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OVERVIEW
Welcome to the ‘Academic Leadership: Fundamental Building Blocks’
Program
Tailored leadership development
that is role relevant...
(Yielder & Codling, 2004, p. 327)This program has been designed to assist you in your development as an academic
leader. More specifically, it has been designed to assist you in acquiring the skills and
knowledge needed to perform your academic leadership role more effectively. These
roles may have various titles depending on the University within which you work. They
may be Program Director or Course Coordinator. Whatever the title, the role is one
where you have responsibility to manage the delivery and quality of an academic field of
study. For ease of writing, the Academic Coordinator title is used in this book. It is
based on the principle that leadership development needs to be tailored to the needs of
both the individual and the role, and recognises that you are in an academic leadership
role with little or no formal authority or power. This program builds on research on
leadership in management as well as research on academic leadership. It utilises critical
reflection as a strategy that fosters deep learning. The new understanding will help you
to develop your personalised action plans. These will strengthen your professional
competence as an academic leader.
In this resource book you will find:- some background information on academic leadership,
- workshop materials designed to assist you in interpreting and responding to
feedback that you have received via the online survey, - copies of workshop slides,
- an outline of some Personal Action Plans for you to complete,
- a suite of self-access activities and resources for ongoing use with your action plans,
- a CD that contains a copy of this resource book.
We hope that you will find the program and this resource book useful in assisting you
to build your skills as an academic leader.
Enjoy the program!The Research Team:
Tricia Vilkinas
Betty Leask
Richard Ladyshewsky
Sanjee Perera
Tim Rogers