#leadership-turnover

#leadership-turnover

OAKLAND - Floyd Mitchell is leaving his job as Oakland's police chief in part because he grew frustrated at needing to answer to so many bosses - or, at least, that is the consensus among several Oakland police and city officials who worked closely with him. The chief, who will have lasted just over a year and a half by his Dec. 5 resignation, is the latest in a long line of top cops to exit sooner than expected.

On the administrative side, the tenure of senior leaders is also shrinking, leading to increased leadership turnover. New leaders come in with change agendas to fix some prior unaddressed issue or manage significant budget deficits or other operational inefficiencies. In this environment, faculty disillusionment is high, as is disengagement. It is all too easy for administrators to treat faculty as expendable resources, forgetting that there is a human component to leadership and fostering distrust between these two critical groups of campus leaders.