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April 26, 2024

12:00pm - 2:30pm

Lunch will be served.

Register here.

Leading with Confidence and Clarity in a Changing (and Chaotic) Higher Ed World: Tools, Strategies, and Hope

In a post-pandemic world where uncertainty is the norm and complexity reigns, colleges and universities need academic leaders who are comfortable working in ambiguity and who can guide others through it along a path of productivity and progress. This session explores leadership tools and strategies for gaining the skills, confidence, and clarity needed for that.  It draws on ideas from the presenter’s recent book, Reframing Academic Leadership (although having read the book is not essential for participation); and is appropriate for those who currently hold academic leadership positions at Tufts, who aspire to them, or who merely want to influence others in more productive ways.

The afternoon will be a lively mix of conceptual input, discussion, and activities that include opportunities for participants to diagnose their own leadership preferences, strengths, and flat spots.  The session will begin with the basics on how universities work and probe vital issues, like leadership agility, the power of a good diagnostic eye, and why reframing is an essential skill for leadership success.  In the latter portion of the session, we’ll play reframing experts using a disguised university case to see the power of reframing and to fine-tune our own reframing skills.  Participants will leave the session with an integrate and useable four frame model of academic leadership and enhanced confidence to handle whatever challenges lie ahead.

This year’s Rosemary Johnson Symposium features an interactive workshop where Dr. Joan Gallos will
lead participants in exploring four frames for leadership - structural, political, human resources, and
symbolic - featured in her coauthored book Reframing Academic Leadership (2021), the text currently
used in the ALD. In this interactive session, participants will learn when, where and how to apply the
frames and how you can gain agility switching between frames in different situations.


Joan V. Gallos is an award-winning educator, author, and academic leader, as well as a sought-after speaker and consultant for leadership development and organizational change projects in the U.S. and abroad.  She is currently a Faculty Fellow at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA; the Senior Advisor on Leadership and Education at the Council for the Advancement of STEM Leadership in Washington, D.C.; and Professor of Leadership Emerita at the former Wheelock College (where she also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs).

Prior to Wheelock, Gallos was tenured Professor of Leadership, University of Missouri Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Director of the Executive MBA Program at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she had also served as Dean of Education, Director of the Higher Education Graduate Programs, Coordinator of University Accreditation, and Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Strategic Planning. She has also held academic appointments at the Radcliffe Seminars, Harvard Graduate School of Education, University of Massachusetts-Boston, and Babson College; and taught in executive programs at a wide variety of institutions such as Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Babson, Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, the University of British Columbia, and the University of the Virgin Islands.

Gallos holds a bachelor’s degree cum laude in English from Princeton and a master’s and a doctoral degree in organizational behavior and professional education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Gallos has six published books (Business Leadership; Organization Development; Teaching Diversity: Listening to the Soul, Speaking from the Heart (with V. Jean Ramsey); and Reframing Academic Leadership (editions one and two) and Engagement: Transforming Difficult Relationships at Work (with Lee G. Bolman), as well as multiple articles and sets of curricular and training materials for the organizational and management sciences.  She has a co-authored (and produced) play on teen health, the majority of a first novel, work on a book living and leading in a post-pandemic world, and plenty of ideas for screenplays.  For more, see www.JoanGallos.com.