Women face unique challenges and, most often disadvantages, in negotiating. The higher education context can exacerbate these challenges.
The two presenters, one male and one female, combined, have over 50 years of higher education experience as faculty and administrators from program director, to department chair, associate dean, dean, provost, and university president. They have each observed and engaged in both successful and unsuccessful negotiations from a variety of perspectives where gender and context played a role. These include being party to hiring and salary negotiations, discussions of tenure and promotion, administrative appointments, performance reviews, grievances, and donor solicitation.
Based on their experiences and the research about gender differences and negotiation, the session will engage the audience in a discussion of the continuum of options women have ranging from, on the one end, forcefully leaning in (i.e., being more “male”), to the other end of passively leaning back (i.e., abiding by societal and cultural expectations of female submissiveness). The finer point-counter-point of various options will be explored and evaluated to provide the audience with the tools to be more aware, informed and effective negotiators, regardless of the style and approach participants adopt.
This is an interactive presentation appropriate for women in higher education at all levels, whether faculty just considering or entering administration, or more experienced administrators moving to advanced positions.

Before shifting to higher education law, I was a trial lawyer who represented individuals in controversies against larger organizations. Some of these controversies involved sexual misconduct and institutions of higher learning. In my current capacity, I am the senior administrator in charge of ensuring a workplace free of sexual misconduct. This involves investigating allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment in the workplace. Having practiced on both sides of the "v.," I bring a unique perspective to this fraught topic. I hope to use what insights I've gained to empower people in institutions of higher learning and thereby mitigate risk to the organization.
I will first discuss what a typical investigation looks like. Individuals are often reluctant to discuss inappropriate behavior because they are unsure of what will happen when they report. A legally sound investigation involves confidential interviews, prohibitions on retaliation, and other traits that people in higher education will find informative.
Next, I will discuss how to communicate about sexual misconduct. This involves reporting to a higher authority (typically a Title IX Coordinator), or discussing the problem with peers and supervisors. Fostering a culture where people can openly communicate is one of the best ways institutions can resolve these difficult issues. Because this is often the most difficult facet of these problems, I will discuss how to broach the topic in a safe way.
Finally, I hope to use case studies to illustrate the points above. This includes claims that were resolved within institutions. It will also include internal problems that lead to a lawsuit. I hope to end with a brief question and answer session.

This talk will walk the audience through a case study in which the goals and rewards system was redesigned to promote collaboration in order to more effectively meet growth targets. In 2014, we undertook an effort to prepare our workforce for growth and challenges in our changing market. The goal was to retool the team to become more collaborative and adaptable. The team had grown and merged with other groups and was in need of a more structured alignment of goals. The process began with a focus on cascading goals. These goals were developed from a strategic level to a functional level and tied to individual goals. This allowed everyone in the organization to see how their individual responsibilities tied to meeting our departmental goals. In addition to the cascading functional goals, we created cross-functional teams with shared goals that encouraged better collaboration.

