College Programs

Organized by the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors (CoDP), the New Administrators Workshop (NAW) facilitates highly interactive, mentorship-focused conversations among new and experienced administrators on the challenges—and rewards—of academic leadership.

The NAW is a legacy project of the CoDP. In its original form, the daylong workshop focused primarily on deanship, usually of colleges/schools with a single—or a very tightly related few—discipline(s).

Today, in addition to serving as Deans—often, now, of “blended” colleges with multiple, at times unrelated disciplines—our administrator colleagues also lead and seek to inspire complex constituencies in their roles as Department Chairs, School Directors, Executive/Vice/Associate/Assistant Deans, Provosts, Chancellors, and Presidents.

In these leadership roles, they respond to a broad range of institutional responsibilities and expectations in a higher education landscape that is multi-disciplinary, data and metrics-driven, entrepreneurial, technology-enabled, research-focused, partnership-driven and industry engaged.

Through our discussions, newer and more experienced administrators are afforded opportunities to share insights and forge mentorships.

In October 2025 ACSA launched the new ACSA/DPACSA Faculty Mentoring Program. Most emerging faculty members have mentors in their departments to guide them through their institution’s tenure and promotion process, but rarely do new faculty have access to senior colleagues from other institutions to advise them on their careers paths and on the content of their work.

CoDP members are encouraged to complete the application form to serve in this capacity.

The goal of the program is to empower faculty to identify and initiate mentoring relationships based on their needs and to set the terms of those relationships, in contrast to the way in which many departments to assign senior faculty as mentors of new faculty, with promotion and tenure primarily in mind.

This program would not replace the formal faculty mentoring programs that exist in most institutions, but to complement them with a more informal mentoring process that can reduce the power dynamics that can exist among faculty in the same department. Research has shown that this informal mentoring is especially important for women and faculty of color in search of colleagues who have faced similar career challenges.

Applications for the 2025-26 close in early November, with matches arranged later that month.