Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 176
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4758-1844-4 • Hardback • September 2015 • $82.00 • (£63.00)
978-1-4758-1845-1 • Paperback • September 2015 • $42.00 • (£35.00)
978-1-4758-1846-8 • eBook • September 2015 • $39.50 • (£30.00)
Paula Vene Smith is professor of English and director of the Purposeful Risk Engagement Project. She previously served as vice president for academic affairs and chief academic officer at Grinnell College.
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Part I: INTRODUCE RISK MANAGEMENT
Chapter One: Start the Ball Rolling
Chapter Two: Take a Campus Tour
Chapter Three: Create Plans for Risk Action
Chapter Four: Hold Governance Accountable
Part II: STRENGTHEN RISK LEADERSHIP
Chapter Five: Engage the Faculty
Chapter Six: Uncover the Blind Spots of Leadership
Chapter Seven: Tackle Interdisciplinary Risks
Chapter Eight: Prepare Your Campus for Crisis
Part III: INTEGRATE RISK GOVERNANCE
Chapter Nine: Establish Ethical and Law-Abiding Practices
Chapter Ten: Build Risk Communication
Chapter Eleven: Scan for Emerging Risks and Moving Targets
Chapter Twelve: Embed Risk Practices into Governance
Epilogue: The Risk Community
Appendix: Sample College Area Risk Registers
Selected Resources
About the Author
Smith has managed to present a sensible, easy-to-follow schematic that can take academia from functioning to thriving. While the book is written to the academic audience, one could adopt the principles easily into nearly any business operation.
— Risk Notes
Engaging Risk: A Guide for College Leaders is a relatively short and easy read that providesinformation on the fundamentals of ERMand the role they play in the process…. [T]he text delivers on its promise to guide the reader through ERM with a focus on campus involvement, knowledge building, and sustainability. This guide will influence the way campus leaders, including department chairs, view their engagement with risk.
— The Department Chair
In these days when so many valued and valuable colleges and universities are facing what seem to be growing and unprecedented threats to their well-being and even sometimes to their very existence, Paula Vene Smith has written a truly important book about risk. But what makes this book an imperative read for trustees, administrators and faculty is that she defines risk as including but going beyond financial risk to include risk to mission and to the values that are at the heart of our institutions and then gives her readers thoughtful and insightful ways to address such risks.
— Dr. Susan Resneck Pierce, President Emerita, University of Puget Sound, and author of On Being Presidential and Governance Reconsidered
Engaging Risk is an invaluable guide for leaders in liberal arts colleges. A comprehensive guide, it provides a primer, a thorough grounding and then is also designed to provide a quick reference when needed. Anyone who faces—or worries about facing-- the wide range of risks involved in today’s complex world of small campuses needs this book.
— C. K. Gunsalus, author of The College Administrator’s Survival Guide and The Young Professional’s Survival Guide
Engaging Risk is a timely and extremely important contribution to contemporary scholarship in higher education. It should be a must-read for every college, university and system-wide administrator down to the program and department level. At a time when faculty decry top-down, corporate decision-making and trustees and regents grow frustrated with the slow deliberative pace of academic consultation, Paula Smith reminds us that risk management is everyone’s responsibility and one of the key elements in achieving “shared governance.”
— Eugene M. Tobin, Senior Program Officer for Higher Education at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-author of Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education