2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Evidence Based Practice Paper
This paper describes strategies for navigating leadership transitions within engineering departments, schools and colleges. In particular, the transition challenge is viewed from each side and best-practices are reviewed for both (a) those seeking and/or thrust into interim leadership roles, and (b) those becoming full-time leaders following the leadership of an interim steward. The paper describes key issues of these transition challenges, presents theories of organizational behavior and leadership germane to this situation and summarizes existing literature in this space. A meta-analysis of the existing literature is described that uses a key-words/issues approach to identify the most impactful issues and strategies that can be deployed in this space to lead to more positive outcomes. The authors have served in multiple interim and full-time roles across multiple institutions and the paper concludes with a case-study summation of their lessons learned across these roles and responsibilities. Key insights are provided for three specific audiences: (1) those serving or who will serve in interim roles, (2) those coming into full-time roles following interim leaders, and (3) those serving across institutions who can positively impact organizational momentum if they positively interact with interim leaders.