Academic Leadership Transitions
It takes time for a newly appointed dean, provost, or president to understand the context they have inherited and decide where to focus. We help accelerate that process.
Ad Verum Partners works with new academic leaders to create a first draft of their priorities and transition rapidly from orientation to impact.
The Challenge
Before a new dean, provost, or president can make real progress, they must understand what they have walked into. The academic portfolio, the financial architecture, the research trajectory, the governance dynamics, the senior team they have inherited. None of it is fully visible from the outside, and very little of it is handed over neutrally to the new leader.
A listening tour helps, but it is only as valuable as the understanding a new leader brings to it. Without an independent fact-base, they walk into carefully managed conversations and come out with a picture shaped more by opinion and institutional politics than reality. Many new leaders find that a year or more passes before they feel prepared to act with confidence.
A First Draft of Their Priorities
We help new leaders cut through the noise to identify the handful of issues and strategic questions most likely to require early action. The result: a first draft of their priorities, grounded in data that is unburdened by pre-existing narratives.
Our work will help sharpen questions and make clear what matters and deserves deeper attention. We help new leaders consider questions like:
Academic Programs
How are our programs performing?
Research Portfolio
What are the strengths and weak points in our trajectory?
Competitive Position
How does our progress measure against a shifting landscape?
Finance
How does money flow, and what does that mean for what I can and can't do?
Organization
Do I have the right people in the right seats? How can I foster a strong team?
Governance
What can I decide on my own, and where do I first need to build consensus?
For newly appointed deans in particular, we pay close attention to the relationship between the school and the broader institution: how resources flow, where decision rights sit, and how to build a reputation as a constructive partner in university-wide priorities.
Analyses shown are illustrative examples of the kind of work we bring to each engagement. Some questions get answered. Others get asked more precisely. All of it informs a clearer set of early priorities.
When We Work Together
Before You Start
Between appointment and first day. We build the new leader’s initial fact-base while they still have the clarity of an outside perspective, before internal narratives begin to shape what they see.
First Year in Role
The steepest part of the learning curve, and the most consequential. A deeper engagement as the real picture of the institution comes into focus, covering programs, research, finance, organization, and governance.
Any Point in the Role
Strategic clarity isn’t only a challenge for new leaders. At any stage of a deanship or provostship, shifting conditions — financial, competitive, organizational — can make it worth stepping back to assess where things stand and how priorities should be reordered. Ad Verum can provide that outside perspective whenever it is needed.
Engagements are tailored and typically run eight to twelve weeks, including a mix of in-person and remote work.
Mentoring
Alongside the analytical work, new leaders have direct access to members of the Ad Verum advisory board: former deans and provosts of leading research universities, available for candid conversations, mentoring, and perspective on the terrain ahead.
Who This Is For
Newly appointed and experienced deans, provosts, presidents, and other academic leaders.
Every engagement is tailored to the institution and the leader.
Reach out to start a conversation.
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