The Role of Servant Leadership in Faculty Development Programs: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

The following note is that a review of existing literature pertaining to servant leadership and faculty development. Specifically, this work discussed delivering servant leadership to online faculty through the utilization of a faculty development program. The idea for this literature review stemmed from the author asking how an online academic administrator could utilize the practice of servant leadership in order to improve the overall online academic experience. The intent of the review involved discovering, through a review of the literature, a way of opening up a dialogue that can possibly drive future research studies regarding the practice of servant leadership to improve of the overall online academic teaching experience. In this work, the author conducted a literature review that identified strengths in both faculty development as well as practicing servant leadership within the online education modality. The literature identified the issue of faculty isolation as challenge for academic administrators and offered up faculty development as a possible solution to overcoming it. The findings of the work showed a benefit to bringing servant leadership practices into faculty development programs in order to improve the overall online teaching environment. The work generates future empirical research ideas regarding building community, the use of servant leadership, and faculty development programs.