This lecture will provide a pragmatic and innovative approach to addressing women’s lack of inclusion in the decision-making spheres of the upper administrations at two distinctive universities in rural Alabama: Tuskegee University, an historically black college, and Auburn University, a predominantly white land grant university. The discussion will illustrate the formation and continuing co-creation of purpose among members of the Tuskegee Auburn Women’s Leadership Alliance (TAWLA) and present outcomes that have led to the realistic achievement of inclusion through the alliance’s relational leadership process. [We will address the potential question of who makes up the alliance and how the alliance was formed.] The presenters will detail a case study of the relational model we used as a bottom-up collaboration that positively impacts the climate of both universities so that members of the university communities who are often excluded from decision-making spheres might collectively move their careers forward, making them more likely to be included in policy-setting arenas.
The process is as follows: Member of the alliance (TAWLA) began by first acknowledging the causal relationship between the lack of women in positional authority in our academic environments and the poor satisfaction, retention, and advancement rates among women at both universities. [We will provide statistical information to support this claim.] Second, using a relational style of communication that diffuses hierarchical interaction, we co-created a shared purpose that embraces fairness and belonging among us that stands in contrast to the entrenched sense of exclusion from decision-making academic spheres that we have experienced. Third, we co-created a vision encompassing concrete initiatives with the ethical standard of each being measured by its capacity to provide a sense of self-esteem and affirmation for members of our community. Each initiative is designed to perpetuate self-sustaining motivation by focusing on the work each of us is required to do in order to fulfill professional obligations that lead to career advancement, thereby opening the pathway to potential academic leadership roles. [We will provide specific examples of these initiatives.]
Fourth, in order to transform our academic cultures into inviting environments in which all stakeholders can perform, we identified key concepts about which we could speak from experience including professional balance, self-awareness, confrontation with injustices, micro-aggressions, career ladder challenges, historical perspectives, engagement with community, leadership and path-clearing for others, and confidence issues. Although most of the members of the alliance had been professionally trained to mute the personal in our academic work, we realized that speaking with authority from our personal experiences held significant potential in helping us formulate experientially infused discipline content. To enhance our abilities to discuss our academic areas from personal perspectives, we turned to previously published research such as “Having Our Say: African American Women, Diversity, and Counseling” (Bryant et al., 2005) that resonates with our experiences and informs our premise that indicators of ethnic and gender discrimination can be strikingly similar. Fifth, we entered into a meaning-making process that seeks congruence between our academic work and our academic lives by producing experientially infused discipline content intended to mitigate alienation and devaluation of our work that often accompanies our professional output, particularly in environments in which we are so rarely presented with opportunities to enjoy the like-minded camaraderie that often leads to advancement into academic leadership. [We will provide 3 specific examples of experientially infused discipline content from our process.]
Finally, we enacted our initiatives by bringing experientially infused discipline content into the professional arenas in which we are regularly measured and evaluated. We held a professional symposium in which we presented research from our disciplines within the context of our academic lives. In speaking together in public in a bottom-up collaborative forum, we claimed agency over our contributions to our disciplines in a manner that grants each of us the kind of self-esteem that we seek in our academic careers. Next we revised our professional presentations into a cogent narrative about the work of an inclusive group of scholars who share experiences related to our sense of the reasons behind our collective exclusion from the highest echelons of academic administration, and the result, a book titled Outside In: Voices from the Margins, is in the publication process, due out this spring. [We will provide brief examples from the book.] The book opens a space for congruence between the often excluded practitioner and her professional mission, thereby demonstrating forward momentum towards inclusivity at all levels and forging the possibility for inclusive leadership at our universities. Lastly, we continue to embrace our collective agency through individual efforts on behalf of one another such as purposefully recommending and nominating one another for important service assignments, appointments, and awards. [We will provide a few examples of how these efforts have directly benefited members of our alliance in their pursuit of leadership roles.] We remain committed to the idea that we will achieve a sense of belonging within the larger academic environments of which we are a part when we see ourselves reflected in the leadership of our academic institutions. This lecture will offer a case study of the success of the Tuskegee Auburn Women’s Leadership Alliance in promoting women in leadership at all levels of higher education in our region.

This talk is for all audience levels and will focus on the ability of the Binational Hispanic Woman to move away from the traditional non-leadership behavior patterns learned in the culture of their home and community.
A legacy of subordination is foremeost in the history of most Hispanic women on the International border of Nuevo Laredo ,Mexico and Laredo,Texas. Maternal role models for most of the females come with a heavy dosage of life patterns such as staying in the background, hesitating when presenting a personal opinion, and accepting another's decision that might not be in their favor even though they have the right to challenge. Most of these binational females know they have rights and choose to ignore them. The reasons are varied, they are not choosing roles or professions as leaders and prefer not to "shine" in public or they feel that leadership is necessary only for a political career. Their preferred self image in not one of a woman in the spotlight thus confusing leadership with public attention. The development of leadership for females within the family is usually ignored or confused. The paternal figure head often plays a role in the valuation of female leadership. Some is positive, some is negative, most is passive indifference.
On our international university campus in a binational community we have noticed a change in the number of the Hispanic binational female students participating in a leadership role.The traditional passivity is no longer the norm. We are pleased to see binational Hispanic female students actively engaged in activities that spur them into leadership roles and later actively seeking positions of leadership in our campus community. This has occurred only in the past few years(our campus is over 45 years old), we will examine what has happened to support this most successful change in attitude and personal culture.

