Christian Stewardship During Transitions in Engineering Academic Leadership

Christian Stewardship in Engineering Education calls us to handle the inevitable leadership transitions with grace and wisdom. These transitions range from rare and well-planned to frequent and sudden, and how we handle them impacts our students and our mission. Leadership transitions may require those without formal leadership training to lead on short notice, and faculty experience alone is often incomplete preparation for academic leadership positions. This paper offers encouragement and recommendations to help engineering faculty prepare to lead or support the process of academic engineering leadership transition. The authors have served in multiple interim and full-time leadership roles across two institutions, including a private Christian and a public university. One author transitioned from leadership in a public university to a private Christian university. In this paper we briefly summarize our more general ASEE paper on this topic [1], and then we do a deep dive into aspects of special interest to practicing Christians, especially if they are serving at a university with a Christian mission. In particular, here we explore the role in leadership transition processes of the Christian ideals of humility, vocational calling, identity, and prayer. The paper ends with an appendix interview of two experienced academic leaders discussing common leadership transition questions.