American Administrators Research Articles

John D. Robinson (1946-2021).

Memorializes John D. Robinson (1946-2021). John was the first African American psychologist to serve in both the United States Air Force (1973-1975) and Navy (1975-1983). He was also the first African American administrator at the University of Texas at Austin (1968-1969). His roles throughout his career included professor of Surgery and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Howard University until his retirement (1992-2016). At Howard University Hospital, John pioneered the field of transplant psychology, working hand in hand with surgeons and patients to both prepare patients-behaviorally and emotionally-for upcoming surgeries and ensure that patients were able to follow through with aftercare activities to ensure a successful transplant. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The legacy of Chester I. Barnard in the science of organization of Oliver E. Williamson

Chester Barnard was an American manager and public administrator who greatly influenced economics and the history of economic thought. Oliver Williamson’s early works were published after Barnard’s death, but the intellectual proximity they show to Herbert Simon, along with the significant influence of John Commons on their analysis, brings them closer. This study investigates Barnard legacy (particularly his work in 1938) in Williamson’s “science of organisation” project by analysing the Barnardian origins of his organisational micro-approach from their complementary theories of cooperation.

Toward a Theory of Sympathetic Leadership: Asian American School Administrators’ Expectations for Justice and Excellence

Purpose: This qualitative case study illuminates the leadership practices of four female Asian American administrators in urban schools. Due to their underrepresentation in leadership roles, the need is pressing for research to capture concrete exemplars on beliefs and practices of sympathy based on an asset-oriented approach to school leadership. The study’s research questions include (a) How do Asian American school administrators define their social justice beliefs and expectations for their school community? (b) How do these four Asian American school administrators communicate their expectations through sympathetic leadership to resist deficit models of education? Method: This study includes four research participants from two states. Data collection includes two rounds of in-depth interviews, field observations, reflective memos, and archival sources. Data analysis is guided by inductive approaches. Findings: Research findings demonstrate how Asian American school administrators define social justice through four relational practices with their community: (a) develop intimate knowledge of students and their racialized history, (b) enact asset-based sympathy as a condition of solidarity, (c) form connections based on relational equity to counteract White supremacy, and (d) prepare students for an equitable future through intellectual rigor. Implications: This study contends that leadership must begin with an epistemic shift from racial indifference and deficit thinking to the practice of sympathetic touch. Social justice revolution in schools and society starts when the minds and expectations of the leaders and those they serve become one and the same.

Ruth Harris: A Reticent Disrupter in St. Louis Public Schools’ Stowe Teachers College during Jim Crow Era

In 1940, St. Louis Public Schools named Dr. Ruth Harris, the first African American female President of the Stowe Teachers College (now named, Harris–Stowe State University). Like many African American administrators, prior to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Harris had to creatively find ways to acquire resources. This article is an examination of her community engagement programs for preservice teachers and the African American community. Preservice teachers were intentionally immersed in the communities they would one day teach-in while the community learned from well-known African Americans in a nurturing environment removed from the Jim Crow stigma prevalent during the time. Using the community as classrooms for preservice teachers and the campus for public service revealed one educator’s resourcefulness in teaching the marginalized.

Teaching evidence-based practice: A comparison of two disciplines

ABSTRACTThe increasing emphasis on research supported treatments in behavioral health requires clinicians to develop knowledge and skills for evidence-based practice. Graduate professional degree programs must address this in preparation for the emerging workforce. In this paper, we synthesize results from two related studies that examined the extent to which master’s level professional degree programs prepare future practitioners to deliver a process of evidence-based practice or specific evidence-based treatments. We compare these results with a previous study of North American administrators and supervisors who hire graduates from Master's level professional degree programs. The first study explored the Masters in Social Work curricula, and the second study examined Marriage and Family Therapy programs. Professionals with these graduate degrees are primary providers of behavioral health treatment. Results demonstrate how both disciplines are changing and offer both rationale and concerns voiced by program deans and directors. Compared with a study of provider perspectives, the collective results indicate institutions of higher education are providing at least modest levels of training in evidence-based treatments. We conclude with suggestions for university partnership with behavioral health and social service programs.