External advisory boards can be of great benefit to senior university administrators.
For those setting one up, it is essential to select the right membership, to invest internal colleagues, to set up the appropriate accountability structures, and to manage expectations of all parties.
To receive maximum benefit from a board, administrators must be willing to invest significant work, particularly as it related to data collection and presentation.

Although women make up the majority of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree recipients, they remain underrepresented in leadership roles in higher education. To foster an environment that enables individuals to reach their full potential, University of Georgia President Jere W. Morehead and former UGA Provost Pamela Whitten, who is now President at Kennesaw State University, launched a Women’s Leadership Initiative at UGA in 2015 to address issues such as recruitment and hiring, leadership development, and work-life balance.
As a result of the initiative, the UGA has enhanced training for department heads and search committees on increasing diversity through the use of active and systematic recruiting practices. The university also launched the Women’s Leadership Fellows program, which includes monthly meetings that address issues women face in academic administration. Women’s Leadership Fellows learn from senior administrators on campus as well as visiting speakers from academia, business and other fields, and several Fellows have moved into leadership roles following their participation in the program.
The Women’s Leadership Initiative at UGA also resulted in the development of a Staff Women’s Leadership Institute, programming for students, and the hiring of a campus-wide work-life balance coordinator.
This discussion will highlight lessons learned from the initiative, successes, and unexpected challenges. Audience members, from faculty members to administrators, will leave with ideas that they can implement at their institutions.

There is a growing body of research that describes college students who have children. They are usually single, women of color, first-generation, and low-income. Sixty-five percent have full or part-time jobs in addition to caring for their families while attending college. Issues such as employment, childcare, finances, balance, and general stress, all contribute to a lower rate of persistence for this group. Only 33% of student parents earn a certificate or degree 6 years after initial enrollment.
Under the leadership of Dr. Erika Endrijonas, Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) has created a new paradigm for community colleges to “think outside the box” and address non-academic issues of persistence and retention. This effort, Strengthening Working Families, is a collaboration between two award-winning departments at LAVC: the Family Resource Center and Workforce Training Department. The mission of the program is to advance social and economic mobility by reducing barriers to higher education and jobs through integrating holistic family support services for underserved populations.
Audience Takeaway:
We will discuss how to shift the paradigm from the focus of serving students academically to including a holistic family approach. We will also discuss opportunities for collaboration within on-campus support programs as well as community agencies that all work to advance positive social, economic, and educational outcomes for students. The presentation will include how a community college serves students and the community as a workforce site. An employer driven academy approach that leads to high job placement will be outlined, as well as outcomes of success when the family unit is strong.
The audience will take away examples of the “how-to’s” of programmatic services such as: group and individualized counseling, free children’s clothing exchange, food pantries, on-campus parent and child playgroups, satellite kid-friendly study lounges, textbook lending library, and workforce/community partnerships.
Audience Level:
All higher education faculty, staff, and administration can benefit from learning about the Strengthening Working Families model, which is a national model for replication through the Aspen Institute. All innovative programs at community colleges need a champion, but it takes collaboration between college departments to get the job done.

Few women reach the level of chief executive officer (CEO) in Fortune 500 organizations, a troubling disparity, especially considering that women bring unique leadership qualities and expertise to organizations that result in financial gains. A phenomenological study explored strategies that women incorporated to attain successfully senior management positions in business organizations. Guided by critical theory, which seeks to explain a phenomenon of an oppressed social group by criticizing the oppression and using the oppression as a catalyst for empowerment, the study asked participants to explain the strategies they applied to attain senior management positions in business organizations.
Twenty female senior managers in Fortune 500 companies in the Midwest United States related their lived experiences through face-to-face interviews. Using the Hycner method to bracket meanings and themes of the data, 5 subthemes emerged: (a) acting positive and fair, (b) obtaining a mentor, (c) listening to advice and asking questions of a mentor, (d) needing increased/continued education, and (e) needing to work hard and increase responsibilities. The implications for positive social change include specific, tangible strategies women seeking advancement may implement in order to reach senior management positions. Ultimately, as the number of female CEOs in the workforce increases, the gender wage-gap will decrease, resulting in a gender-equal workforce.
The take-a-way from this discussion is real world strategies women can use to gain advancement, proven successful by women who incorporated them in their own career trajectories. The results of this study are intended for all audiences- individuals will either be women themselves or work with women, and therefore will find the study results useful in developing the careers of selves or others.

