Higher education is navigating rapid change, intense political pressure, and challenges to its core mission and purpose. Addressing these fundamental, systems-based issues demands creative solutions and innovative strategies. Social workers, this is your moment—it’s time to lead.

Today’s campus leaders need systemic and strategic perspectives, sharp interpersonal skills, political savvy, and sheer tenacity to address the complexities they face. In other words, educational administrators must have many of the core skill sets that social work demands. Positioning to Lead: Social Work Educators in Administrative and Leadership Roles is a resource for social work faculty and administrators considering career paths in academic, institutional, and professional leadership. Drawing on research-informed narratives and their personal experiences in key administrative positions, authors Nancy Kropf and Sara Sanders explore higher education career paths and examine the connection between social work and success in these specialized leadership roles. Positioning to Lead offers insights on how and when to pursue leadership opportunities, and experiential activities help the reader reflect on these topics further and evaluate their own personal and professional goals. In consideration of social work as a profession and the challenges facing higher education, Kropf and Sanders emphasize the need for more social workers in institutional leadership and for social work values to inform institutional-level decision making.

About the Authors:

Nancy P. Kropf, PhD, MSW, is the inaugural recipient of the Kenneth D. Lewis Distinguished Chair in Interdisciplinary Health Studies at Georgia State University. She has served in several administrative roles within social work and central administration, including as dean in multiple colleges, associate vice president, and most recently, as senior vice president. Kropf is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America where she previously served as treasurer, was president of the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work, and was a John A. Hartford Foundation geriatric scholar. She is currently a board member of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers and LGBTQ Leaders in Higher Education, and a member of the Council on Leadership Development at the Council on Social Work Education. Nancy has authored or edited 12 books and more than 100 peer-reviewed articles or chapters.

Sara Sanders, PhD, MSW, is a professor in the School of Social Work and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. She was named a Dean's Scholar in 2011, a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America in 2013, and an Emerging Leader in Professional Practice by the Social Work Hospice and Palliative Care Network in 2013. Sanders specializes in the area of gerontology and death and dying and presents nationally on topics associated with grief and loss, professional boundaries and ethics, and caregiving for older adults. She has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and is now the co-author of three books.