Beyond Representation: African American Administrators’ Experiences as Reflections of Workforce Diversity Perspectives

ABSTRACT The recollections of sixteen African American administrators who were some of the first hired in de/segregated school districts in the North are analyzed in order to understand their work lives and experiences in district processes. Findings are analyzed through the lens of workforce diversity perspectives. Five themes emerged from the data regarding race, African American administrators’ roles and experiences. Findings indicate that elements of all three diversity perspectives were present, but the most inclusive, integration-and-learning was least present. Recommendations for further research in contemporary contexts are provided.

Enablers and Barriers Influencing African American Administrators’ Career Advancement at Predominantly White Institutions of Higher Learning

Enablers and Barriers Influencing African American Administrators’ Career Advancement at Predominantly White Institutions of Higher Learning

Adhering to the “Flashing Yellow Light”

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, despite growing political, scientific, and popular concern about the prospect of melting glaciers, sea-level rise, and more generally, climate-induced societal instability, American high-level science advisers and administrators, scientific committees, national and international scientific organizations, and officials within the Carter administration engineered a politics of restrained management of climate risk. Adopting a strategy of restraint appeared optimal not because of a pervasive disinterest in or ignorance of the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change. Rather, this administrative decision was rooted in widespread skepticism of the public’s ability to regulate their panic given popular dissemination of alarming scenarios of the future. Their concerns were not epistemic; they were sociopolitical. Broad-based appeals to moderation directly informed both scientists and the administration’s eventual decision in 1980 to minimize executive involvement. Despite some environmentalists’ and scientists’ calls for a more proactive position aligned with their ethical perspectives about the future implications of climate change, these linguistic cues of moderation became powerful heuristics that helped shape and anchor assessments of climate risk, calibrate scientists’ advice to policy makers, and regulate public apprehension about climate risk. Ultimately, officials within and outside the science community concluded that the likely short-term costs incurred from immediate action to curb fossil fuel emissions were greater than the social and political costs incurred from maintaining what was considered to be a tempered approach to climate governance in the near-term.

A Pathway for Native American Students to Access a Mainstream University for Social Work Education

ABSTRACTNative American students, faculty members, and administrators of a tribal college were interviewed by two investigators from a mainstream midwestern university in this qualitative study. The study examines the participants’ perspectives on continuing their education and identifying a pathway for Native American students who received their associate degrees in addiction studies or human services from the tribal college to complete their social work education at a mainstream university. Three themes emerged from the data supporting the formation of a combined cohort of Native American and non–Native American students working together as a pathway for Native Americans to attend a mainstream university for a degree in social work education.

The Meaning of Quality in Online/Blended Courses to American and Malaysian Administrators, Faculty, and Students

This article compares two studies, investigating administrator, faculty, and student perceptions of quality in online/blended courses conducted in two different contexts, namely (1) two midsize public universities in the United States, and (2) a college in a public university in Malaysia. The research question explored in both studies was: What is the meaning of “quality” in an online/blended course to administrators, faculty, and students? Survey data from the three constituents in both contexts were obtained. Qualitative data analysis revealed the top 7-8 quality features of each context as ranked by number of references. The results revealed similarities and differences in the rankings of the quality features between constituents and between contexts. Similarities suggested that different constituents had different priorities with regards to quality features while differences appeared to be based on where each institution was on their distance education trajectory. These findings should be considered and reflected on in online course design, teaching strategies, and student support.

Race and Leadership in Library and Information Science Education: A Study of African American Administrators

Race and Leadership in Library and Information Science Education: A Study of African American Administrators

