Leadership in Action

When working as an administrative leader my foundational practices are advocacy, collaboration, and reflection. These practices have been developed and honed during my time as a department manager, my leadership in elected and appointed campus service roles, and as graduate program director of the Master of Arts in Professional Communication (MAPC).

The sections in this statement describe the process and examples of how I work as an administrative leader seeking to practice active advocacy. I believe a strong leader must first work to understand the current state of a project, department, or program; including identifying goals or outcomes, concerns, and any contextual considerations required by the situation. Then using collaborative communication, a leader should seek feedback and ideas from stakeholders. This allows the processes under management to move forward to stages where changes can be considered, piloted, implemented, and assessed. During these ongoing stages recursive reflection is an important practice to allow for monitoring and adjusting through meaningful assessment as adjustments, training, and communication should be central to any program or process.

Active Advocacy

This approach is based on understanding that as a campus leader you must seek to understand the goals of a collective community (at the program, department, college, and university levels) before making any substantive changes. This style of leadership also requires that you seek information to consider ways that decisions and changes made would impact all levels of this community, not just the immediate stakeholders.

Active advocacy requires effective stewardship of resources, which include but are not limited to: time and effort of collaborators to the project (students, staff, and faculty alike) and fiscal considerations. Seeking to balance these needs often requires consideration of more than one view of an issue and may result in selecting a solution which may not be well received – but is the best in the long run.

One example of experience I have as an active advocate is in my seeking to allow graduate teaching assistants to expand their instruction into higher level courses in the composition sequence at my current university. While I have not had an opportunity to serve as writing program administrator due to institutional requirements, I do take an active role in considering how to meet the needs of the writing program, the English department, and our graduate students. This advocacy effort was successful and has allowed several students to move on in their emerging efforts as instructors both in academic and professional industry settings.

Collaborative Communication

This approach focuses on the principles of active listening to stakeholders in the project or process. In my work as a program director and teaching assistant mentor this means attending to both instructor and student feedback. This also requires understanding that some inhabit both roles simultaneously, particularly for graduate students.

In application, this communication style means that large and small group gatherings are goal-directed sessions with a clear agenda and outcome associated with every meeting. One-on-one communication is guided by the same principle, seeking to establish rapport and develop positive interactions no matter what the message content is.

One example of this style in action can be found in the mentoring I provide to graduate teaching assistants instructing ENGL 272: Introduction to Technical Writing. The weekly meetings we hold for this small group of instructors (typically 2-3 per semester) are so focused and productive that adjunct instructors also teaching the course voluntarily join in sessions. To me this signals that the environment created in these hour-long sessions is both open enough for both adjunct and graduate instructors to feel valued; but still goal focused enough that the information merits even voluntary attendance.

Recursive Reflection

This approach reflects the manner in which I continually strive to understand, assess, and develop goals for all aspects of my teaching, scholarship, and service. In my work as a program director and teaching assistant mentor this means providing clear explanations for the decision-making process to allow for collaborative feedback by all stakeholders as is possible and appropriate to each project or process. Additionally, a continual process of reflection requires measurable and specific feedback through formal and informal assessment. Both formative and summative assessment practices can be used throughout a process to help identify areas which yield affirmation and elements which require improvement.

In practice, this requires understanding the cycle of assessment, feedback, adjustment, and application. One example of this approach is found in the development of program wide assessment rubrics for the Master of Arts in Professional Communication program. Initial collaboration on these rubrics among the faculty allowed a strong first draft to be developed in alignment with program outcomes and understanding of perspective students. Then pilot use with both students and faculty led to revisions and new implementation of this system. Now I work to provide training and multiple means of support for new users of this system.

Through this continual use of feedback and adjustment the program has a consistent way in which all faculty assess student projects. This helps to provide a stronger foundation for program and individual course assessment processes in connection with accreditation requirements connected to the university as a whole.

Summary

My goal as a campus leader is to advocate for consideration and incorporation of multiple perspectives in the decision-making process as appropriate for each project. I believe my success in these efforts thus far is rooted in my ability to use thoughtful implementation of collaborative communication and recursive reflection practices no matter what the situation. Decision making is not always easy, but creating possibilities for the mentoring and growth of others makes the process worth it.