Academic Leadership During a Pandemic: Department Heads Leading With a Focus on Equity

Sharon D Kruse,Donald G Hackmann,Jane Clark Lindle

doi:10.3389/feduc.2020.614641

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented crisis with momentous challenges for higher education institutions. Academic leaders have been charged with restructuring their systems, ensuring instructional quality while operating with significantly diminished resources. For department heads of units with leadership preparation programs, the complexity of this crisis is layered upon fundamental scholarship about leadership, which reports the effectiveness of leadership as a collective incorporating the shared and diverse talents of faculty, students, and program stakeholders. This work of educational leadership rests on a public and democratic ethic promoting social justice and equity as the practices and outcomes for schooling at any level. In this article, three department heads of educational leadership units in major research universities use dialogic inquiry to reflect on our responses to complex demands brought forth by the pandemic. We share insights into our decision making, as we have led with a focus on equity. We address dilemmas and conflicts that we have addressed as departmental leaders during this critical period of institutional challenges, changing institutional policies and practices, and declining resources, as we have worked to ensure equitable access and distribution of resources for students, faculty, and staff. We conclude with implications for department heads who strive to maintain a focus on equity during times of sweeping organizational change.

Highlights

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has created an unprecedented crisis with global consequences
In higher education institutions the landscape quickly evolved, with senior leaders initially tasked with making rapidfire decisions, while keeping the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff foremost in their planning
We did not write extensively about how equity was at the forefront of our budget deliberations, during our joint reflections we agreed that equity was an important factor as we explored potential areas to cut and considered the effects on faculty, staff, and students

Summary

Introduction

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has created an unprecedented crisis with global consequences. Personnel in educational organizations, including PK-12 school systems and higher education institutions, abandoned face-to-face instruction in mid-spring semester 2020 and shifted rapidly to online learning. The transition to digital learning is but one example of the significant ambiguous and immediate crises caused by the pandemic that have affected educational institutions, students, programs, and faculty, and staff, and those who lead these organizations. In higher education institutions the landscape quickly evolved, with senior leaders initially tasked with making rapidfire decisions, while keeping the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff foremost in their planning. In early spring 2020, academic leaders engaged in a first wave of decisions: canceling events, moving students home, shifting instruction online, and modifying university policies and procedures. The financial impacts for higher education have been compounded as U.S public education is among the few sectors to remain negatively impacted by the Great Recession (Laderman and Weeden, 2020)

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Discussion

Conclusion