ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the management issues associated with overseeing academic development units and ensuring they help to deliver the institution's strategic priorities. Pro Vice-Chancellors (PVCs) with a background in discipline leadership in Faculties may find engaging with academic developers a challenge. A Pro Vice-Chancellor portfolio usually means managing multiple areas, and the post holder is unlikely to have the same level of expertise in all of them. Academic development engenders a nuanced, sophisticated understanding of how people grow and change. Most academic developers are appointed now into UK higher education providers with an institutional emphasis on learning and teaching and on students' experience and success. Senior managers enter PVC Learning and Teaching roles from all kinds of backgrounds. Senior management teams can be cut-throat environments. Women in senior management roles particularly are likely to be harshly judged if they react visibly to bad news or aggression, so it is worth cultivating techniques to cope with unpleasantness.
