Tim Jansa
Dr. Tim Jansa is a scholar-practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in higher education leadership, administrative and financial operations, and adult language and intercultural education. His scholarship centers on innovative and holistic adaptations of organizational leadership structures to serve institutions' internationalization efforts. He has authored several publications on organizational and instructional leadership for international programming, as well as fostering student success by supporting non-academic staff in U.S. colleges and universities. Dr. Jansa has extensive professional experience designing and leading training programs in both the nonprofit and corporate sectors. He currently serves as an affiliate and project lead for Gateway International Group, LLC.
Phone: +1 (678) 524-0844
Phone: +1 (678) 524-0844
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This 4-part series explores ways in which a transformation of administrative operations in our colleges and universities is not only needed, but possible. Following the values and principles of Agile, I outline specific shifts in mindsets, leadership behavior, and team dynamics that – if implemented correctly – promise to turn an institution’s administrative services into great and meaningful places to work.
This drastic shift “back home” demands that leaders embrace different competencies, priorities, attitudes, and behaviors and ensure that internationalization can be sustained in an equitable and socially responsive manner. To this end, our paper interrogates and extends traditional concepts of leadership in international higher education and proposes a shift from primarily instrumental strategies toward organizational and curricular changes in the interest of preparing students for the complexities of today’s world. We outline specific leadership dispositions, attributes, and behaviors and propose guidelines for distributed, transformational, and instructional leadership in hopes that they will allow for better transdisciplinary collaboration and meaningful, holistic student engagement and learning with a focus on more accessible, equitable, and socially responsive practices.
The authors argue that both the Standards of Professional Practice proposed by the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA, 2016) and NAFSA’s International Education Professional Competencies (2017) address advocacy, equity and inclusion, and faculty, student, and community engagement, as well as interpersonal attributes that include intercultural proficiency and empathy. However, the reality of leading an international office often leaves little time to forge meaningful relationships or engage students and faculty. International education leaders further will benefit from developing a deeper understanding of various theoretical concepts to inform their leadership as scholar-practitioners (De Wit, 2017). These constructs allow leaders to better conceptualize and articulate extra and intra-institutional complexities and garner buy-in from a wider range of traditional and nontraditional stakeholders.
Therefore, established top-down leadership with a focus on bureaucratic, administrative, and outwardly-oriented tasks must yield to increasingly relational and inclusive practices and priorities that include community outreach, full integration of international and underserved communities, and the facilitation of impactful intercultural exchange. Refocusing international education efforts toward universally accessible on-campus learning requires that internationalization and institutional leaders jointly redefine what successful international and global learning looks like and establish metrics that account for the qualitative nature of personal growth, understanding of global interdependencies, and intercultural proficiencies. Finally, the authors encourage leaders to expand their understanding of international education to include local Indigenous communities.
This paper proposes three principal leadership frames for senior international officers and their teams to lead on-campus internationalization: distributed, transformational, and instructional. These three frames, when practiced in concert, promise to provide opportunities for all students to engage in formative and impactful international and global learning while addressing pervasive questions surrounding inclusive and equitable access to international education.
The core competencies required of internationalization leaders will likely remain the same in the foreseeable future. However, embracing the relational aspects of leading, empowering others to promote and support international and global learning on campus, and modeling the desired dispositions, attitudes, and behaviors of informed and culturally proficient global citizens promises to bring about more equitable, accessible, and just educational opportunities for all students.
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This 4-part series explores ways in which a transformation of administrative operations in our colleges and universities is not only needed, but possible. Following the values and principles of Agile, I outline specific shifts in mindsets, leadership behavior, and team dynamics that – if implemented correctly – promise to turn an institution’s administrative services into great and meaningful places to work.
This drastic shift “back home” demands that leaders embrace different competencies, priorities, attitudes, and behaviors and ensure that internationalization can be sustained in an equitable and socially responsive manner. To this end, our paper interrogates and extends traditional concepts of leadership in international higher education and proposes a shift from primarily instrumental strategies toward organizational and curricular changes in the interest of preparing students for the complexities of today’s world. We outline specific leadership dispositions, attributes, and behaviors and propose guidelines for distributed, transformational, and instructional leadership in hopes that they will allow for better transdisciplinary collaboration and meaningful, holistic student engagement and learning with a focus on more accessible, equitable, and socially responsive practices.
The authors argue that both the Standards of Professional Practice proposed by the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA, 2016) and NAFSA’s International Education Professional Competencies (2017) address advocacy, equity and inclusion, and faculty, student, and community engagement, as well as interpersonal attributes that include intercultural proficiency and empathy. However, the reality of leading an international office often leaves little time to forge meaningful relationships or engage students and faculty. International education leaders further will benefit from developing a deeper understanding of various theoretical concepts to inform their leadership as scholar-practitioners (De Wit, 2017). These constructs allow leaders to better conceptualize and articulate extra and intra-institutional complexities and garner buy-in from a wider range of traditional and nontraditional stakeholders.
Therefore, established top-down leadership with a focus on bureaucratic, administrative, and outwardly-oriented tasks must yield to increasingly relational and inclusive practices and priorities that include community outreach, full integration of international and underserved communities, and the facilitation of impactful intercultural exchange. Refocusing international education efforts toward universally accessible on-campus learning requires that internationalization and institutional leaders jointly redefine what successful international and global learning looks like and establish metrics that account for the qualitative nature of personal growth, understanding of global interdependencies, and intercultural proficiencies. Finally, the authors encourage leaders to expand their understanding of international education to include local Indigenous communities.
This paper proposes three principal leadership frames for senior international officers and their teams to lead on-campus internationalization: distributed, transformational, and instructional. These three frames, when practiced in concert, promise to provide opportunities for all students to engage in formative and impactful international and global learning while addressing pervasive questions surrounding inclusive and equitable access to international education.
The core competencies required of internationalization leaders will likely remain the same in the foreseeable future. However, embracing the relational aspects of leading, empowering others to promote and support international and global learning on campus, and modeling the desired dispositions, attitudes, and behaviors of informed and culturally proficient global citizens promises to bring about more equitable, accessible, and just educational opportunities for all students.