Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership : An Examination of Grassroots Leaders in Higher Education

Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership contributes to the growing tradition of giving voice to grassroots leaders, focusing on the largely untapped potential of faculty and staff on college campuses. In an increasingly corporatized environment, grassroots leadership can provide a balance to the prestige- and revenue-seeking impulses of traditional campus leaders, create changes in the teaching and learning core, build greater equity, improve relationships among campus stakeholders, and enhance the student experience. This book documents the stories of grassroots leaders, including their motivation and background, the tactics and strategies that they use, the obstacles that they overcome, and the ways that they navigate power and join with formal authority. This investigation also highlights the fact that grassroots leaders, particularly in more marginalized groups, can face significant backlash. The authors end with a discussion of the future of leadership on college campuses, examining the possibilities for shared and collaborative forms of guidance and governance. Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership explores a mostly untapped resource on college campuses - the leadership potential of staff and faculty at all levels. This book contributes to the growing tradition of giving voice to grassroots leaders, offering a unique contribution by honing in on leadership in educational settings. In an increasingly corporatized environment, grassroots leadership can provide a balance to the prestige and revenue seeking impulses of campus leaders, act as a conscience for institutional operations with greater integrity, create changes related to the teaching and learning core, build greater equity, improve relationships among campus stakeholders, and enhance the student experience. The text documents the stories of grassroots leaders, including the motivation and background of these "bottom up" beacons, the tactics and strategies that they use, the obstacles they overcome, and the ways that they navigate power and join with formal authority. This investigation also showcases how grassroots leaders in institutional settings, particularly more marginalized groups, can face significant backlash. While we like to believe that organizations are civil and humane, the stories in this book demonstrate a dark side with which we must reckon. The book ends with a discussion of the future of leadership on college campuses, examining the possibilities for shared and collaborative forms of leadership and governance.-- Publisher description Grassroots leadership : making the invisible visible Framing the study : tempered radicals framework Developing a study of grassroots leaders : approach to inquiry, assumptions, and institutional descriptions Meet the grassroots leaders Tactics and strategy for creating meaningful change Analyzing and overcoming obstacles and challenges for grassroots leadership Encounters with authority and power : ways grassroots leaders navigate resistance and oppression Grassroots leaders' understanding of power and effects on leadership style Remaining resilient Top-down meets bottom-up : challenges and opportunities Leading in a time of corporatization : the impact of institutional structures and culture Encouraging and supporting faculty and staff grassroots leadership Moving forward : leadership implications and future research. Pointing out in their introduction that "grassroots leadership differs from two other related phenomena, social movements and faculty and staff activism," Kezar (U. of Southern California) and Lester (George Mason U.)--both are scholars of higher education organization--offer a study that explores the phenomena of problem-solving individuals who make an impact. After explaining the structure of the study, they focus on how to cultivate and nurture such activity, and the implications for institutions. Coverage includes obstacles and challenges, encounters with authority, power, resilience, and the impact of institutional structures and culture, among other topics. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) This book explores a mostly untapped resource on college campuses - the leadership potential of staff and faculty at all levels-and contributes to the growing tradition of giving voice to grassroots leaders, offering a unique contribution by honing in on leadership in educational settings. In an increasingly corporatized environment, grassroots leadership can provide a balance to the prestige and revenue-seeking impulses of campus leaders, act as a conscience for institutional operations with greater integrity, create changes related to the teaching and learning core, build greater equity, improve relationships among campus stakeholders, and enhance the student experience This book uncovers and makes visible grassroots leadership and change on college campuses.