Cultivating Systemic Resilience in Private Colleges

• In Event: Navigating Resistance, Fostering Survival, ad Cultivating Belonging: Exploring Strategies for Thriving in Challenging Environments

Abstract

Extant scholarly inquiry about resilience in higher education is primarily focused on academic staff and students. The scant research about administrators tends to focus on how senior-level leaders cope with acute disruptions or provides a top-down mandate for facing more endemic challenges. Eliminating the perspectives of entry and mid-level non-unionized staff and administrators means that our understanding of resilience in higher education is disconnected from the lived experience of most people who work within that system. This research endeavors to address these gaps by centering the experiences of entry and mid-level non-unionized staff and administrators and using that data to provide tuition-dependent institutions with a well-defined, practical pathway for cultivating sustainable resilience regardless of the challenges that arise.

Author

• Linda Romano, Princeton Theological Seminary