Inspiring or Inhibiting Today’s CAO: Lessons from Senior Academic Leaders

The CAO’s role is often very challenging, requiring balancing competing needs while working in isolation. Institutions can and should do more to support these key players.

Chief academic officers go by numerous titles as they conduct their work to uphold the academic core and integrity of their higher education campus. The chief academic officer (CAO) is often described as the most challenging position in higher education leadership. The position requires balancing faculty expectations with the strategic directives of the institution’s executive leadership, which often proves to be untenable. Whether as provost or vice president for academic affairs, campus dean or chief learning officer, each CAO navigates complex organizational dynamics, faces high levels of responsibility and frequently encounters institutional policy and personnel management stressors.  

However, in recent years, the average tenure of CAOs has decreased, indicating a need for new and proactive measures to better support this essential group of higher education leaders. Compounding the issue is the feeling of loneliness that many CAOs report (Harris et al., 2022). With little research on how to respond to these stressors and the sense of loneliness, a group of colleagues joined together to design an inquiry into the experience of CAOs and are now communicating the findings.

The authors, four former chief academic officers, interviewed fifteen individuals who had served as or were still serving as CAO to learn more about senior academic leadership’s experiences. If left unaddressed, the 47% turnover rate has serious implications for organizational cultures and student outcomes. We wanted to bring the individual experiences together, seeing challenges to form recommendations. This article is the first of two and introduces the inquiry and our findings.   

What’s happening with CAOs? 

When we worked as colleagues, we were four CAOs upholding our institution’s mission and serving our students daily through our academic leadership. As coresearchers, we shifted to collectively puzzling over the complexity of the role, trying to understand a broader group of colleagues and their experiences of the role, as well as the decision to transition into or out of academic leadership. Through individual and group interviews of current and former CAOs, we heard about what inspired and challenged them in their work. They shared clear recommendations for essential leadership relationships, professional development and fostering an atmosphere of success within the organization’s executive culture.

Collectively, our participants articulated what would strengthen and extend their tenure. The purpose of our inquiry was to find out what’s happening with CAOs. Brantley (2022) warns that if the overall difficulty and stress of the role would likely contribute to, or prompt, their departure, CAO turnover will continue, loneliness will increase and leadership success will decline (para. 17). Where will students and faculty be left as a result?  

Untold Stories 

Interviews with professionals often reveal untold stories, simply because it’s lonely at the top and it feels too vulnerable to articulate the stress. However, stress has an impact and, as one participant noted, “The intensity and acceleration in our roles keep increasing.” Others described leading through times of shifting presidents or other key administrators, pressures of union power, racism and facing hundreds of day-to-day decisions. CAOs described program and institutional closures, employee layoffs, financial challenges and enrollment declines.  

The stories revealed the following patterns of leadership dynamics and stressors: 

1. Relationships are essential yet often unavailable: Relationships with colleagues and the president matter to their success and perceptions of self-efficacy, yet they are often as difficult to navigate as they are essential to the job.
2. Health and well-being are dangerously out of balance: Stress, isolation and exhaustion negatively impact health and well-being. While common among many sectors and roles, the CAO’s responsibility for tending others’ mental health does not extend to their own. 
3. They are fixing, fixing, fixing: This is the mantra of a CAO and reflects their constant interest in improvement. They are always fixing and building, often rewarded with chronic role expansion, as everything seems to need fixing or changing. 
   
4. Values must be aligned and actively practiced: Values serve as a guiding compass. If they do not align with the organization’s direction or culture anymore, it’s clear it’s time to step down. 

Fatigue comes from many places: presidential turnover, mountains of initiatives and identity papercuts or microaggressions that hamper an equitable leadership culture and the CAO’s daily work. Presidential upheaval was amplified during the years most affected by the COVID pandemic. Some CAOs described the instability from interim presidents and changes to cabinet members when presidents brought their own people. One participant reflected, “You’re left there, always looking at the back of your head, making sure that your own CV is ready, so you can pivot quickly if you need to.”

Another CAO described a recently terminated employee whom their new president decided to bring back: “It’s exhausting and detracts from the work [the president charges the academic leader to accomplish].” Adding to the list, some participants described how microaggressions, even at the cabinet level, are merged with the “frustration of walking the imaginary line of perceived aggression” and the “need to smile and look for compromising words.”

Race, gender and sexuality identities continue to be lightning rods in some campus cultures, making it difficult if you don’t have golf clubs or a wife and kid, despite being in an institution that is “welcoming, on paper.”  

Now What? 

On a positive note, our interviews taught us what could be possible and how to enable academic leaders to sustain their roles long enough to affect faculty culture, the institution’s challenges and students’ successes. Rather than asking where we will we left, these responses took us to where we might go. Notable responses spoke of the critical partnership between the institution’s CAO and president in determining CAO success. Participants reported that their effectiveness and overall job satisfaction were closely tied to their working relationship with the president. Many CAOs expressed a need for visible presidential support, particularly when implementing challenging directives or strategic initiatives.  

During periods of program closures, personnel retrenchment, budget cuts or when rolling out controversial policies, CAOs describe feeling professionally isolated. In some cases, they perceived themselves as a shield for the president, absorbing criticism while attempting to implement a difficult directive. Given the importance of relationships, particularly with the president but also professional relationships generally, our next entry in this series is dedicated to the value of relationships as a tool for CAO success. This is a critical dynamic that presidents can actively cultivate and a way to signal to a new or long-serving CAO that the value is mutually beneficial.  

References  

Brantley, A. (2022). Chief Academic Officer transition: Opportunity, chaos or something in between? https://www.cupahr.org/issue/feature/chief-academic-officer-transition-opportunity-chaos-or-something-in-between/ 

Harris, J., Lane, J., Sun, J., & Baker, G. (2022). Academic leadership and governance of higher education: guide for trustees, leaders, and aspiring leaders of two- and four-year institutions (Second). Stylus. DOI: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003442868/academic-leadership-governance-higher-education-james-harris-jason-lane-jeffrey-sun-gail-baker-nancy-zimpher