The United States has a contemporary ambivalence about women and leadership. A cottage industry of studies makes clear that women’s under-representation in leadership positions is at least partly attributable to traditional gender expectations and practices (Nohria & Khurana, 2010). In 1871 the United States saw the first female become a college president; Frances Elizabeth Willard was President of Evanston College for ladies in Illinois (Retrieved from https://franceswillardhouse.org/frances-willard/biography/). Yet, 146 years later, women remain underrepresented in academic leadership (Dean, Bracken, & Allen, 2009). According to Dean, et. al. (2009), women are not entering academic careers at rates proportional to their degree attainment. “Women remain underrepresented in academic leadership and must exercise personal agency for fostering their own advancement and challenging inequities; they remain underrepresented in top academic leadership positions and in key positions along the academic career ladder” (Dean, et. al., 2009, p. 2).
Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011) postulate that in the early twentieth century, women in the postsecondary sector were known for their activism which increased the numbers of women faculty and students in higher education institutions. As the numbers increased throughout the century, women were known for engaging in generative leadership practices. A fundamental challenge to women’s leadership arises from the mismatch between the qualities traditionally associated with leaders and those traditionally associated with women. The assertive, authoritative, and dominant behaviors that people link with leadership tend not to be viewed as typical or attractive in women (Nohria & Khurana, 2010). In contrast to male leaders who were known for their individuality, decisiveness, and vision, women demonstrated leadership practices such as forming committees and creating advisory boards to encourage participation in governance, creativity of problem solving and open communications. Women leaders are often described as modeling authentic human reactions; demonstrating qualities such as nurturing, organizing, motivating, and listening – skills they were taught as part of being a woman. These mothering skills most often associated with female leadership are attention to relationships, encouragement, protection and support (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). Women set high standards for themselves; they lead from a value-based core; they seek continuous learning and are concerned with balance in their lives (Dean, et. al., 2009).
Women in academia make up more than half of all college students, but less than 15 percent of the presidents at doctoral-degree granting institutions are women. Data indicates that there are more than enough qualified women to fill available leadership positions based on the fact that women are being prepared at a greater rate than men. In 2014, just three years ago, 31% of women held full professor positions at degree-granting postsecondary institutions. That same year, male faculty held a higher percentage of tenure positions at every type of institution even though they did not hold the highest number of faculty positions at every rank (American Council on Education [ACE], 2016). Based on research pertaining to women leaders’ lives (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011), women have enormous potential to bring change. Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011) go on to say that although society is not yet at a point where gender does not matter the ways in which some women lead indicates a post-gender phase based on the chances they take, the strategies they use; all in spite of not being taken seriously. Women are at a point where they can lead as they want to lead, without explanation. They are changing the ideas about appropriate models just by being themselves.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step; in the original Chinese this statement translates to - The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet (University of Denver, 2013). Wolverton, Bower and Hyle (2009), assert that to be a person is to have a story to tell; stories explain life. They raise questions, get us thinking and help us see people. Storytelling captures our attention and illuminates images we carry within us. Stories have the potential for greater influence; they tell us who a person is, why she is where she is, what she wants, what she believes, and how she enlists others in her dreams, desires, and needs. The road to the college presidency is well established and traveled mostly by white men; for women the way is less well marked (Wolverton, Bower, & Hyle, 2009). Intended for women who are currently in leadership positions in higher education institutions, this presentation will demonstrate how the success of women college presidents, or the lack of them, are/should be connected to mentors they’ve had in their lives; and why mentoring women into leadership positions is needed.
References:
Dean, D. R., Bracken, S.J., & Allen, J.K. (2009). Women in academic leadership; Professional strategies, personal choices. VA: Stylus Publishing.
Frances Willard House Museum & Archives. Retrieved November 27, 2017, from https://franceswillardhouse.org/frances-willard/biography/
Grogan, M. and Shakeshaft, C. (2011). Women and educational leadership. CA: Jossey-Bass.
Nohria, N. & Khurana, R. (2010). Handbook of leadership theory and practice. MA: Harvard Business Press.
University of Colorado, Colorado Women’s College. (2013). Benchmarking women’s leadership in the United States. Retrieved November 16, 2017 from https://womenscollege.du.edu/media/documents/BenchmarkingWomensLeadershipintheUS.pdf
Wolverton, M., Bower, B.L., & Hyle, A.E., (2009). Women at the top: What women university and college presidents say about effective leadership. VA: Stylus Publishing.

