Developing Veterinary Colleges and Leaders: A Whole-System Approach

The current environment in higher education calls for increasingly progressive leadership and management. This report describes the efforts of the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) at Michigan State University (MSU) to strengthen its leadership using a whole-system approach. Developing a leadership culture is the responsibility of leaders, and the pursuit of such a culture requires considerable and justifiable investment of time, energy, and resources. The volatile and changing environment in which colleges of veterinary medicine exist makes creating such a culture imperative if society's needs are to be successfully met. Noteworthy cultural change has occurred within the MSU CVM because of the efforts described here.