Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Welch Suggs
33RD ANNUAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR
CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICERS
BUILDING INSTITUTIONAL STRENGTH:
PROGRAMS, PROCEDURES,
AND THE PROFESSORIATE
2005 Institute for Chief Academic Officers
Building Institutional Strength:
Programs, Procedures, and the Professoriate
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
NOVEMBER 5–8, 2005
Developing the Leadership Team
With encouragement from presidents, CIC has
always placed a priority on programming for other campus
leaders. Over the years, CIC has offered a wide range of
seminars, research tools, and other services to academic,
business, and student affairs officers as well as directors of
libraries, information technology, and institutional
research, and also division and department chairs and
faculty members.
Prior to the advent of the Presidents Institute, the
Council held a National Institute initially every summer and
then every four years. The National Institutes were designed
for teams of campus officials from CASC/CIC member
institutions, who came together to focus on campus change
strategies and to work collectively to frame their institution’s
distinctive role in American higher education. The most
recent themes were “Values and Education: Developing
Personal and Public Ethics,” “Learning and Service,” and
“Creating Cultures of Learning.”
In the early 1970s, the Council began what became
its second major annual event, the Institute for Chief
Academic Officers. Its wellspring was a “Neophyte Deans
Workshop” in 1973, a two-day conference organized and
staffed by the CASC Commission on Academic Affairs
and featuring advice from senior campus leaders to peers
who were new to their jobs. The next year programming
for experienced as well as novice academic officers resulted
in a Deans Institute offering a range of practical sessions,
big-picture presentations, and a spouses program. In 1999,
the event was renamed the Institute for Chief Academic
Officers. In recent years, the chief academic officers have
often invited colleagues in other campus leadership roles—
chief student affairs officers in 1991, 1996, and 2001; chief
financial officers in 2004—to form teams with them at
the meetings.
1991
CIC publishes A Good Place to
Work: Sourcebook for the Academic
Workplace, the culmination of The
Academic Workplace in Liberal-Arts
Colleges program.
1992
CIC assumes operational
responsibility for the Consortium
for the Advancement of Private
Higher Education (CAPHE).
Membership tops 300 colleges
for the first time.
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