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.

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Concerns over student retention and development within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) higher education present a need for research that examines educational caring in STEM leadership. This work purports that senior academic administrative leadership's positional influence and caring intelligence are necessary to cultivate and sustain caring STEM environments. Building on cross-disciplinary scholarship on academic caring, the STEM Caring Intelligence Framework for Academic Administrative Leadership is proposed as five interrelated dimensions of caring intelligence: STEM caring, academic caring, administrative caring, leadership caring, and champion-driven caring. The proposed conceptual framework and a thematic analysis were used to examine caring intelligence within the interview transcripts of seven provosts at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), who were identified as STEM supportive. Atlas TI software was used for management of the data, coding, and assistance with thematic analysis. Extending previous scholarship tested with HBCU deans, the findings substantiate the relevance of the framework for understanding characteristics of STEM caring intelligence of provosts serving as chief academic officers. All seven provosts' reflections on STEM leadership promoted at least one of the five dimensions of caring intelligence that were proposed in the framework. STEM caring and champion-driven caring were found to be the most common dimensions present in the provosts' reflections on their STEM leadership and efforts to broaden participation. Thus, the reflections of the participating HBCU provosts provided a narrative for the practice and study of caring in STEM leadership. Implications for future research are discussed.

With the steadily increasing occurrence of disasters (natural and man-made), university crisis leadership has become a staple discussion in higher education. This chapter puts forward caring as an important element of university crisis leadership, based on stakeholders' observations and perceptions. In addition to a literature review, an account of an empirical study is given on perceived relationships between caring administrative leadership and authentic academic caring. The study was completed at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Data was collected from a convenience sample of university students (n=210). An exploratory quantitative research design was used. Through correlation analysis, associations were found between points of UVI's academic caregiving (e.g., operations, colleges/schools, and instruction), and caring administrative leadership. The findings spotlight qualities of academic caring that should be exhibited by university administrative leaders in the event of a crisis.