Residential Program

The 2025 Academic Leadership Institute Residential Program will be held from Saturday, August 2 – Wednesday, August 6, 2025, in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

The application for the 2025 Residential Program is now closed. Please check back for news about future programs.

The Academic Leadership Institute, which is a collaboration between Earl Lewis as Founding Director of the Center for Social Solutions at the University of Michigan, and Dwight A. McBride, Senior Advisor to the Chancellor at Washington University, will convene established and rising academic leaders in the summer of 2024 to achieve these goals:

• Create a space in which diversity, equity, access, and inclusion are foundational values.
• Build a space of affirmation in which participants can move quickly to a place of professional intimacy and collaboration around shared values and vision for higher education.
• Provide a safe space for sharing fears, challenges, successes, hopes, and ambitions.
• Spark a leadership movement that centers on talent cultivation, networking, and sourcing.Initiate a space for career development and for survival.
• Generate a shared vision for transforming higher education and developing individuals who are capable of making this change.
• Develop leaders who will shape the future of American democracy.
• Offer a solution for the current lack of qualified leaders who excel in diversity, equity and inclusion.
• This network of leaders will be a go-to for every search firm and institutional committee.
• Build a cadre of mentors.
• Work not just to elevate individuals, but to transform institutions.

While most programs for higher education leadership focus on the skills required of a leader, the Academic Leadership Institute goes beyond that to talk about the experience of being a leader within the academy from an individual perspective. Each day’s curriculum is explicitly organized around identity as it relates to the various streams of university business: the sense of self as a leader, in relation to institutional frameworks, in relation to the team, and in relation to the community and the public. 

When creating and developing ALI, we discussed the myriad of issues that face administrative leaders of color, in particular the number of institutional barriers that make it challenging to create change at colleges and universities. We noted that when taking on leadership roles, administrators of color must have a unique understanding of how change happens within institutions of higher education and at the same time, naming and navigating barriers to change.

The curriculum of the ALI includes a focus on the following broad content areas that are critical for aspiring university leaders, particularly presidents and provosts, to understand and manage

• Institutional change and transformation
• Personal Identity vs. Institutional Identity
• Institutional/Organizational Culture
• Best practices for self-care and wellness 
• Business and Finance
• Development and Fundraising
• Governance (Boards, Senates)
• The Search Process (Preparation, Contract Negotiations)
• Academic Enterprise
• General Counsel
• Crisis Management

The Residential Program is the first major professional development event of its kind to have an explicit focus on DEI, providing a personalized five-day course guided by experienced university and college leaders.