academic decision making and institutional leadership depend upon it. The design and use of routine and customized strategic reports are reviewed, as well as issues concerning institutional information systems.
Ferren and Stanton offer the information in these chapters based upon their collective experience as academic executives, accreditation visitors, and higher education consultants, as well as their extensive reading and analysis of higher education books, journal articles, dissertations, published case studies, higher education association websites, and numerous higher education listservs to which they belong. They rely on intuition, anecdotes, and perceptions as they distill this massive literature review into practical, readable descriptions and advice. [End Page 625]
A serious flaw, however, mars this useful collection of information and advice. Although acknowledging that faculty members work hard and are an institution's most important resource, the authors communicate a decidedly negative and patronizing view of professors, whom they stereotype as envious, childish, selfish, devious, and complaining sources of resistance to strategic change. Although supporting the faculty's role...
