Professor Patricia VilkinasImproving leadership capabilityImproving leadership capability

Improving leadership capability

Academic coordinators have a direct impact on the learning outcomes of large numbers of students, but few have well-developed leadership skills, an ALTC-funded report has found.
“Improving the leadership capability of academic coordinators in postgraduate and undergraduate programs in business” was led by Professor Patricia Vilkinas (above) of the University of South Australia and funded as part of the ALTC’s Leadership for Excellence in Learning and Teaching grants program.
The project investigated the leadership capabilities of academic coordinators at the UniSA and Curtin University of Technology.
“Within the current turbulent higher education environment, universities rely on the academic coordinator position to provide leadership at the degree level,” Professor Vilkinas said.
“But unfortunately a lot of the time, academic coordinators don’t see themselves as academic leaders,” she said.
Through interviews, surveys and literature reviews, the project team determined what academic leadership meant to the coordinators, which factors impacted on their leadership performance and how to make the roles more attractive.
The project team also developed professional development workshops and resources to improve the coordinators’ leadership skills.
“This project has highlighted the need to do several things if learning and teaching outcomes through excellent academic leadership are to be improved,” Professor Vilkinas said.
“These include proper role induction for academic coordinators, helping them understand their leadership responsibilities as well as periodic reviews of all levels of academic leadership,” she said.
“Even though they had no formal authority, we found that the academic coordinators in this study were capable of providing the leadership required, but they would definitely need ongoing support by senior managers and regular development opportunities to sustain those leadership qualities.”
While these results are based on the outcomes from two universities, a subsequent study, also funded by the ALTC, has begun that will take the work from the present study across the sector.

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Posted on 1 June, 2009 - 16:51