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The Change Leadership Toolkit for Advancing Systemic Change in Higher Education project aims to develop a set of tools and resources to help campus leaders and teams develop strategies and leadership competencies that contribute to implementing, scaling and sustaining campus systemic change and transformation initiatives.
Background and Goals
There is an increasing need to build leaders’ capacity to facilitate systemic institutional change and transformation that improves student success as well as other important campus goals. Campus leaders play critical roles in helping facilitate and support the institutionalization of policies, programs and changes to infrastructure, processes and culture that are necessary for institutional transformation efforts. Successful institutional transformation involves multiple levels, from grassroots faculty engagement to presidential vision and support – essentially shared or team leadership across campus. This project fills a major gap — there are no research-based models of change which are focused on leader roles, moves (or actions), and competencies that are accessible and user-friendly. This project also provides a comprehensive set of tools that starts with leadership context, analysis of change levers, leadership roles and agency, building leadership team and capacity, and details on how to lead, not just what to lead, in ways that connect leaders to the entire process of change.
The USC Pullias Center project team, Dr. Adrianna Kezar and Dr. Ángel Gonzalez, with Dr. Susan Elrod, have developed a Toolkit and an online Library of Resources for change leaders to facilitate more effective institutional change and transformation, with a $275,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, building on prior support from the National Science Foundation. Additionally, with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the team will develop and validate a model and resources for Tookit implementation by campus teams.
This project is intended to create and refine the strategy and tools required to build and sustain change leadership capacity for systemic institutional change.
The Toolkit includes:
- An Ecosystem Model for Leadership of Systemic Change
- The What and Who of Change: Goals of the Project and Leader Roles, Agency and Teams
- Change Leadership Worksheets:
- Leadership Context
- Levers for Change
- Change Leader Moves Inventory
- Prioritizing Change Leader Moves
- Assessing Leader Moves and Process
- Case Studies
- Resource Support
We are grateful for the engagement and support of everyone who was involved in this workshop and subsequent stages of Toolkit development.
Pullias Research Team
Adrianna Kezar
Director
Susan Elrod
Chancellor, Indiana University-South Bend
Angel Gonzalez
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Funders
The ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION is a not-for-profit, mission-driven grantmaking institution dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge. Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation, the Foundation makes grants in four broad areas: direct support of research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics; initiatives to increase the quality and diversity of scientific institutions and the science workforce; projects to develop or leverage technology to empower research; and efforts to enhance and deepen public engagement with science and scientists.
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Mark Suzman, under the direction of Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.
The National Science Foundation (Grant #s 1841055, 2017799) provided funding for a workshop that resulted in development of the initial draft of the Toolkit, which outlined the model and Change Leader Moves.
Toolkit
Change Leadership Toolkit: A Guide for Advancing Systemic Change in Higher Education
Susan Elrod, Adrianna Kezar, Ángel de Jesus González
Pullias Center for Higher Education (2023)
Several years into a pandemic, a racial reckoning unfolding, enrollments fluctuating, and with strapped finances, leaders are in dire need of a guide that can help support them in leading systemic change. Successful systemic change in higher education involves multiple leaders at various levels across campus employing an array of specific strategies, which we call Change Leader Moves, to create change. It requires an understanding of leadership context and the ways that elements of context can be leveraged to promote change or navigated to overcome barriers to change. However, there are minimal research-based tools for change and no models that connect leaders’ actions with their Leadership Context, and no Resource Library that bridges various individual existing leadership tools. For these reasons, we provide this Change Leadership Toolkit. The Toolkit consists of an array of tools that were developed with higher education leaders in varying roles across numerous institutional types nationwide.
Categories: Leadership, Equity and Leadership
adrianna kezar equity and leadership leadership
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