This case is framed around the personal experience of a faculty member whose dispute with supervisors lead to the resignation of a chair, the eventual firing of a dean, and the loss of good will with key community stakeholders. It focuses on the analysis of an internal grievance process that brings the student to two decision points, namely, (a)…

Sam Patrick, a White female superintendent is in her fourth year leading the Douglasville School District, a high-performing, predominantly White suburban district that has a long history of unacknowledged and unchecked racism and racial disparities. Sam is driven to embrace a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda and move the district in…

Despite legal challenges, universities are increasingly using holistic admissions practices to accomplish affirmative action and increased student diversity. The admissions committee of the college of nursing at an elite university grapples with the potential outcomes of adopting a holistic admissions process. The case offers the legal and…

This case illustrates Professor Saitoh's struggles in a middle-management position leading an education committee called the Assurance of Learning (AOL) Committee at a business school in Japan. The committee assessed students' learning outcomes and provided suggestions for curriculum improvement. The school was accredited by the Association to…

The President of Southern Plains University is dealing with coronavirus disease 2019 on-campus that has forced the university to move most of its courses online. Alongside this issue, the country is in a state of social unrest as multiple unarmed African American citizens were killed by local police and White citizens. During these divisive times,…

The President of prestigious Beacon University is dealing with a nationwide scandal involving its admissions and athletics operations. For years, a network of corrupt admissions consultants, standardized test proctors, and college coaches operated a lucrative underground pipeline into top universities, and it has recently infiltrated Beacon. Under…

This case study presents a fictionalized narrative account of a university-industry partnership across a 5-year period. The case presented involves a hypothetical public research university and their partnership with a Fortune 500 company. A brief background on the history of university-industry partnerships is provided with highlights of key…

A superintendent initiates an equity focus in a small school district and experiences resistance from both school board members and principals. As the school district diversifies its teaching workforce, the superintendent and principals face myriad unexpected challenges, resulting in teachers of color resigning at three times the rate of White…

School systems collect and maintain increasingly significant amounts of data and information on students, faculty, and staff and have a duty of care to ensure that sensitive information remains secure. Therefore, sitting and/or aspiring school leaders need to develop at least a basic understanding of data privacy and information security…

Those tasked with leading large school districts direct incredibly complex organizations in what are often contentious political and social contexts, with powerful stakeholder groups espousing conflicting policy priorities. Because of their high-profile positions, superintendents often face uniquely persistent and powerful resistance and must…

The underrepresentation of female Administrators in higher education is not decreasing even though education continues to be a field dominated by women. The overall percentage of women leading colleges and universities in the United States remains disproportionately low at 26%. This ambiguous case study examines whether or not the Higher Education…

Culturally responsive (CR) leadership permeates all leadership practices and consists of several domains including: developing critical consciousness, supporting cultural knowledge development, and advocating for social justice within and outside of the school walls. This case focuses on the need to ground CR leadership in critical self-reflection…

This case study is designed for use in graduate courses in student affairs and higher education administration. This case presents some of the challenges that higher education professionals face concerning policies and laws as they relate to student mental illness and emotional support animals. Requests for emotional support animals are becoming…

This case study, framed within a school-university partnership, highlights the tensions inherent to employing design-based approaches for educational change. The case illustrates core tensions between an abductive, open-ended, design-based approach to change versus more traditional (deductive/inductive) approaches to managing change in schools.…

This case is for use in graduate courses in student affairs and higher education administration. It presents the challenges faced by student affairs professionals at the University of Virginia where some students participate in an annual high-risk drinking practice that has resulted in injuries and even death. Student affairs professionals at the…