Abstract
This chapter shares the lived experiences of four interim presidents serving at one of the 10 independently accredited community colleges in the Maricopa County Community College District, one of the largest community college systems in the country. The concepts of sensemaking and sensegiving are used as the theoretical framework for each of the four interim presidents to share their stories. Each story provides a context, circumstances of the appointment, the culture of the institution, what has been accomplished while they have served, and specific lessons learned by each person. Ultimately, a collection of lessons learned is provided to the reader to inform an approach to serving as an interim president should that opportunity arise.
TopBackground
The use of interim leaders in higher education has been common practice for decades (Browning & McNamee, 2012; Farrell, 2016; Miller & Carlson, 2020; Rud, 2002; Whitford, 2021). Interim leaders are sometimes used due to a failed search while at other times they are needed to fill a gap when someone leaves their position unexpectedly (Rud, 2002). In the case of this chapter, the use of a currently seated vice president to fill an interim presidency was due to a retirement, resignation or reassignment into another position within MCCCD.
Browning and McNamee (2012) share in their study the advantages for institutions to appoint internal interim leaders who serve as a known entity in addition to needing someone to lead during a challenging point in time. In this chapter, two of the authors are referred to as “internal interim” presidents because they were hired to lead as the interim president at their home college within the larger MCCCD system. The other two authors are considered “external interim” presidents, for the purposes of this chapter – referencing that they were employed by MCCCD but at another college from within the MCCCD system as compared to the college they are currently serving as interim president. They are more appropriately described as external-internal interim presidents. In either case, all four interim presidents felt a sense of obligation to their colleagues and to Maricopa to step into the role whether it was at their home institution or at another college within the system. This feeling of obligation was also recognized in the study by Browning and McNamee (2012).
Kuh and Whitt (1988) describe the “invisible tapestry” that is institutional culture. Those aspects of the college that are both spoken and unspoken, those things that are codified and observed, those things that define the institution and its way of acting, doing and behaving. There are several subcultures that occur within the context of this chapter including the culture of the MCCCD as a system (i.e., the “District” or “Maricopa”) and the culture that exists at each individual college. There are at least five different cultures that exist among these four MCCCD colleges and the District Office. It is a unique challenge to serve as an external-interim president at a college that is not your home college – if for no other reason than not intimately knowing the institutional culture that exists there. Even when serving as an internal interim president, the known culture of the institution plays an important role in shaping the way in which things get done (Kuh & Whitt, 1988).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Internal Interim President: An employee hired from within their home college among the system who is appointed to assume the top leadership role at the institution (Browning & McNamee, 2012).
Sensemaking: The environmental factors, and the actions taken to provide sensemaking and sensegiving are essential components of strategic change. Through their ethnographic study of strategic change at a large public university, Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991) utilize the concept of sensemaking to frame the actions of upper administrators and their ability to assign meaning to the strategic activities in their environment to make sense of the roles they served. This sensemaking, or the ability of the leaders to make sense of the complex strategic change process, was essential to facilitating the complementary component of strategic change, which was the sensegiving process.
External Interim President: An employee hired from a college within the system who is appointed to the top leadership role at an institution not considered their home college (Farrell, 2016).
Institutional Culture: The values, practices, and collective understanding that guide the actions and decisions of a particular organization in higher education. These beliefs provide a frame of reference to interpret the actions and decisions of leaders at the institution (Kuh & Whitt, 1988).
Sensegiving: Sensegiving involves effectively diffusing change throughout the organization by seeding it through the development of relationships with employees across the institution (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991).