My leadership philosophy is grounded in what I think of as enabling leadership: setting a clear, evidence-based academic direction, building the structures that make excellence repeatable (governance, assessment, accreditation readiness, and well-designed workflows), and then empowering faculty and staff (and even my soccer players) to own the work. As a coach of successful teams for more than two decades, I try to listen carefully, communicate transparently, and promote people’s growth, while remaining decisively results-oriented on outcomes that matter: student learning, academic quality, and institutional integrity. In practice, that means avoiding micromanagement but insisting on clarity (shared standards, roles, timelines, and credible evidence), especially in cross-unit and interdisciplinary contexts where ambiguity can stall progress. I also believe that innovation, whether in GenAI, online learning, or curriculum reform, only becomes sustainable when teams feel genuine agency and recognition.
This approach has produced durable results across three very different institutions: at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, it supported the creation of a vertically integrated professional communication program and an assessment culture strong enough to sustain accreditation expectations; at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, it enabled faculty across disciplines to pursue pedagogical innovation through well-supported, grant-funded projects and a shared framework for evaluating impact; and at MIT, it has helped scale a large, integrated communication program by building a shared curriculum, transparent faculty processes, and institute-wide partnerships. The most meaningful validation of this leadership approach is when external recognition follows internal ownership: under this model, MIT’s Writing, Rhetoric and Professional Communication program earned national recognition in 2022 with the CCCC Award for Program of Excellence in Communication.
Is Andreas a good manager?
Using the lessons from Google's Project Oxygen, click below to see how Andreas manages teams
Administrative responsibilities over the years
Coordinating and evaluating the efforts of 35-40 full-time lecturers who provide communication instruction and feedback to students in about 100 undergraduate subjects every academic year, reaching more than 4,500 MIT students
Collaborating with faculty and administrators in all MIT departments in course design, teaching assistant training, development of instructional materials and technology use
Managing the hiring, onboarding, reappointment and promotion process for all lecturers in the program, including all research assistants
Directing the research unit of the program, including serving as principal investigator in department-wide projects, budgeting, fundraising and task allocation
Designing and administering the summer incoming writing assessments for both undergraduate and graduate students, including training between 20-30 scorers each year
Designing and running faculty and staff meetings, annual retreats and other faculty development activities (e.g., invited speakers or funding agency representatives)
Led two funded interdisciplinary research projects (totaling about $1.7 mil) on learning technologies with teams comprised of faculty, post-docs and undergraduate students from three continents, including budgeting and reporting to the funding agency
Guided all CMU-Q faculty in pedagogical innovation projects (technology and curriculum-based)
Evaluated the effectiveness of pedagogical innovations inside and outside the classroom for all Carnegie Mellon campus faculty
Offered diversity and cultural inclusiveness training to the faculty of Education City (all US institutions)
Designed and offered a full day orientation teaching and learning workshop for new faculty (Pittsburgh and Doha) and led faculty development workshops and seminars in Education City
Served in multiple committees supporting institutional growth, from physical infrastructure to faculty and staff hiring
Spearheaded the creation of a Professional Communication program, with courses in years 1-6 of the Pharmacy curriculum and seminars for alumni and faculty
Led a team of a dozen faculty and adjunct instructors in the development and implementation of a first-year communication curriculum
Chaired the assessment committee and led the accreditation efforts with Middle States and ACPE (Pharmacy accreditation body)
Directed the activities of the Writing Center, including peer tutor training, scheduling and budgeting
Developed and administered the incoming student writing assessment for placement, and the portfolio assessment for entrance into the pharmacy program
Comments from anonymous faculty feedback surveys
I have felt included, appreciated, and privileged.
Andreas is brilliant at giving us opportunities to share our work and our expertise with each other.
I'm grateful to Andreas for caring so much about the program. His decision to convert the director's office into a lounge for the WRAP
community is perhaps the perfect metaphor for the shift toward inclusion and community that
has occurred during Andreas' leadership.
Department culture and morale have greatly improved in the past year. Andreas has worked
tirelessly to seek input from lecturers about how to improve working conditions (e.g. managing
workload) and created numerous opportunities for us to share our approaches to teaching and
collaborate on projects related to the daily operations of our program and our teaching.