Imagine being one of the few senior-level woman leaders working in a 300-year-old male-dominated international Catholic educational organization. Where up until the late 1990s only men held positions of leadership at the national and international level, even though the women outnumber the men at 54%. What leadership skills would you need? What struggles would you face? How would you navigate within the patriarchal culture? What advice would you give to women in similar situations?
In 2017, I conducted an interview study with seven first-generation senior-level women leaders in the Lasallian Institute to find out. The Lasallian Institute, founded in 1680 by the De La Salle Christian Brothers, is a global Catholic educational network with over 65 universities worldwide . Given the patriarchal hierarchy, very few women have risen to top leadership roles within the Institute. However, similar to other Catholic universities in the U.S., the number of women in senior-level leadership roles are beginning to rise . Given this new generation of university women leaders situated in a traditionally male-dominated environment we have the opportunity to learn from their experience and sage advice.
During this interactive talk, participants will discover the key themes that emerged from interviews exploring the lived experience of seven women leaders representing institutions from the Philippines, Australia, Mexico, and the United States who rose to senior-level leadership roles within their institution, regionally, and internationally. Takeaways include a deeper understanding of women leadership in a traditional patriarchal culture including, common struggles and barriers, effective leadership skills, discerning gender differences, and advice for emerging women leaders. The session will conclude with an open discussion to gather insights and spark a further exploration of ideas. This talk is intended, but not exclusively, for women who are entering or have recently entered a senior-level university position; especially if situated in a traditional patriarchal environment.

Basically, I would like to talk to an audience of women leaders in academia about an important issue that gets little attention yet affects the lives and success of women faculty in important ways. The issue is the disproportionate amount of "service"--particularly "internal" service that women faculty do compared with their male counterparts. The types of service I will be discussing are uncompensated service assignments--not compensated assignments like dean or associate dean positions.
While the talk is based on research I conducted with my coauthor Victor Borden that was published recently in Research in Higher Education (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11162-017-9454-2), I would like to focus with this audience on constructive ways to address the problem.
The research garnered attention in the New York Times, Newsweek, and many other news outlets in May when it first came out online. The next step is to develop and implement strategies to fix the imbalance. If academic leaders pay attention to this issue and recognize its importance, it is something we can successfully address to improve the lives of women faculty.

