What is wisdom? How does anyone become wise? Is it something you are, something you have, or something you do? Does anyone ever set out to develop or acquire wisdom as a goal? How does a person become wise? Do people regarded as wise think of themselves as wise? What is it about someone that has others see them as wise?
Dr. Judith Ramaley enjoyed working in university administration at the University of Nebraska. She knew that one day she would become a university president. In 1982, Ramaley became the chief academic officer at the State University of New York at Albany and was acting president.
Judith developed a plan for learning about how to be a highly effective university president. At conferences for administrators in higher education, she would single out university presidents and interview them about what their experience had taught them about how to be effective. She asked what they wished they had known when they first started. She asked what to do quickly and what mistakes to avoid. She was told, for example, that some professors would be among the first people who would want to see her and they would present a long list of charges maligning an administrator that they had conflicts with. The professors who try to get to her first with their complaints, she was told, will prove in the years ahead to be the ones most likely to stir up faculty and staff antagonism toward her.