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction Michael D. Pante Distinguishing between foreign and Filipino has always been a complicated act in Philippine studies, yet one often taken for granted. The line separating natives from non-natives, historically and historiographically, has existed more like erratic fissures than a stable boundary. Such fissures do not make for neat categories; instead, they point to underlying sociohistorical fault lines. The stories of three figures who tower over this journal issue—Horacio de la Costa, Daniel Burnham, and Juan Tamad—reveal these complexities. Horacio de la Costa's career as a Jesuit leader demonstrates the immense pressure that decolonization exerted upon society to delineate between native and non-native. As Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr and Nicholas Sy show, even the Jesuits' fraternal lives could not insulate them from external forces then stirring postcolonial Philippine society. The Jesuit organization in the country attained its status as a full-fledged province of the Society of Jesus in 1957, a time when calls for Filipinization of various facets of Philippine society—from economic nationalism to nationalist education—were raging. The politics of Filipinization affected the Jesuits as to cause a rift between the American and Filipino clergy. De la Costa found himself at the center of the storm when he became the first Filipino superior of the Philippine province of the Society of Jesus (1964–1970). Initially, his notion of Filipinization revolved around the need to train more Filipino priests, thereby allowing the Catholic Church to "take root" and become a native institution. Eventually, De la Costa's preference for Filipino Jesuits clashed with the lingering but dominant presence of American Jesuits, especially those who continued to teach in Jesuit schools. Under his leadership, the number of Filipino Jesuits in leadership positions considerably increased, pushing this group to gain a relative majority over foreign missionaries by 1976. De la Costa tried to strike a balance between the two camps, but ultimately supported the pro-Filipino forces within the order while giving American Jesuits a secondary role, a decision that must be understood in the context of widespread radicalism that had permeated even the Ateneo de Manila. [End Page 265] De la Costa's struggle mirrored that of Pedro Peláez and José Burgos, two priests who championed the cause of Philippine-born, secular priests against Spanish friars in the nineteenth century. The question of the natives' capacity for religious leadership was integral in both situations, despite the hundred-year gap in between. De la Costa, an eminent historian, could not have missed this uncanny parallelism. De la Costa was also editor of this journal, and Aguilar and Sy's article is our belated contribution to the celebration of his birth centenary in 2016. Landscapes usually conjure ideas of home, of unchanging permanence. In this light, the landscapes within a nation's territory can be understood as inherent parts of that nation's ancestral domain, as it were. Daniel Burnham's place in Philippine history, however, shows otherwise. Scott Kirsch's analysis of Burnham's urban plans for American-era Manila and Baguio treats the physical environment and geographical features of the two cities as dynamic and contingent. Kirsch tackles the shift from Hispanic to American in the aesthetic regime in Philippine city landscapes, a transition signaled by Burnham's 1904–1905 visit to the country. Clearly imperial in outlook, the plans turned both cities into spaces for the reproduction of US colonialism. The aesthetics embedded in them were meant to be consumed by American administrators and businessmen, not by Filipinos. Manila and Baguio became derivatives of Washington, DC, and British Simla, respectively. Thus, rather than signify indigeneity, the landscapes of Burnham's Manila and Baguio evoke the foreign. Lastly, multiple layers of cultural appropriation make it difficult to identify whether certain ideological products are foreign or native. Laurence Marvin Castillo illustrates this point through the heteroglossia of fictional character Juan Tamad. The numskull trickster Juan traces his literary lineage to the precolonial pusong genre, but this character enters Philippine literature through the awit, a colonial form of metrical romance popular during the Spanish period. As a signifier of the natives' supposed indolence, his ideological utility for colonialism was apparent. Nonetheless, in...

Ambition Is Priceless

Within the representative bureaucracy literature, there are a variety of individual or professional incentives that may discourage movement from passive to active representation. This study presents two of these incentives by explaining the potential effects of professional socialization and individual career ambition. Using 3 years of survey and performance data from public schools, this research explores how professional socialization and ambitions of career advancement may promote specific behaviors that potentially support or discourage effective representation. The results indicate that professional socialization actually promotes representation by African American and Latino bureaucrats. The impact of Latino representation across values of professional socialization is also significantly different from that of White managers. The results also demonstrate varying effects for bureaucratic career ambition, as the effect of Latino administrators on student performance is minimized for administrators with higher levels of ambition. For African American administrators, the opposite is true as Black administrators with high levels of ambition are related to increasingly positive student performance. These results add to our understanding of representative bureaucracy by exploring how different values will interact with a minority bureaucrat’s decision to represent the interests of minority clients.

“Lord Cromer’s Shadow”: Political Anglo-Saxonism and the Egyptian Protectorate as a Model in the American Philippines

This article revisits the nature of American expansionism in the Progressive Era. It contends that the figure of Evelyn Baring, the first Earl of Cromer, and the British “Veiled Protectorate” over Egypt shaped the internal American retention debate regarding the Philippines in terms directly compatible with the political dichotomy between liberal advocacy of “self-government” and conservative calls for “good government” that lay at the heart of British imperial policy. It further argues that prior British imperial experience and political thought were consistently rhetorically privileged by American administrators within the trans-imperial marketplace of ideas surrounding colonial governance. In doing so, it builds on previous transnational and comparative scholarship on U.S. imperialism of this period, typified by the work of Paul A. Kramer and Frank Schumacher. It rejects renewed exceptionalist attempts to artificially isolate American colonial state-building via Jeremi Suri’s “Nation-Building” paradigm and the “American Umpire” concept recently advanced by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman.

