This paper discusses about the leader experience of African American women and

brought out five themes. Researchers once try to figure out what characteristics make
some persons become great leader. They call those theories “the great man theories”
and focus on great leaders in social, political and military areas, mostly on white men.
( Parker & Ogilvie, 1996, Bass, 1990; Northouse, 2010) However, some problems
could be found out on the name “great men”, not include “women”, specially some
minorities, like African American female leaders in higher education.
Deanna and Cecilia bring out some dilemmas of African American female
leadership, one for them is leadership opportunities barriers. Gender unbalance in
lower-level and lower authoritative leadership positions, historical racial oppression,
prejudice to female leaders, gender stereotype (people may doubt women have
enough authority and power in making decision, and get use to hierarchical relation).
Gender inequality existed in many industries such as business, politic, education and
military. The main and common phenomena is, female take almost half percentage of
labor, but little percentage of leadership.
Double standard is another dilemma for female leaders. To become a leader,
female need to adapt “the rules of games” made by male. Also, gender stereotype
made people associate female leadership with compassion, sensitive, nurturing and
caring, but associate male leadership with authority, powerful, strength and strict, and
prefer male is “more suitable” as a leader. Glass ceiling is also a long-term problem
for female leaders. More and more data showed that the performance and number of
female students is over than male students in universities, however, the number of
female professors, administration leaders are far below than male.
The development of feminist theory could effectively help female out of the
inequality. Feminist theory is focus on female themselves, not only earn equal right
but also refuse to represent, dominate and define by male. Black feminist theories are
generated from this, and the target of black feminist is to fight against multiple
oppressions. They emphasize that gender and race cannot be split, because America is
a complex society with gender, race, religion and social class, all these issues twisted
together.
At the end, five interviewees brought out the themes of their leadership
experience: Predestined for success, independent education in childhood, sponsor
from others, the way to handle discrimination and oppression, specially from white
male, learn the rule of games made by male, and step outside comfort zones to fight
and help each other—African American women who already got success should help
those not yet success, but want to have achievement African American.
What are the key characteristics of learning communities?
1.collective knowledge;
2.colleaborative work on the community’s idea
3.educational variant of knowledge creation

Identify 2-3 things that are distinctive about the model you are reading (how is it
different from the others)?
1.Students working as a community can significantly advance the knowledge of that
community and tackle some problems that are satirically significant. It is significant
in scientific field. For example, some formula or theory are hard to prove or practice,
but in community, students can work together, doing experiments together. It is more
efficient and effective than individual working.
2.All ideas are improvable. Knowledge building is like designing, and since designing
is an open-ended journey, so as knowledge building. No limitation is one of the
essences of research. The more students step into a knowledge area, the more they
understand, the more they will not understand. Knowledge building provide a open-
ended option to students. For example, we a group of students program a APP in
mobile phone, knowledge building will encourage them to keep thinking, how to
improve? What can they do better? Is there anything could be extend?

The authors discussed a number of principles for designing a learning community -

Identify a few principles (2-3) you like most and how you may them in your teaching/
professional practice
First one I like most is inquiry project assigned by teacher, because this is a
promising first attempt at knowledge building. If I not familiar with knowledge
building, this is a good start, the time cost is not that high (3 weeks) and execute not
that hard. Another reason is, this principle gives students enough freedom to go
through the knowledge that they need to learn, opposite to “Duck-stuffing” type of
teaching, knowledge is pulling students, not pushing to students.
The second one I like and may apply to my teaching is more extensive inquiry project.
In this principle, teacher divided into few groups with equal number of students in
each class, and made the school week as a project—first two weeks for collecting
information, then four weeks for carrying out chosen inquiries, and last two weeks for
presentations and summary. How I apply this in my class is, the exchange researching
result and information within learning group is effective. They could even learn how
to team work, it is not just getting benefit from knowledge. Highly autonomy for
students in learning is the reason why this principle attracts me.
