Thriving in Higher Education: Creating the New Normal Through Resilience

Abstract

The higher education industry is experiencing fiscal, organizational, and competitive stress in today's competitive environment (Bowen, 2018; McCaferty, 2018). As educators and higher education leaders, we believe that our role in society is essential ecause our collective work inherently concerns student learning, research and service to our university and the broader society. Yet, with today's competitive higher education market, universities and colleges ask more and more of faculty, staff and administrators to ‘get the work done’, creating mental, physical, emotional and spiritual stress. This chapter shares insights, practices and research designed to help university and college workers become resilient in the face of this set of extreme challenges In particular, the focus of this chapter is resilience and its four dimensions including physical, emotional, spiritual and mental resilience. It is argued that by investing in our own resilience as leaders, we foster the resilience of our colleagues, peers, teams, and institutions such that we can thrive in today's higher education environment despite its ongoing challenges.

Citation

Breen, J.M. (2019), "Thriving in Higher Education: Creating the New Normal Through Resilience", Visvizi, A., Lytras, M.D. and Sarirete, A. (Ed.) Management and Administration of Higher Education Institutions at Times of Change (Emerald Studies in Higher Education, Innovation and Technology), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-98. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78973-627-420191013