Welcome to the 365 McIlroy blog, hosted by the University of Arkansas Libraries. Today, the Scholarly Communications team is interviewing Dr. Michael T. Miller, Professor of Higher Education, and Dr. G. David Gearhart, Professor Emeritus of Higher Education.
Scholarly Communications: We are proud to host the Journal of Research on the College President in the U of A institutional repository ScholarWorks@UARK. In just the first three months of 2024, nearly 1,000 web visitors have come to the journal. Clearly, there’s a great deal of interest in this topic.
Could you tell us what, exactly, college presidents do? How does their role impact faculty, staff, and students?
Miller: One of my favorite stories is here on campus. A few years ago, Student Affairs held a trivia night and asked students what a Chancellor does. The response was “chancel!”
Gearhart: Presidents, or campus leaders called Chancellors, do so much for their campuses. They set the overall leadership tone for what is valued, convey beliefs about what the campus is trying to accomplish, and they go out every day looking for the resources to help faculty, staff, and students be successful. It’s a hard job with so many internal and external constituents.
Scholarly Communications: The two of you cofounded the National Lab for the Study of the College President, based here at the U of A, in 2016, right? What compelled you to create the Lab?
Gearhart: I think part of the founding of the Lab was to organize research on the college presidency and give it some structure and direction. There are so many individual case studies out there. There needs to be a more systematic approach to studying these roles.
Miller: I would add that there are no real mechanisms for academic, objective studies and discussions about the college presidency. There are many commercial providers of college president training and advocacy-based groups, but not any sort of peer-reviewed, critical examinations of the presidency. We wanted to try and give that idea some formal space, and Dr. Gearhart’s tenure as Chancellor of the U of A certainly gave us some very real credibility in working in this area.
Scholarly Communications: You started the Journal as soon as you opened the Lab’s doors. How does the JRCP advance the mission?
Miller: As I mentioned, we really wanted to create an area for the objective, academic study of the college presidency and college leadership overall. We set out to develop a strong advisory and editorial board, and they have been tremendous to work with. And I think that all of us involved recognized that there are many journals out there that cover different aspects of higher and postsecondary education, but none specifically spoke to the role of the president, and we wanted to try and fill that void.
Gearhart: And I would add that our interest was really to try and expand the larger discussion of college leadership and allow a place for scholars to situate their work on the presidency. As a new journal, we also wanted to stress that we are open to all types of research methodologies and approaches to studying college leadership, and, we wanted this discussion to be free and open to the public; we wanted it to be open access to allow as many faculty, students, and administrators as possible to be able to access this research.
Scholarly Communications: Did you know that the three most popular articles, according to the repository usage statistics, all relate to becoming a college president? (The list, with hyperlinks to the articles, appears at the end of this blog.) Would you like to comment? What does this information tell us about the readership?
Gearhart: I don’t think those articles surprise me at all. The president’s role is critically important, and I think that there are many people out there who want to make a positive difference with students. Understanding how to move into a presidency, and what to do once you get there, are important steps, and some of these articles are helpful in that regard.
Miller: I think some of the topical issues of the articles in the Journal reflect the trends in higher education in general. We’ve had, for example, a couple of articles that deal with women in the presidency, and those have been very popular. Similarly, we’ve had well received and downloaded articles on topics such as legal issues, fundraising, and student mental health. All are reflective of larger issues impacting higher education, and I think that our authors do a good job of developing research that aligns with the most important topics that are facing higher education today.
Scholarly Communications: Thank you for this informative conversation. We share your hope that leaders in institutions of higher education across the USA and around the world will discover the Journal of Research on the College President. Surely, they will find both inspirational and practical articles.
Three Popular JRCP Articles in ScholarWorks@UARK
Martin, Q. (2021). The Aspiring College President: A Critical Review. Journal of Research on the College President, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.54119/jrcp.2021.507
Cooney, M., & Borland, K. (2018). The Next Generation of Community College Presidents: Who They Are, How They Prepare, and How They Lead, Results from a National Study. Journal of Research on the College President, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.54119/jrcp.2018.204
Martin, Q. (2018). Chief Student Affairs Officers: Transforming Pathways to the Presidency. Journal of Research on the College President, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.54119/jrcp.2018.205