 One of the changes that neoliberalism bring to education is “commercialization”,
which means university is tend to be like a product. Neoliberalism reducing the
government control and impact to university. Once market practices involve,
university has to consider the competitive, how to improve the quality of their
education product, and how to draw more attention from customers.
In this article, the writer concerned that “strategy” is the key that made balance
and alignment between external context and external context of university. Strategy
can help university keep competitive and not misaligned.
It is hard to judge whether neoliberalism is good or bad to education. One of the
core values of neoliberalism is competitive. Under this trend, chasing for ranking has
become the goal for many universities’ leader. However, competitive power is a
complex concept, not just in ranking system. Thus, writer argued that leadership’s
sensemaking is very important—to sense the external environment and evaluate the
internal dimensions, make the suitable strategy for university. Also, sensemaking can
help leader simplifying complex competitive context, and not how to interact with
them.
According to the research and data analysis, the writer referred and claimed that
how university leaders understand the cornerstone market construct of competitive
advantage. It is hard to justify and define the competitive power of university. No
matter what, one thing is clear that, the sensemaking of leader have important
influence on the university future in decision making. I will consider the
relationship between the sensemaking of university leader and the competitive power
of university is directly proportional. However, the writer also points out three
sensemaking dilemmas of university leader: assessment of environmental fit or misfit,
and whether past leaders seized the opportunities of fit or avoided the threats of
misfit. Finally, finding a frame of reference (Day and Nedungadi, 1994) that allows
leaders to determine whether competitive advantage was achieved by comparing their
standing against those they believe are the leading universities. It’s seems the
neoliberalism is an unstoppable trend in education industry, and how to understand
“competitive power” is a necessary topic for university leader making right decision.
 Paper review: Asked More Often: Gender Differences in Faculty Workload in
Research Universities and the Work Interactions That Shape Them
This paper argued that how gender difference influence teacher’s work time
allocated in research university. It’s not just involved in academic workload, but also
administration work, daily life and teaching time. Base on the writer’s studies, it’s
found that female teachers would spend more time on campus service, student
advising and teaching -related works, while male teachers would more focus on
research. This different can be consider as an intangible division of labor in academic
—more female teachers would be allocated to teaching part, and male teachers would
be allocated to researching part.
“Gender roles and practices” concept was considered have relationship with
division of labor in academic workload. In university, teacher spend on different
works could be influence by various context, such as gender and race.
There is one point that made me feel interesting is, writer referenced Acker’s
theory of gendered organization and gendered division of labor to explain different
gender teacher’s time allocation. Academic workloads may influence by some social
and institutional forces, shaping higher education institutions, these forces even
included globalization, technology and neoliberalism. Modern academic workload
change teacher’s life style, because of some new demands, such as requirements for
annual post tenure and graduate outcome assessments. For those teachers who chase
for researching, these new demands would take much, even large percent of time.
They had no way but only spend time on these administration performances, due to
the academic uncompromising request. To fulfill the administration workloads
demand, different gender’s teacher been arranged for different type’s workload.
Unfortunately, under the long-time gender stereotype, male would be positioned in
authority, management and administration place, while female would be positioned in
peripheral place—glass celling is always existing. In this situation, academic reward
systems has defined that campus service activities students caring and teaching as
“female teacher’s jobs”, and defined university management, academic research as
“male teacher’s jobs”.
The most immediately negative affection of “Gender role and practice” is,
teacher’s academic workload may become a dilemma to him/her. For example, a male
teacher in management level, have more interested in teaching and campus services,
while the university have a high requirement in academic achievement. he would have
less time on his career choice.
 I have to say, this class is beyond my expect, that I never thought this class would
be so interesting and thought provoking.
[Due to there is rarely limitation to this self-evaluation of learning outcome. I
would like to tell my feeling in a casual way, rather than an academic way.]
I will list 3 the most impressing things that I learn from this course.
The first one is, do not judge a book by its cover. To be honest, when the first
time I hear “higher education leadership”, my first thought was: “what is this?” “Is
that relative to politic issue? Sorry, no interesting”, “God, this must be boring I want
something fun”, and later…...you made me realize I thought in this way so wrong.
