EDUCAUSE Institute Management Program 2008

About the Management Program

The Management Program focuses on developing participants' organizational management skills, particularly those related to managing one's interactions on campus and to working collaboratively with other people. It provides a foundation of skills and awareness that are essential to the successful motivation and deployment of people. This program, in particular, is of benefit to those who manage functions within central campus information resources organizations, those who are relatively new to management, those who aspire to an increasing leadership role, and those who may be relatively new to higher education.

General Sessions

A Quiz: Manage This Project!

This highly interactive session will test your project management fortitude and skill by quizzing you on topics from defining project management and a project’s life cycle to identifying project failure warning signs to getting derailed projects back on track.

Effective Teams

This session will review the concept and characteristics of a team and the process of building team cohesiveness between information resources organizations and their customers. Specific attention will be paid to the unique challenges of projects and cross-functional teams.

Higher Education and IT

A natural tension exists between the fast-paced culture of IT and the slower-paced culture of higher education. The challenge for administrators and IT professionals is to develop strategies that resolve that cultural tension in ways that create new opportunities and sustain a vibrant learning environment. This presentation helps participants begin to assess where they individually and their institutions are situated as they prepare to face the challenges of the next century, and explores strategies that reduce tension while continuing to effectively meet the needs of the organization.

Performance Management

Participants will be given an overview of the basic concepts of performance management with suggested techniques for handling performance appraisals, establishing professional development plans for staff, and motivating IT professionals

Professional Development

Information technologies are changing at an exponential rate and careers of those of us who work in this field rise and fall more quickly than planned or imagined. Nevertheless, "career management" is not an oxymoron. Success and happiness are rarely achieved by chance. In this session you will think about your career in new ways as you work with your peers and faculty mentor to develop your own Professional Development Plan. Career management needs to become a proactive part of our job descriptions—not a description of something that happens to us in our jobs!

The Changing Face of IT

This session is an overview of the major factors impacting the use of information technology in higher education and how IT managers can manage this changing environment. We will examine the major trends in higher education and how these trends are impacting information technology organizations on campus.

Topic Sessions

Balanced Leadership—The Role of Emotional Intelligence

Researchers have recognized that while IQ has been a good predictor of academic success, many exceptionally bright people remain remarkably ineffective and unproductive in their professional lives. This session introduces the concept and key components of emotional intelligence (EI), provides an assessment of individual EI competencies, and illustrates the impact of EI on successful leadership.

Developing a Positive Organizational Culture Using Appreciative Inquiry

High quality customer service has become a common expectation within our increasingly "consumer driven" world. The perceived success of an organization often depends upon its ability to integrate improvements of service quality into all of its activities. Appreciative Inquiry is a dynamic and simple tool that can be used to help an organization function at its best. Applied to the subject of service, Appreciative Inquiry has the potential to help an organization vastly improve the quality of the customer experience.

Interpersonal Communication Skills

The single most costly breakdown that occurs in today's workplace is a collapse in communications. This session will examine keys to good communication, including understanding how communication happens, knowing your communication style, diagnosing the communication needs of others, and being sensitive and aware of those needs.

Managing Time and Priorities

This session will examine approaches to prioritizing your tasks and getting them done. We will discuss how to focus on the right things at the right time and ways to improve your own delegation skills. Participants will share ideas on how to avoid procrastination and manage the inevitable stress that arises in our jobs today.

Leadership

In this component, we will discuss leadership styles, the characteristics of effective leaders, ways to develop stronger leadership ability, and why leadership is a critical ability for professionals at every career stage.

Office Hours

Faculty will be available to discuss management-related issues including (but are not limited to) difficult personnel situations, managing up, project management, career planning, work/life balance, budgets, assessment, and communication with the campus community.

Suggested Reading

• Management Institute Reading List