Challenges Confronting Community College Deans

Abstract

Community college deans and other senior administrators are faced with a variety of issues and challenges that include, but are not limited to, the ever-changing nature of technology, changes in diverse populations, industry training, and job placements. At this level, the frequently identified emergence of leadership and supervision issues have been more than community college deans can address proactively. Various approaches are used to identify such issues and trends in the field. However, this article describes a 3-round Delphi approach to identifying leadership and supervision issues confronting community college deans over a 5-year period in 4 southeastern states: Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia. The results of the study produced 48 major issues and 18 categories that have implications for community colleges throughout the nation. 12 of the 48 issues had a mean score of 4 or more points based on the assigned 5-point Likert-type scale. Community college deans, more than ever before, face increasing leadership and supervisory issues that have far-reaching implications not just for community colleges, but for other 2-year postsecondary educational institutions as well.

Leadership competencies of branch campus administrators in multi-campus community college systems

“…If they were realigned to the same competency, as other studies have combined them, the strength of those responses would be 23. Then the results of this study would more closely resemble studies by Wallin (2006) and Watba and Farmer (2006), which ranked financial skills high as a needed skill by mid-level administrators and leaders.…”

“…Much research exists on community college leadership, especially on the community college president (Duree, 2007;Eddy, 2005;Malm, 2008;McFarlin, Crittenden, & Ebbers, 1999;Shults, 2001;Sullivan, 2001;Weisman & Vaughan, 2002. Other leadership studies have focused on the next tier of leaders: chief academic officers (Amey & VanDerLinden, 2002a, 2002bAnderson, Murray, & Olivarez, 2002;Cejda, McKenney, & Burley, 2001;Keim & Murray, 2008), mid-level administrators (Garza Mitchell & Eddy, 2008;Rosser, 2000;Wallin, 2006), deans (Bailey, 2008;Watba & Farmer, 2006), and faculty leaders (Miller & Pope, 2003;Pope & Miller, 2005).…”

A comparative thematic review of vocational leadership literature from the USA, Great Britain and Australia

“…General studies have noted that declining taxpayer funding, fiscal leadership and finding alternative private incomes has become a critical part of college presidents' role (Jeremiah-Ryan and Palmer 2005; McGee 2003; Phelan 2008) as well as deans' (Watba and Farmer 2006). Grasmick, Davies, and Harbour (2012) report the value of leaders' vision when implementing participation and shared decisionmaking and Hlinka (2013) One area of interest shown by a number of researchers deals with crises management in relation to sudden changes in leadership.…”

A Conceptual Paper on Organizational Stressors Among Higher Education Deans

“…Major issues the 102 deans identified were very similar to the stressors previously reported in existing literatures. Fiscal problems, remained the very top of the stressors experienced by the deans, with funding, budget cuts, declining resources cited as the primary challenges (Watba, & Farmer, 2006).…”