Leadership Development in Higher Education

Abstract

Introduction The American Council on Education Fellows Program (AFP) was created in 1965 to identify and prepare leaders for colleges and universities. The Fellows Program began operation with a $4.75 million grant from the Ford Foundation to support a five-year internship program in academic administration. It was founded in an era of rapid expansion of higher education: the community college movement was in full swing; teachers' colleges had become multipurpose institutions; and the emphasis on universal higher education created an atmosphere of unlimited growth and possibility. As the higher education enterprise grew, so did the number of administrative vacancies. Few, if any, efforts existed to identify and educate administrators to fill these new positions. Thus, the Fellows Program, as well as other programs designed to train administrators, were created. The American Council on Education also began the Institute for College and University Administrators in 1965, transplanted after a brief existence at Harvard. In 1970 Harvard initiated the Institute for Educational Management (IEM), then a six-week course for presidents and senior administrators. The mid-1970s saw the creation of the Claremont Women Administrators Program (no longer in existence), the Higher Education Management Institute (HEMI), which had about a seven-year life, and the Higher Education Resource Services (HERS)Bryn Mawr Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration, still in operation.