Category: Blog

A Year in Crisis: Lessons in Communication Learned as a Department Chair

by Brian Shook (opens in new tab)

Introduction We have just passed the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this experience may have provided opportunities for us to learn and grow, it has also taught us there are critical elements of our life and work where no substitute is sufficient. One of these elements is communication. The extreme safety measures of social distancing, lockdowns, quarantines, remote teaching, and working from home have made communicating with one another increasingly difficult and acutely essential. Let’s not forget, though, there has always been a need for academic leaders to improve communication—many of us have even read books and attended workshops dedicated to this topic. However, the current pandemic has magnified potential weak spots in our communication, providing the opportunity to develop new habits that will benefit those we lead. Allow me to share with you some lessons I have learned recently—some more painful than others—and how they can be applied right now, as well as in a post-pandemic world. Knowing Your Responsibilities Makes You a Better Communicator Being a department chair is the toughest job on campus, and the job does not get any easier during a pandemic. Students, faculty, and staff look to us for magical answers to […]

Persistent Tension in Academic Leadership and How to Make it Productive

by Melissa Padfield (opens in new tab), Norma Rodenburg (opens in new tab)

Leadership is hard Let’s face it, leadership is hard and exhausting. Leadership was hard before the Covid-19 pandemic, and the additional complexities that leaders have been facing over the past year have been significant. Leaders at all levels are increasingly finding themselves making more decisions more quickly, with more significance, and with less information. The risks we are managing have increased. Our teams are looking to us for vision and guidance while we manage all of this new complexity and challenge. And we are doing all of this while working at our kitchen tables and in virtual meetings. We have had to acquire a whole new set of skills to lead in a remote or hybrid environment literally overnight. Leading teams and managing ourselves during these conditions is not for the faint hearted and it necessitates that we build our toolkit to tackle leadership in new ways. Now we are starting to look to the future with hope and optimism, knowing that some things will never return to the way they were before the pandemic. They can’t, and in many ways, they shouldn’t. Acknowledging and validating that the work of leading is hard right now (and really always was) is […]

The Power of A Coaching Mindset and Its Impact on Leadership in Higher Ed

by Dr. Jianping Wang (opens in new tab)

Coaching and leadership have not always been discussed together. For many leaders, coaching is somewhat of a mystery. I would like to share my journey of discovering coaching as a powerful leadership development tool that has transformed the way I lead, and how I was motivated to become a leadership coach. I will try to demystify coaching by explaining and illustrating its process. Receiving coaching is a way to unleash your leadership potential and become an inspirational leader for your college or university. Adopting the leadership coaching mindset has positively impacted my college’s organizational performance. Moving away from ‘fixing the problem’ mindset” Leadership is important. Leadership development is even more important today, because as organizations we lead face tremendous challenges. Many leaders, including myself, are likely to admit that the formal education we received does not adequately prepare us for the challenges awaiting us. More and more of us crave “on the job help” to do our jobs well. Over the years, I have been helped and have helped others. However, I feel that our leadership mindset is still on “fixing problems.” Such an approach makes organizations highly dependent on their leaders to do the “fixing.” Consequently, leaders are weighed […]

University Comprehensive Naming Reviews

by Kathleen Diemer (opens in new tab)

During the last decade, a few high-profile donor stories throughout the country have heightened public awareness of university namings. In response, “reputational risk” or “morality” clauses started popping up more frequently in university gift agreements. These clauses generally stipulate that an institution can remove a naming should the institution’s association with the name prove problematic in the future. The hope was that these clauses would allow institutions to disassociate themselves with the names of those who might become mired in scandal or criminal activity at some point in the future. But times are changing, and our institutions have been forced to consider how those changes impact the expectations of our internal and external community. Higher education institutions were forced to alter just about everything in response to the Covid pandemic. Seemingly overnight, classes moved to virtual formats, faculty and staff switched to remote work, buildings locked down, and in-person activities ceased. At the same time, our nation’s calls for justice and equality left many wondering if it was time for some of the names at our universities to go. Although our campuses sat empty, the names associated with our institutions became much more significant. The pandemic required swift work and […]

Integrating Internationalization Strategies and DEI Initiatives at US Universities: What’s to be Gained?

by Dr. Ashley Green (opens in new tab)

Introduction Until recently at many US universities, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and internationalization programs were considered to be separate undertakings responding to different university goals. Today collaboration between the two is still the exception to the rule. This article makes a case for more and stronger collaboration between DEI and internationalization by considering what can be gained by bringing them closer together. It provides examples of such initiatives drawn from the experiences of Michigan State University. There are compelling reasons to explore the nexus between these two efforts. As state governments have withdrawn significant funding from institutions of higher education over the past decades, universities have become much more dependent on international and out-of-state tuition. Prior to COVID-19, which brought about large drops in enrollment of international and in some places, domestic out-of-state students, the US was already falling behind in its recruitment and retention of international students and faculty. There is reason to be optimistic that this trend can be reversed, but for this to occur new DEI-inspired strategies aimed at creating a more welcoming, equitable and inclusive climate will be required. Background Traditionally, DEI initiatives responded to urgent domestic needs to address racism and sexism on campus […]

