Virginia Tech faculty, administrators selected for ACC Academic Leaders Network
Five Virginia Tech faculty and administrators have been selected to represent the university as part of the 2018-19 ACC Academic Leaders Network.
The Virginia Tech representatives are Jeff Earley, associate vice provost for finance; Ron Fricker, professor and department head of statistics; Kay Hunnings, associate dean for administration in the Pamplin College of Business; Patty Raun, director of the Center for Communicating Science; and Susan Sumner, associate dean for academic programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The team from Virginia Tech will join representatives from other ACC schools during the 2018-19 academic year for a series of networking and collaboration sessions hosted at various participating institutions.
The ACC Academic Leaders Network (ALN) is designed to facilitate cross-institutional networking and collaboration among academic leaders while building leadership capacity for the participating institutions. Building upon existing campus programs to support leadership development, the ALN also seeks to create distinctive learning opportunities for the participants and their universities and capitalize on collective networking and engagement.
“It’s good to see the broad range of colleges, departments and academic support units that are being represented by our team from Virginia Tech,” said Cyril Clarke, interim executive vice president and provost. “The academic leadership tools and perspectives that each attendee will bring back to campus as a result of participating in this exclusive network will be of great benefit to Virginia Tech. I look forward to learning from them about their experiences in this program.”
In its inaugural year, participants in the ALN program will consist primarily of department chairs or heads, assistant or associate deans, and assistant or associate provosts (or similar titles as they may vary from institution to institution) with at least one to two years of experience in their current role.
Three sessions will take place over the course of the academic year, each hosted at a different participating university campus. These sessions are designed to provide information, build skills, and facilitate conversations over a range of topics that support leader development on interpersonal, institutional, and broad higher education context levels.
Virginia Tech and the other ACC institutions will benefit from participating in the ALN by having additional leadership development opportunities for promising academic leaders and access to information, perspectives, people, and approaches that come from a collaborative university program.
The first session of the program, which focuses on “Leadership Foundations,” will take place on the campus of Virginia Tech on Sept. 20-22. Georgia Tech will host the next session on “Implementing for Results" Feb. 7-9, 2019, and the final session on “Resources and Systems” will take place at the University of Notre Dame, May 28-30, 2019.
