University Administrators as Caring Academic Leaders in an HBCU Setting

Abstract

This chapter examines caring university administrative leadership within a bureaucratic reality of authentic university academic caring (AUAC). AUAC is regarded as a university's formal intent to provide genuine academic caring: caring about (emotive attention; motive), care for (disciplined nurturing), caregiving (institutional guardianship), and care receiving (student as customers). In the bureaucratic realm, caring administrative leadership is an administrative capacity to guide, influence, inspire, and motivate an institution to achieve the goals of AUAC. This chapter opens by providing scholarly support for caring administrative leadership as a critical element of AUAC. This chapter also includes an account of a research study and empirical analysis that investigated the association between caring administrative leadership and AUAC at the University of the Virgin Islands, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Ultimately, this chapter identifies direction for future research in authentic caring university leadership.