FLIPping the Script on Course Design: Integrating UDL and Student Centeredness into the Course Design Table

By Dr. Leslie Madsen, Teresa Focarile, Dr. Tasha Souza, Dr. Lisa Berry After the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted the spring 2020 semester, Boise State University faculty looked toward an uncertain fall with some trepidation. Because students might have to quarantine for weeks or miss several classes due to illness, instructors realized they would not only need to be ready to shift modalities as they had during spring semester, but potentially teach in multiple modalities simultaneously. To help faculty plan their fall classes, the campus units responsible for supporting instructors’ course design, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and eCampus Center (eC2), worked together to create a three-week Flexible Teaching for Student Success Institute (FTSS). While the collaboration between the two units led to several locally novel developments in the design and delivery of the summer Institute, a simple document template at the heart of the effort proved to be its most significant—and useful—innovation. Drawing on the tenets of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), the Flexible Learning and Instruction Plan, or FLIP, expands on the traditional course-design table by: asking instructors to build in adjustability and to provide students with multiple ways to access course content; allow for students to […]

Identifying Opportunities in Your Department’s DEI Strategy: One Alumni Department’s Perspective

by Ryan Barnhart, DHSc (opens in new tab)

Are you wanting to create more opportunities for diversity, equity, and inclusion for your constituents, but not sure where to begin? Here’s how one Alumni Relations and Development Office started. We started from the bottom At California University of Pennsylvania, our Office of Alumni Relations has been working collaboratively with departments across campus to paint a true picture of what diversity, equity, and inclusion means for our students, our alumni, and our institution’s history and future. Examining DEI concepts through a variety of lenses is essential to success. For many of us in higher education, our campuses are at times the first, and unfortunately the only, opportunity to have an open, meaningful dialogue around diversity, equity, and inclusion for our students. Our institution has a history of acknowledging and embracing our diverse populations across campus. For example, we’ve always celebrated the legacy of Jennie Adams Carter, our first Black alumna, and her impact on education and her family’s legacy, (Cal U was founded originally as a normal school for teacher education). Other examples include yearly dedicated outreach and programming honoring international students and their heritage. Much of this programming is student-centric. However, as the director of alumni relations, I felt […]

Navigating a virtual provost search during the pandemic

by David Forgues (opens in new tab), Carolyn Thomas (opens in new tab)

The below piece tells the story of Cal State Fullerton’s experience conducting a provost search virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. The story is written from two perspectives: the first from the institution’s Vice President of Human Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion and Search Committee Chair; and the second from the now sitting provost. By sharing their experience, the article authors hope other institutions that find themselves embarking on a search in this continued virtual environment can gain ideas that positively impact the process. Perspective #1: David Forgues, Search Committee Chair and Vice President of Human Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion Pre-pandemic: Starting a provost search When our interim president was made permanent by the board in May of 2019, high on his list of priorities was to search for and appoint a new provost. Three interim provosts had served in the position since the last permanent provost departed. As we moved into fall and kicked off the search, we had no idea what was in store. We planned for this search along the normal cycle with groundwork to be completed in fall and advertising and recruitment over winter break and into the start of the spring semester. That would set us up […]

Back to the Future of Alumni Relations

By Kathy Edersheim President, Impactrics Social distancing and isolation brought on by the pandemic have proven the importance of community and connection, the very priorities for alumni relations. As the vaccine rolls-out and we look forward to a new normal, it is the perfect moment for alumni associations to assess the challenges and, yes, opportunities that have emerged from an almost entirely virtual system and consider what that means for the future. Observing and working with over 25 institutions during the past year has provided perspective on the potential for new directions and greater success. During the outset of the pandemic Since March, alumni relations pivoted to the virtual world like everything else. The first challenge was how to get alumni to support students facing an abbreviated semester and, often, financial challenges. It was a major communication effort to keep alumni informed about cancelled events (including refunds for tickets), campus news, and to solicit donations for student emergency funds while working remotely. At some institutions, the alumni-student support network for career guidance was mobilized to assist graduating students. Overall, the remote management of this process was surprisingly well-accepted and effective in maintaining and building connections. For many institutions, the most […]

Using Thinking Aloud Strategies to Create Equity in Distance Learning

By Prof. Dr. Eugene AllevatoWoodbury University In education, equity means to ensure that every student has an equal chance for success based on their specific needs. Due to the recent pandemic, the transition to distance learning has caused the achievement gap to widen requiring new tools and strategies to reduce barriers, especially to underrepresented groups. Think aloud is a strategy that enhances student’s comprehension and intellectual growth by removing these barriers. By expressing one’s thoughts while reading, students develop their reading skills because they can acquire information from what they read, add to their knowledge, enlarge their way of thinking and reasoning to advance toward academic excellence. In addition, this strategy provides a better way to assess students’ learning. Before the pandemic, considering that social interaction is fundamental in the learning process, I was not in favor of online instruction because I thought that physical proximity was necessary for engagement and learning. Once I was forced to transition to virtual instruction and adapt to new technology and different tools, I realized the significance of online instruction. In fact, distance learning implementation, has the potential to cause disengagement and disconnect between teachers and students, due to the perceived lack of communication, […]

Loading survey...