Leadership Development and Support

AAC&U helps higher education reframe what it means to be a good leader, reexamine existing norms, and validate authentic forms of leadership that exhibit self-awareness, internalized moral perspectives, and relational transparency.

The urgent task of bolstering public trust in higher education, while simultaneously engaging in the daily work of leading and managing institutions focused on student success, requires thoughtful leadership and dedicated commitment. It also requires making structural changes that align the academy with the lived experience of diverse leaders and rejecting reward systems that mandate role congruity and privilege the ideal of a good leader as an autocratic, authoritarian, competitive agent.

AAC&U provides dedicated programming, resources, and events that help higher education leaders develop, find community, and succeed—even amid an ever-growing list of challenges, from political polarization and public disinvestment to ongoing injustice and threats to academic freedom.

Leadership Initiatives

Presidents’ Trust

The Presidents’ Trust is a network of CEOs committed to advancing the vision, values, and practices that connect liberal education with the needs of a diverse student body, a global workforce, and thriving communities.

Forum on Transformational Leadership

The Forum on Transformational Leadership is designed to prepare mid-career leaders in higher education with the knowledge, tools, and courage to meet complex challenges and create change at their institutions.

Leadership Institutes for Women and Gender-Diverse Leaders

The Credo + AAC&U Leadership Institutes equip participants to lead more courageously, vulnerably, and effectively. Institutes are for CEOs of colleges and universities and senior leaders in higher education.

Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership

The Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership investigates and invests in leadership for broadening participation in US STEM higher education at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Project Kaleidoscope STEM Leadership Institute

The PKAL STEM Leadership Institute empowers individuals to navigate change, address conflicts, and restructure institutional systems that limit capacity for global competitiveness in science and technology.

K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award

The Cross Award honors graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education and who are committed to academic innovation in equity, community engagement, and teaching and learning.