What started as a grass roots effort to support the advancement of women across 14 University of Texas (UT) campuses, has become several large scale administratively sponsored initiatives – supported and in some instances funded by UT Administration. It started in October 2012, when a group of UT senior women faculty and executives organized the first Senior Women’s Leadership Meeting. Representatives gathered from UT institutions across the state and System administration. This meeting eventually resulted in the formation of the UT Women’s Senior Leadership Network. The goal of the meeting was to better understand the progress of women through the UT System and to identify specific professional issues facing women across the campuses. Three important recommendations emerged from this meeting:
1. Re-invigorate the advancement of women as a high priority issue for each UT campus,
2. Establish and refresh existing programs for recruitment, mentoring and retention of women that can be shared across campuses,
3. Ensure equity in salary, promotion, and title.
With these goals in mind, a group of senior women faculty and executives from the Senior Leadership Network met with the UT System Chancellor to gain support for the initiative. The discussions were the result of several years of collaboration and work to detail the necessary steps to operationalize women’s advancement in the UT System and specifically addressed the following problem statement:
The number of women in academia has risen, but the number of women in administrative executive and faculty leadership positons has not. To be a national model for women in higher education, action is necessary. Currently, there is no System entity to coordinate actions to address this issue.
After several meetings with the Chancellor and senior leadership, Administration agreed to financially support a “Developing Future Women Leaders” conference. The 2015 conference focused on building a sponsorship program within the UT System. Sponsorship programs are different from mentorship or coaching programs in that sponsors – a person in a position of power – advocates publicly for the advancement of a protégé within an organization. The sponsorship conference continues today with the next meeting set for January 2018.
The work of the Senior Women’s Leadership Network has played an important role in the development of the Chancellor’s Strategic Vision. Two important elements of the strategic priority “Enhancing Fairness and Opportunity” focus on gender pay equity and ensuring diversity in recruiting pools. The outcome of this is the foundation for a System-level capability to nurture, support, and sustain and enduring climate that is positive for women and enables equal achievement for women professionals.
The UT System has since established a Chancellor and senior-leader sponsored System-wide entity whose purpose is to enable the and sustain an organizational climate and culture across every institution and within the System Administration that is positive for women, supports equal achievement for women professionals, and assist in raising the next generation of women leaders. This entity is the “Chancellor’s Network for Women’s Leadership.”

This session will explore the difficulty leaders face in adhering to important principles and sticking by their own moral priorities. A recent study by Stephanie Johnson and David Hekman of the University of Colorado's Leed School of Business confirms what instinct has told us – when women and minorities take steps to support diversity in the workplace, they suffer negative employment consequences, including lower performance evaluations. As a result, when a female or minority leader hires and promotes qualified minorities and women, the leader is viewed as less competent at all of the important aspects of the leadership position. This negative perception makes it more difficult for the leader to create buy-in on other important projects and goals for the organization. Thus, a female or minority leader must maintain a firm commitment to her principles to accomplish her top goals, especially a goal of increasing diversity in the workplace.
This talk is intended for anyone in leadership or anyone with an interest in becoming a leader.
The audience will come away with a better understanding of the fortitude it takes to lead effectively and with some ideas about coping with that difficulty.

Leaders in higher education need access to information, and personnel need access to decision makers. Very often, however, all the information and decision making authority resides in a select few individuals in the institution: typically, the President, Provost, and Finance Officer. This structure leaves little room for diverse voices and all too often creates barriers to emerging female and minority leaders. There are simply not enough seats at the table.
Unity College has a different approach. When Dr. Melik Peter Khoury became president, he immediately began work on flattening the administrative structure, eliminating dysfunctional hierarchies, and empowering accountable leaders to better influence mission-aligned strategic decisions. This first among equals approach means being responsive to changing conditions; an individual’s capacity to serve will, at times, seem to stretch the boundaries of a strict job description in order to place project and need above reporting structure. First among equals means shared successes and shared failures. Celebrations are inclusive. Challenges, vulnerabilities, and mistakes are treated with transparency. Today, ten mutually-invested “chief officers” fill out the executive cabinet, reimagining concepts of leadership in higher education. Seven of the ten are women.
In this presentation, three female chief officers provide an insider’s look at both how to create an abundant leadership team, and what it’s like to work on one. Using a story-telling approach, the Chief Academic Officer will explain the challenges of being first among equals; the Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer will reveal why her position is strategically vital; and the Chief Sustainability Officer will explore the importance of disposition over training in leadership development.
This talk is intended for experienced executives who already lead teams of professionals and are considering disruptive organizational structures, as well as emerging executives developing their inclusive leadership frameworks.
Dr. Rana Johnson advises, supports and implements the vision of the President on all areas of diversity, equity and inclusion. Dr. Erika Latty oversees faculty leadership, curriculum, policy, and delivery of academic programs. Ms. Jennifer deHart advances the college’s nationally recognized commitment to sustainability, and works collaboratively to plan, develop and facilitate coordinated, best-practice sustainability efforts.

