Administrative leaders are crucial to the successful adhearance and implementation of regulatory measures. As a policy and procedure writer for a non-profit college I find that strong department heads are important in ensuring any changes are implemented from the top down. I find that having buyin from my department heads will ensure their employees are much more receptive to any additional work or changes that are caused from a shift in regulations.
The hardest part of the year is when we do our annual IPEDS and the way in which departments must take on additional reporting to capture all of the data required for the IPED. It is hard to ask someone who is already working a full-time job to take on an additonal part-time job for our annual reports to the DOE. If it were not for strong administrative leaders, my job and the job of a regulatory affair/accreditation department is almost impossible. The insititution is only as strong as the leaders it puts in place to run student facing departments, so it is imperitive to find driven administrative leaders with an understanding of compliance and regulations, or at least leaders who are driven to gain that knowledge.
