Discuss the below:
Activity 1: Discussion: Inspiring a Shared Vision
What value is there to be gained by studying higher education leadership? In short, what difference can it make? Thinking and reflecting further, in an atmosphere where people are encouraged and rewarded for thinking independently, how can we as academic leaders inspire a shared vision?
Activity 3: Discussion: Power - Its Use and Misuse
As you have started to read some of the foundational theories of leadership, what one theory in particular strikes you as particularly relevant in today's increasingly complex and highly political academic environment?
Activity 4: How Others See Leadership
Collect information from an in-person interview with one person-either a faculty member or a senior administrator-at a nearby college or university or other higher learning organization. The purpose of this assignment and subsequent essay is to determine how others in higher education make sense of leadership within their own contexts. In order to ground the interview, suggest the person interviewed think of someone specific (although they need not share the name of the person with you) whom they view as a leader. For example, for a faculty member, they should identify another faculty member; and for a senior administrator, another in that category.
Activity 5: Discussion: Leadership and Stress
Share some of your personal experiences with both directive and participative leadership styles. What are the implications of both styles and is it possible to move back and forth along a continuum between both, depending on context? In addition share your insights into the role that stress plays in leadership. Is stress always necessarily bad? How do we recognize stress that impedes our ability to be effective leaders and what can we do about it?
Activity 6: Today's Diverse Workplace
Workplaces in academe are diverse environments. Reflecting on theory read in this module, please offer your insights in a 3 - 4 page essay, relative to the tensions and dilemmas with respect to the need to affect a strong leadership posture within an increasingly diverse community.
Activity 7: Discussion: Principles of Transformational Leadership
In responding to these discussion questions you will have read, as background:
Astin, A. W., & Astin, H. S. (2000). Leadership reconsidered: Engaging higher education in social change.
What are the key points that Astin & Astin make in their chapter entitled "Principles of Transformative Leadership?" What are the barriers that you see might stand in the way of becoming a truly transformational leader and how does one begin to surmount those barriers? Can faculty really be leaders in higher education today? Have you seen, from your own personal experience, examples of where faculty members have been champions for a cause or causes that truly made a difference in the life of their institutions?
Activity 8: Pressing Leadership Challenges
Review current issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education looking for articles that highlight one pressing leadership challenge faced by today's college and university presidents. Detail one of those challenges in a 3 - 4 page paper and offer some suggestions on how that challenge might better be approached.
Activity 9: Discussion: Enabling Others to Act
Kouzes & Posner speak of "enabling others to act" - what does this mean to you? Additionally, Kouzes & Posner direct us as leaders to "encourage the heart.'" Given the theory you've read for this course and the practice you've reflected upon, what does "encourage the heart" mean to you at this point? What about those we lead or may lead who may be "hard hearted" How are they to be enabled?
Activity 10: Reaffirming or Modifying Assumptions About Leadership
Prepare a final written reflection essay of 3 - 4 pages that reveals how your views, assumptions, values, and beliefs about leadership have either changed or been affirmed as a result of the reading, reflection, and faculty mentor interaction that has comprised this course. The paper must include retrospective reflections on statements made in Learning Essay 1, either affirming those earlier reflections or modifying some based on new understandings gained within this course