by Monika Sziron, Ph.D.
Have you been noticing the increasing number of interim leaders in higher education? It is difficult to miss.
In this episode of the HigherEdJobs Podcast, Kelly and Andy interview Dr. James Martin, a senior consultant at The Registry, who works on placing “people in interim jobs for usually either a semester or an academic year, sometimes more, rarely less than that.” Dr. Martin continues, “…it’s easy to say that the business is very, very busy now for a number of reasons that I can try to explain. A lot of people are interested in being interims and maybe in some ways more importantly for HigherEdJobs, a lot of colleges and universities are becoming interested in retaining an interim leader.”
Dr. Martin notes that during the COVID-19 pandemic nearly every interim he worked with was doing their job completely remotely. Since COVID-19 regulations have lessened, still nearly every interim he works with is in a hybrid model of leadership. Some interims come to campus for two-week periods and return home, some come to campus for two months and return home — it depends.
“I think more and more people in higher ed are going to want to work at the very least to the hybrid position. I see that all the time. I do not see an unbridled return to the way things were five or 10 years ago. No campus that I work with is of that mind, that we’re going to go back to the way things were. People have changed.”
Interims enter their position knowing that their job is not long-term, Dr. Martin says, “I think there’s a straight path forward to employees over the next 25 years to want to work in higher ed on shorter timeframes. I think it will be more of an arc for the institutions themselves […] I think that what people want as professionals and as persons is going to prevail and I think institutions are going to have to live with a no-harm-done employee who works for three and a half years and then leaves. That’s going to be some getting used to.”
Tune into episode 16 to hear more about how the interim role is changing higher education from the future of tenure to the future of hybrid work environments.
Disclaimer: HigherEdJobs encourages free discourse and expression of issues while striving for accurate presentation to our audience. A guest opinion serves as an avenue to address and explore important topics, for authors to impart their expertise to our higher education audience and to challenge readers to consider points of view that could be outside of their comfort zone. The viewpoints, beliefs, or opinions expressed in the above piece are those of the author(s) and don’t imply endorsement by HigherEdJobs.
