Awakening the Academy: A Time for New Leadership

Higher education institutions face myriad difficulties as they try to adjust to a changing environment. What forces catalyze these changes? What traditions block them? How can institutions align these forces? Does it take a crisis? Putting the microscope to three significant academic units (the business school, graduate education and information studies, and the physics and astronomy department) at the University of California–Los Angeles, the authors gained a better understanding of how the university interacts with its environment and how it manages its own processes of change.

In a book that is a compellingly good read, the authors relay fascinating and universal stories of change—causes, processes, and results—that administrators and faculty at any institution in higher education can apply to their own contexts.

Topics include:
• How the academy can respond to external demands for change while safeguarding the qualities that define it.
• Creative and successful ways to involve faculty in identifying problems, searching for solutions, and effecting change.
• The university in a broader context: statewide influences, governance, and buffering functions, among others.
• For each of the academic units, analysis of the following: Academic life, research and teaching, external forces for change, the unit’s response, unexpected consequences and corrections, and a concise summary.
• Managing change—old strategies versus new strategies and how to lead for change without a crisis.
• A summary chapter draws findings together into a set of conclusions to help academic administrators think differently about their institutions.