Who are academic deans and what do they do? What challenges do they face and what strategies do might they use to meet these challenges? What can universities do to help them become more effective?

Newly appointed academic deans often find themselves in key leadership roles with strained fiscal resources, external accountability pressures, dizzying technology and system demands, and a rapidly shifting student demographic. Previous training and experience as faculty is often not enough to prepare academic deans for surmounting these challenges. Authors Mimi Wolverton, Walter H. Gmelch, Joni Montex, and Charles T. Neils draw from their own experiences in higher education and their research at the Center for Academic Leadership at Washington State University to examine the evolving role of the academic dean and the profound external changes which are affecting the nature of deanship. They present six specific strategies to meet the persistent challenges in funding, diversity issues, legal concerns, technology demands, ethical practices, and achieving the balance between the personal and professional. They also address the university's role in furthering the leadership abilities of its academic deans and examine successful practices in selection, socialization, development and evaluation. Offering an effective strategy that moves deans as managers of day-to-day operations to deans as leaders of a dynamic environment, this book is a valuable resource for academic deans at any stage of their career.