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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Mentoring in faculty development is seen as a catalyst to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) leadership. STEM faculty leaders are organizational influencers with or without formal authority or appointments. Within the fields of STEM, mentoring is often construed as more than senior faculty mentoring junior faculty. This study explores the perspectives of 13 professors and chairs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) on faculty mentoring based on semi-structured interviews conducted by the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership (CASL). The main questions addressed in this study are: What, if any, mentoring styles or strategies do STEM faculty leaders acknowledge and employ? What specific leadership styles are associated with mentoring in HBCUs for STEM faculty who acknowledge mentoring as an aspect of their leadership? The findings of this study suggest that STEM faculty leaders who adopt transformational, servant leadership, and intellectual styles find value in mentoring.

This chapter offered a reflection on a research study conducted at the University of the Virgin Islands, a historically black college and university (HBCU), in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The research study examined student perceptions of authentic university academic care (AUAC) in a post-disaster setting. AUAC can be viewed as genuine humanistic concern and disciplined nurturing in higher education. AUAC is also an important element of examining the quality of academic services. Thus, this chapter shares the experiences of the researchers, their investigative processes, the challenges faced, solutions used, and recommendations.