“Higher education leadership” is just the book cover, however, all the chapters are so
incredible and many of them are my favorite topic: neoliberalism and collegiality are
a new area for me and not that difficult as it looks, women and gender equity! As a
feminist, we should defend female’s right in all dimensional, including academic
leadership; cross-cultural, learning freedom and minorities? I always want to write
something about LGBT and academic freedom! Those topics which students cannot
approach in mainland China easily, could be learn as much as our can in this class. Its
so lucky that I could learn this course, I shouldn’t have a stereotype thinking to
“higher education leadership”. If I didn’t take this course, I may keep this prejudice
for a very long time.
The second one is disagreeing brings different thoughts. It’s quite attractive,
when I listen the argue among our thoughtful classmate. Andrey, Nick, Andy, Betty,
Jessica, [and me]……we have our own thinking way, and own thought. And argue is
an excellent way to communicate. When we argue, we will try to use our evidences to
convince the other side, usually we could learn more from these evidences, they are
something new beyond the ppt. And when its going to much “intense”, professor will
guide the argue back to topic, and not becoming a fight. No matter joins the argue or
not, I would very appreciate it. Being a listener could also learn from other, and who
said the argue is bad thing? War is one of form of cultural exchange in history.
 The third one is no matter how many achievements we have, there’s always
something we could do better. Covid-19 is so sudden for all of us, and we never
thought that all classes would go on Zoom. However, online class is not that easy, and
the good thing is, me and my many friends are appreciated that you did better and
better in Zoom class organization. If you have the record for each class, when you go
through them, you may find that how outstanding improve. But the most impressive
part is, even as a professor with a lot achieve in academic, you realize there are many
things you can do better, and have a humble heart to learn.
I did not mention much knowledge from this course, but something deeply inside
in learning this course. All the topics are knowledge, what’s the different between
them and architecture, math, law, art……and so on, if all knowledges are equal? To
me, the word “knowledge” is just a label, a tag, to mark the thing that people learn,
but the core value of learning, is the real things that I learn from you, from this course.
I had to say thank you professor, you inspire me to keep climbing up the
mountain of academic.
[I will try my best to be a PHD student in HKU and meet you again, may be in
you class]
 LGBT Student Leaders and Queer Activists: Identities of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, and Queer Identified College Student Leaders and Activists
This paper is a qualitative study about LGBT student’s leader and their activism.
The writer interviews some LGBT student leaders, including various minorities, such
as Jewish and Latina. According to the interview, the writer claimed that an
“involvement-identity” cycle could apply to these student leaders, and during this
cycle, with the increasing leadership, the LGBT society identity would also increasing
——Which could be consider as, in a activism, the more students devoted to, the
higher identity the student would have. It is good for a student ‘s leadership, because
they would more consider themselves as a part of the activism.
One of the characteristics of LGBT activism is “Identity pride”, also call
“immersion”. Which means LGBT should be proud of their sexual orientation, but not
feel shame. “Identity pride” could bring more courage and confidence for LGBT
student leaders, however, this may also lead to “segmentation”——LGBT label made
students consider themselves are different to non-LGBT group. It may not good for
leader gain more support.
The writher found 5 implications about how sexual orientation, gender and
leadership identities to student leaders. One is LGBT activism is different from other
activism, the function of the involvement-identity cycle for LGBT students depends on
factors related to increased visibility as LGBT and increased sense of responsibility
for leadership or activism. Another one is made the “involvement-identity” cycle
more effective. Whether the student activism success or not, fresh blood is an key
element. Thus, using LGBT identity as a hook to motivate student involvement could
provide a point of connection and an entry into involvement for students who might
not think of themselves as leaders. The existing leaders could find out more student
who have leadership potential. Also, adult and peer mentor and advisers, the identity
differences among students who lead LGBT student groups, the ways that identities of
participants shaped their behaviors, priorities, ultimately, student organizations, and
leading an LGBT student group influenced many students' academic lives and career
aspirations, could deeply influence LGBT student activism.