Transitioning Normalcy

In this article, we present findings from a review and synthesis of historical and contemporary research to examine the concept of diversity leadership in higher education as it pertains to African American administrators at predominantly White colleges and universities. Through the use of critical race theory, we first argue that to understand the leadership disparity of African Americans and other administrators of color in higher education, one must begin by examining the cultural context in which predominantly White institutions originate, exist, and operate through the intersection of group relations. Second, we argue that due to a historical pattern of exclusivity, the title of administrator is considered whiteness property in higher education. As a consequence, the disparity between African American administrators and their White counterparts has become an organizational norm in higher education. Last, we posit that if true diversity leadership is to exist within the administrative rankings at predominantly White institutions, the conceptualization and inclusion of minority experiences must not only inform stakeholders but also shape the recruitment, retention, and assessment of minority representation at the university administrative level.

Medicalizing Gutom: Hunger, Diet, and Beriberi during the American Period

This article looks at American responses to food scarcity in the colonial Philippines. Dismissive of hunger and starvation in the early occupation, Americans initially ascribed ill health to poorly chosen foods like rice. Labor unrest, crop failures following Taal Volcano’s 1911 eruption, and Jose Albert’s identification of infantile beriberi, however, forced American administrators, doctors, and agriculturalists to confront scarcity in several ways. First, “corn campaigns” sought to enhance rice-based diets with corn. Second, research linking beriberi to mechanically milled rice led to vitamin B supplementation campaigns. However, the medicalization of hunger obscured the root causes of scarcity, which American rule exacerbated. KEYWORDS: BERIBERI • FAMINE • UNITED STATES • HEALTH • PHILIPPINE–AMERICAN WAR

African American administrators at PWIs: Enablers of and barriers to career success.

African American administrators at PWIs: Enablers of and barriers to career success.

Fear and Cheating in Atlanta: Evidence for the Vulnerability Thesis

In this paper I foreground the widely reported and highly visible case of cheating in Atlanta Public Schools (APS) in order to argue that the descriptions presented in the report can be taken as providing some of the missing empirical evidence for Callahan’s (1962) Vulnerability Thesis. The thesis seeks to explain why North American (US) administrators in the early 20th century gave in to demands that had little educational merit. It was Callahan’s proposal that their vulnerability to criticism and insecurity of tenure explained a significant part of the ease with which they capitulated to administrative pressure. I propose that revisiting earlier work in education and curriculum studies to provide evidence (or comment on lack of evidence) is important for the development and health of the field. Further, I suggest that, assuming that the concept of ‘vulnerability’ will be an explicit focus of work in this century, new curriculum discourses and frameworks will have to be developed in order to better study the inter-related vulnerabilities of educators as is already occurring in other fields.

Standards Policies to Support Young Dual Language Learners

In response to increasing numbers of young dual language learners (DLL) in American early childhood programs, teachers and administrators have made many and varied attempts to address the unique needs of this population. At times the response has been valiant, at times feeble and inadequate. More often than not, the response has not been sufficient to address their needs in comprehensive and successful ways. We have known for a long time how second languages are acquired and what instructional

Moros in the media and beyond: representations of Philippine Muslims

Colonial constructions of the Muslim image have affected Muslim–Christian relations in the Philippines for centuries. Spanish colonizers used the term “Moro” as a derogatory term for Muslims and portrayed them in negative terms mainly because of their resistance to Spanish colonial rule and Christianity. The succeeding American administrators perpetuated the negative Muslim image through their description of Muslims in their reports and in cartoons published in the American print media. Both colonizers viewed Filipinos primarily in terms of their religious identification, and through their campaigns against the Moros, have influenced the thinking and attitudes of Christian Filipinos towards Muslim Filipinos. In recent times, ethnic Filipino Muslims have appropriated the term Moro to symbolize instead their determination to chart their destiny as a nation and their rich political and cultural heritage. This recasting of the Moro image is reflected in contemporary Muslim writings in both print and electronic media. This paper argues that the remaking of the Moro image challenges colonial misrepresentations, constitutes a redefinition of ethnic Muslim identity, and appeals to the sense of unity of Muslims.