Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia Southern University, 2007. / "A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Art." In History, under the direction of Craig H. Roell. ETD. Electronic version approved: December 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-98)

As society changes, so must higher education. Therefore, colleges and universities and the presidents leading them must adapt to survive in today’s highly competitive marketplace. What must an institution do to stay abreast of the changes? Once the necessary changes are identified, what processes are used by a president of a college or university to go about deliberately creating change on campus? By understanding how to create planned change, leaders within higher education will be able to better ensure that their institutions remain relevant in today’s rapidly changing environment. For many colleges and universities, their ultimate survival may depend on their ability to change. This study examines the transformation of one college. In doing so, it identifies and describes organizational change strategies utilized by its president to influence those changes. This qualitative, single-case study of Georgetown College was executed solely by the researcher. The process of data collection consisted of interviews, observation, and document analysis. The data was then analyzed to identify major emerging themes as well as strategies, processes, and practices that resulted in organizational change at Georgetown College.

This dissertation fills a gap in the historiography of southern higher education by focusing on five university presidents and their role in the desegregation of a non-elite flagship university in the Upper South. While historian Melissa Keane has studied the presidential role at elite private southern universities during the initial phase of the desegregation process, no study has yet examined desegregation from the president’s office at a southern land-grant university. Building upon historian Peter Wallenstein’s thesis that desegregation is not a single event in an institution’s history but rather an ongoing process, I argue that it was also process that clearly involved the university presidents. Though much has been written about desegregation in Kentucky generally and the University of Kentucky specifically, and the pioneering African American students who desegregated UK, almost no scholarship has focused on the specific role of the UK presidents in the ongoing desegregation process. In much of the existing literature, the presidents are portrayed as spectators, they occupy a backseat, or they sit on the sidelines as the action unfolds. Often their story ends with the initial desegregation of UK’s graduate and undergraduate programs. Passive observers they were not, however. Herman Lee Donovan, Frank Graves Dickey, John Wieland. Oswald, Albert Dennis Kirwan, and Otis Arnold Singletary implemented policies that impacted the course of desegregation at the University of Kentucky.

Within Canada, the ever-changing context of universities is paralleled by an increased number of unfinished presidential mandates, approximately 16 in the past ten years. “Never has Canadian university presidential leadership been under greater scrutiny than it is today” (MacKinnon, 2004, p. 132). The trend of an increasing number of unfinished mandates of university presidents in Canada leads to some important questions that require further exploration. Through an in-depth series of interviews with six of the 16 Canadian university presidents with unfinished mandates, this research dives deeply into leadership experiences and highlights patterns and trends within the individual trajectories leading to their shortened mandate. More precisely, the leaders’ transitional process within their presidential role is examined in order to gain insight into the challenges of transition, particularly for the person at the top of the organization. The findings are focused on the themes of board governance and communication, university transitions, relationships within the executive team, the role of the predecessor, and diversity and leadership. This dissertation contributes a unique piece of research to the higher educational literature, and also provides concrete recommendations to improve transitional practices for leaders within the higher education environment.

The purpose of this study is to examine historically the presidential administration of John Christopher Stevens at Abilene Christian University from 1969 to 1981. During this time the institution grew in enrollment, faculty, facilities, endowment, and quality of educational opportunity. Limited to selected experiences and accomplishments, this dissertation examines Stevens' personal and administrative characteristics through interviews with him and those who worked with him. Materials were also used from Stevens' Presidential Archives in the Callie Faye Milliken Special Collections of the Herman and Margaret Brown Library at Abilene Christian University.

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