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Leaders in academic neurology play crucial roles in carrying out the academic mission, directing clinical practice, supporting research, and shaping the education of future neurologists. Keeping these goals in focus while balancing limited time, space, and resources in combination with inevitable urgent and emergent situations present enormous challenges to all academic leaders. These roles make significant demands on the talented and dynamic neurologists who become leaders in academic medicine.

Along with the varied demands on their time, academic neurology leaders face a multitude of evolving pressures in their role. Chairs have different needs at different stages of their tenure. For the new chair just getting started, there are questions about establishing strong relationships in this leadership role, developing in the role, and setting a departmental direction. For a mid-tenure chair, retaining key people, developing distributed leadership, and creating signature programs are common goals. For the late career chair, there are questions about next career steps and how to support leadership in transition.

With all of these considerations in mind, where can academic leaders turn for support? Leadership within the AAN Academic Neurology Committee and its subcommittees have turned their attention to these needs with the development and curation of a set of dynamic and varied resources to support academic leaders in a range of issues. 

The Academic Leadership Toolkit is designed to meet the needs of leaders with a mix of advice, experiences, reflection, and resources. Currently organized into five areas of focus along with position-specific resources, users can explore resources that meet all of their needs, including book recommendations, helpful resources from diverse academic institutions, and video discussions with AAN leaders about how they’ve dealt with challenging or common issues. The toolkit also includes position-specific pages with a few resources and event announcements.