Based on research with 50 C-Suite Women, this presentation details specific recommendations for easing the path of future female leaders. It also brings the positive and negative emotions of leadership journey to light in the words of women at the top of their organizations. What is the price of success and do they think it’s worth it?
Specific takeaways include the importance of :
- Promotion of the positive emotional payback of a top job for a woman as well as some of the negative ones. To date, publicity is more about the trade-offs female leaders make between job and family / personal time. More stories of actual female leaders need to be told. This recommendation is directed more to what happens within organizations than a request for media coverage although that is also helpful. Most organizations have cultures created by men for men, as one study respondent observed, making pathways to leadership for women obscure. Programs that allow direct contact with high-achieving women include mentorships, can show aspiring female leaders the value (and price) of top jobs and pathways to achieve them.
- More programs that build confidence in girls and young women, especially for those eligible for and expressing interest in executive positions. A confidence gap between girls and boys has been documented, and it is not clear that girls growing up in the 21st century have been able to catch up with boys.

The talk is about our three studies regarding aspects of the higher education presidency: (1) the use of search firms, (2) presidential compensation, and (3) the presidents of the most prestigious colleges and universities who also serve on the boards of publicly-traded corporations. An overview of each of the studies shows the following:
- In reviewing 60 contracts for presidential searches (2016 study), we identified some issues of potential concern. Briefly stated, these include the
- Manner in which search firms are hired, frequently with no proposal and little review process;
- Simplicity of most contracts, with little definition of what the search firm is expected to accomplish;
- Lack of what we have termed “due diligence” with regard to checking candidates’ backgrounds;
- Cost of the search; and
- Effect of search firms on the higher education institutions’ boards of trustees and faculty.
- In reviewing 116 contracts for higher education public-university presidents (2016 study), we found that reporting annual salary is quite different from reporting annual or total compensation. Indeed, we discovered that total compensation includes but is not limited to the following:
- Annual salary (base salary plus regular/traditional benefits);
- Other benefits such as deferred compensation, supplemental retirement and insurance (above what faculty and other administrators receive), stipends, and performance bonuses (usually provided without any stated metrics);
- One-time payments such as a signing bonus, a retention or completion bonus, an annuity, and moving expenses; and
- Miscellaneous monies such as travel allowance, entertainment allowance, spousal pay, tuition support for family members, and various “other add-ons.”
- Finally, we have been working for many years on studies of the work of higher education presidents who serve on the boards of publicly-traded corporations. This study we have replicated several times (first in 1998, most recent to be completed February 2018). In the last completed iteration (2010), we examined the top 100 universities according to US News and World Reports to determine the gender makeup of the office of the president at the most prestigious universities and which presidents sat on corporate boards. At that time, men were five times as likely to serve as a president of a top 100 university than women. Of the 39 university presidents who served on corporate boards, only 9 were women.
For this talk, we will focus on women seeking to become presidents as well as those who are presidents by examining the differences between the female and the male experience and suggesting how we might improve our options.
The talk is intended for anyone in a leadership position at a college or university. We will be reporting not just on data collected at one point-in-time, but on patterns of findings, with a specific focus on how women are affected by, and can influence, hiring practices, contract negotiations, and work outside the university setting.

I had been a practicing coach (life, not sports) for a few years when I made the transition from faculty to administration. My transition was smoother than anticipated and looking back I realize it was because of the tools I had learned as a coach. When mentoring new leaders in higher education I find that teaching them some of these concepts and tools helps them become more effective as leaders - an added bonus is that they are happier.
Concepts from coaching can help women find their authentic leadership style and work effectively with others to build high performing teams. The tools I will discuss during this presentation can be divided into two categories: Those directed at managing yourself and those directed at managing others. Starting with the framework of causal coaching and helping the audience understand how thoughts and feelings affect the actions and results they see, I will introduce the audience to tools that will help them get things done, connect with others and not be derailed by the emotional depletion that often affects leaders in higher education. These include tools such as managing your mind, understanding the difference between judgment and discernment, setting effective boundaries and learning how to say no.
While suitable for administrators at all levels, this will be particularly relevant for new administrators who have been given a lot of advice on what to do (like learn to say no, bring the right stakeholders to the table, set appropriate boundaries) but not much guidance on how to implement the advice.