Transitioning From a Faculty to an Administrative Role

Abstract

Many new nursing leaders assuming deanships, assistant, or interim deanships have limited education, experience, or background to prepare them for the job. To assist new deans and those aspiring to be deans, Jana L. Pressler, PhD, RN, and Carole A. Kenner, PhD, RNC-NIC, FAAN, the editors of this department, address common issues, challenges, and opportunities that face academic executive teams, such as negotiating an executive contract, obtaining faculty lines, building effective work teams, managing difficult employees, and creating nimble organizational structure to respond to changing consumer, healthcare delivery, and community needs. In this article, the editors asked guest author, Dr Cesarina Thompson, to discuss the transition process from faculty to administrative role.

Social accountability and nursing education in South Africa

“…Programme assessment is equally important, as it provides evidence of educational effectiveness and therefore meets the demand for accountability ( 58 ). A third aspect of evaluation to improve accountability is raised by Thompson ( 59 ), who advocates widening the evaluation of individual faculty members to encompass assessment of the collective performance of the staff in a nursing education institution. This is because an individual lecturer cannot ensure that students complete the course as competent practitioners ( 59 ).…”

Concept analysis: Succession planning

“…Many academic nursing leaders lack formal leadership training and mentoring thereby compromising leadership stability and job satisfaction 10,11 . In the literature, the recurrent themes related to leadership in higher education identified included (a) the lack of preparation for the roles and responsibilities of an academic dean, (b) inattention to the development of academic leaders in nursing education, and (c) the lack of mentors to help new leaders transition into the deanship role 14‐19 . If academic institutions fail to identify, train, and retain qualified personnel to fill leadership positions, these positions will not be filled by experienced personnel and inherent knowledge is lost 1,5,12 .…”