Calls for changes in higher education are omnipresent and motivated by major challenges for society. Several of these challenges, for example those related to digitalization and sustainability, falls into the category of emerging and transformative challenges. The breadth and width of such challenges is too large to be handled by a single individual or even a small group of individuals. Instead, their solution requires an adaptive leadership with relevant activities at all organizational levels. From research literature and previous successful change processes, it is known that change leaders in the middle are key players during such transformations. In engineering education (and in fact in any other education aiming for a profession), it is natural that this role is taken by a program director who already has a responsibility for the quality and the development of an engineering program.
In this work, I will approach the role of a program director from a logical perspective using arguments based on a simple comparison between available time and total time required to create the desired change. It is obvious that large challenges demand a substantial amount of time to find an acceptable solution, which is outside of the reach for any single individual. I will also discuss the crucial role of persons in the middle for obtaining successful change related to large challenges. Based on my own case, I will try to give some advice about how a program director in the role as a person in the middle can handle this pressing situation. I will point towards the needs of personal time management, a basic understanding of agile change management, the ability to create structures and collaborative efforts that promote agile actions, the need for making coherence and using inclusion strategies and the necessity of networking. I will also emphasize the importance that universities support internal and external networking structures.
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