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The º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver Academic Affairs Leadership Academy (LA) empowers chairs to carry out the strategic mission of º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver.  That mission includes pillars of student access and achievement, academic innovation, community enrichment, enhancement of inclusive departmental cultures, and organizational agility.  The LA also builds rapport amongst chairs to exchange best practices.  This academy is intended for associate deans, department chairs, faculty fellows, and other faculty interested in leadership roles in academic affairs.

• Align leadership roles to the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Strategic Plan, especially in terms of Pillar I, II, and IV
• Assist leaders in developing departmental strategic action plans
• Build community among campus leaders

Session 1.  Welcome to the Leadership Academy (LA) – Why are we here?

In this session, we will have an introduction to the Leadership Academy and frame the importance of the department chair in carrying out the strategic plan of the university.  In addition, we will do a pre-LA assessment to measure gains over the academic year after completion of the LA.

Learning Objectives:

• Articulate the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver Strategic Plan and Diversity Plan
• Describe what it means to be a Hispanic Serving Institution
• Complete Exercise 1.1. Chair Diversity Self-Assessment Profile from The Department Chair as Transformative Diversity Leader, pages 15-17

Session 2.  Creating Inclusive Departments

For our second session, we will work on creating an inclusive department.  The leader does this by guiding searches, serving as a mentor, or creating a mentorship program for the department, and by onboarding new staff and/or faculty, including tenure-track, non-tenure-track, and affiliates.  The leader sets the tone (and agenda) for department meetings, so inclusive processes and language are important in helping everyone feel that the meeting is a safe space.

Learning Objectives:

• Create a recruitment plan
• Construct an onboarding plan for staff, TT, NTT, and affiliate faculty
• Design a mentoring plan

Session 3.  Navigating Faculty and Staff Needs

This session includes an evaluation of departmental guidelines.  While these guidelines naturally differ between departments, some have more embracive guidelines than others.  Faculty benefit from very clear guidelines.  In other words, the clarity of the departmental guidelines removes ambiguity from a stressful process (earning tenure).  Affiliate faculty and NTT faculty also benefit from these same guidelines and inclusive departmental practices.  In addition to the guidelines, this session also investigates the disciplinary procedures that a chair needs to take when faculty need assistance in meeting their professional obligations.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze departmental guidelines for clarity and breadth
• Articulate the process for complaints and reformative processes
• Describe ways to support faculty in earning tenure and during complaints

Session 4.  Student Retention at º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver

Given the changes in leadership and organization in the last year at º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver, the efforts around student retention may not be clear to faculty and chairs.  In this session, we’ll spend some time learning about retention efforts at º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver and what departments can do, especially looking at data, about improving the retention rates.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the importance of retention and º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver strategies to improve retention
• List present retention efforts in one’s own department
• Apply new retention efforts for the coming academic year and save for strategic plan

Session 5. Leadership and Communication

Leaders guide the culture of their groups.  Given the turnover in higher education and the difficulty in recruiting new employees, retaining current faculty and staff remains a key responsibility for the department chair.  In this session, we’ll reflect on our own identities as leaders and our individual leadership styles.  We’ll consider the power of listening and asking questions as part of having crucial/difficult conversations with faculty, staff, and students.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the importance of leadership identity and one’s individual leadership style
• Apply boundaries to leadership
• Practice role playing difficult conversations

Session 6. All About Advising and Assessment

This session has two topics that both strongly correlate to student retention.  How students are advised matters in terms of their success in being prepared for challenging coursework and for feeling a sense of belonging.  In addition, assessment can show faculty where students are hitting barriers to graduation.  Assessment should ideally be the driver of new curricular additions, subtractions, and innovations.  In this session, we’ll learn about the advising landscape and assessment process at º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Denver, and we’ll learn how program level assessment can be a powerful inquiry-based tool for your department.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the university assessment process for the general education curriculum
• Explain departmental level assessment
• List a 3,2, 1 for assessment in the strategic plan

Session 7.  How do classrooms work?

While experience in the classroom is a requirement for entering the chair role, there is no way that one faculty member can know all the myriad of ways that learning occurs in the classroom.  Department chairs have the opportunity to create safe spaces for faculty to experiment with innovative (or innovative for them) teaching methods.  Not all methods will work for all faculty, but creating a culture that supports and encourages different pedagogies will give faculty agency in trying what works for them and for their students.

Learning Objectives:

• List pros and cons of different pedagogical approaches
• Create space in a weekly/monthly meeting to share classroom wins
• Articulate strategies to build an innovative teaching culture

Session 8.  Strategic Action Planning

Having a strategic action plan doesn’t mean more work, it means deciding, as a department, what work is prioritized and what work can be ceased.  In terms of workload, setting priorities and boundaries should help with equity.  In this session, we’ll cover the basics of a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).  We’ll learn how to use a SWOT to create a Strategic Action Plan, and we’ll discuss how objectives and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) could be used for faculty and staff to know if the plan’s goals have been met.

Learning Objectives:

• Running a department SWOT
• Creating a Strategic Action Plan
• Explaining the use of objectives and KPIs

Session 9.  Money Matters

No department has ever said they have too much money.  In this session, we’ll learn about the resources for marketing your department and then spending that money.  The adaptation of Workday, and other budgeting tools, offers a chance for chairs to be strategic and transparent about their spending.  This session offers an overview of marketing and Workday.

Learning Objectives:

• Create a marketing plan to be embedded in your strategic action plan
• Work through common processes in Workday
• Describe Adaptive Planning – the budgeting tool in Workday