Taking the Reins

Peter Eckel and Adrianna Kezar have written this book to offer insight to campus leaders who face transformational change--to help them mount a proactive, rather than a reactive, process to effect transformation. They believe that most institutional leaders have little to no experience with implementing large-scale change and lack a solid literature base upon which to rely. Although some scholarship exists on the content of change or change outcomes and conditions, very little information is available concerning the process through which leaders must go to bring about change--and particularly transformational change. Based upon empirical data, this book offers practical, specific advice for leaders faced with attempting to implement deep and pervasive change. Taking the Reins is based on the ACE Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation, a five-year effort funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation involving 23 diverse institutions working on transformational change. This book focuses on a sub-set of six institutions that had made the most significant change at the end of five years. The key findings of the study include an identified set of core change strategies, the interrelationship among these strategies, the importance of helping people think differently, and the need for sensitivity to institutional culture. The authors formulate a coherent model, which they call the Mobile Model of Change. The mobile is used as a metaphor for the process of transformational change because it illustrates how the identified change strategies work together. The audience for this book includes presidents and provosts, deans, and department chairs and faculty committee chairs, as well as other campus administrators. Other potential readers include higher education scholars and leadership development programs that incorporate modules on change management.
About the Author: Peter D. Eckel, Ph. D., is vice president for governance and leadership programs at the Association of Governing Boards. His papers appear in The Review of Higher Education, Planning for Higher Education, The Journal of Higher Education, Metropolitan Universities Journal, To Improve the Academy, Research in Higher Education, and Higher Education Policy. He has been a fellow at the Salzburg Seminar Universities Project in Austria and at the Centre for Higher Education Transformation (CHET) in South Africa. He received his Ph.D. in education policy, planning, and administration from the University of Maryland, College Park. Adrianna Kezar, Ph. D., is associate professor in the Rossier School of Education and associate director of CHEPA at University of Southern California. She has over 40 published articles, books, and chapters on the topic of leadership, governance, and change and innovation. Her work has been featured in top tiered education journals including Journal of Higher Education, Review of Higher Education and Research in Higher Education. Her latest books are Recognizing and Serving Low Income Students and Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership. Dr. Kezar has developed a national leadership conference for administrators and faculty in higher education based on her research. She previously served as director of the ERIC Clearinghouse for Higher Education and was the managing editor of the ASHE-ERIC higher education report series. She received her Ph.D. in education from the University of Michigan.