For the second year, the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost welcomed a cohort of faculty into the Aspiring Leadership Academy to proactively prepare them for leadership positions. The 2024–25 cohort consists of 15 members from across campus who will work together on new or existing initiatives and gain mentorship from current academic leaders.
Academic leaders guide the strategic direction of the University by creating and fostering innovations in research, scholarship and teaching. The Aspiring Leaders Academy focuses on tenured and professional track faculty who are interested in leadership opportunities, but have not yet served in a major leadership position. The Aspiring Leaders Academy combines pedagogy with practice by pairing faculty fellows with an existing university leader to work collaboratively on new and existing initiatives.
Through the program, each cohort will develop a valuable network of mentors and peers and join an elite group of emerging leaders at UT Austin who are at a similar career stage and can advise one another as they grow on their leadership journey.
“Our inaugural year was highly successful in identifying and developing new faculty leaders, several of whom have been recently recruited into leadership positions or continue to lead projects developed during the academy,” said Alison Preston, Vice Provost for the Office of Faculty Development. “With this program, the University has placed significant emphasis on proactively building faculty leadership capacity.”