Category: Blog

Faculty Success in Today’s Higher Education: Introduction to the Article Series

by Sarah Seigle Peatman (opens in new tab)

Over the last decade, faculty success efforts have gradually consolidated on many campuses to become more comprehensive. Increasingly, institutions are creating or expanding integrated divisions of Faculty Success or Faculty Advancement, whose mission is to support faculty holistically—including a focus on faculty affairs, teaching and learning support, faculty and department Chair leadership development, and faculty well-being. They are also critical players in cross-campus initiatives around things like faculty hiring and retention, academic diversity, equity, and inclusion, faculty climate, and promotion and tenure.  This broadening of the faculty success portfolio no doubt poses some challenges, as faculty success units are often leanly resourced. They must also find ways to tailor their services to the unique needs of various faculty groups across rank and tenure (junior faculty, mid-career faculty, senior faculty, career-track faculty or lecturers), academic discipline, and intersecting social identities (race/ethnicity, gender, age and generational difference, caregivers, etc.). But a more integrated, holistic approach also represents a recognition among university leaders that faculty are not a homogenous group, and we cannot treat them as such if we expect to retain them or to produce the student success and research productivity outcomes we are looking for. Faculty needs are more complex and […]

The Road to Adaptive Learning: Improving Comprehension, Easing Faculty Burden

by Courtney Yuen (opens in new tab)

If you’re currently using learning analytics, this article will show you how a more advanced implementation of this technology plays out. We’ll follow TAWC’s journey about how they got there. Data, data, data. We all know it’s valuable. In the classroom, it has the potential to improve student comprehension. It can also support faculty and reduce costs. If used in more advanced forms, it can even customize the learning experience to the preferences of each student. We all have data, but not everyone is using it in the same ways. According to a study by Ellucian, 61% of institutions currently have some kind of learning analytics program. However, very few have pushed it beyond its most basic functions and ventured into the world of adaptive learning. The American Women’s College (TAWC) at Bay Path University is one such trailblazer. TAWC builds their online courses in an adaptive platform that’s improving student comprehension, performance, and accessibility – and easing faculty burden at the same time. Their model is also saving students money. What’s adaptive learning? An adaptive system is built around a set of AI algorithms that process data drawn from tens of thousands of learner interactions. The computations that the system carries out […]

A Message About Messages

by Sandra Miles, PhD (opens in new tab)

  We understand that global affairs such as the Israel-Palestinian Conflict can feel overwhelming for some and confusing for others. We encourage our members to take care of themselves and their students and colleagues during this time of unsettling events. To learn more about what is happening we encourage you to seek out informative and nonpartisan sources of information, an example of which can be found here – https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict  Over the past few weeks, a number of campuses and campus presidents have found themselves in the middle of backlash, turmoil, and/or reduced confidence from their campus community. Attempts to quickly respond to the most recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict led to clumsy or seemingly offensive messages being distributed campus wide.  While there may not have been anything wrong with the message, however, the audience just did not agree with the messaging, timing, approach, or in some cases, all of the above.  Often, when world issues begin to spark national debate, many of our constituents may not realize the complexity or veracity of the topic and, their expectations for widely circulated messaging is based more on anchor bias – a tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information one receives […]

Improving Advising: A Five-Step Plan

by Carol Moore (opens in new tab)

This is a time of great transition in higher education. A gradual decrease in undergraduate enrollments has prompted colleges to focus on increasing retention and graduation rates as a means for stabilizing revenue and marketing for recruitment. At four-year colleges, faculty advisement has historically been limited to course planning, although more recent trends—initiated first by community colleges—have used professional advisors to offer wider-ranging services aimed at improving student success. The establishment of retention centers has played a significant role in reducing attrition, while allowing faculty to continue in their traditional role of ensuring their advisees meet graduation requirements.  Changing student demographics and perspectives about college bring with them new challenges. The current generation has struggled through COVID and battled the mental health difficulties that accompanied the pandemic as well as the world around them. Students and parents now have new expectations of colleges and their roles in preparing students for a career. Those expectations include helping students to identify a career path, support for academic preparation, and larger roles in assisting students to find placement post-graduation. Families and students assume that faculty will also assist students with stress and mental health issues (a good thing as according to national surveys, […]

Navigating Leadership Transitions

by Karen M. Whitney, EdD (opens in new tab)

Every leader generally experiences the same leadership life cycle, or what I call “Whitney’s Leadership Life Cycle,” that includes a set of stages as they begin, serve in, and leave a leadership role. There are four stages to every leadership position: Aspiring, Acquiring, Attending, and Adjourning. In order to be a successful leader, I suggest that there is value in creating a plan of action for each stage, mapping the intersections of what matters most to you with the institution you may wish to serve. Think of it as a framework or a filter that you will use to sift through what matters most to you as a leader, in connection to the priorities of an institution and the characteristics of the job that you would hold. At the end of the sifting, you will find your best “fit” for your next leadership position. Planning and acting during each stage of your leadership position with your “Fit Filter” will increase your potential for success! While the use of the word “fit” typically connotes the extent to which a leader fits or could easily assimilate into an organization, I offer a different orientation to the use of the word. I suggest […]

Arts & Humanities: Creating Jobs and Changing Societies

by Arts & Humanities: Creating Jobs and Changing Societies (opens in new tab)

By Eileen L. Strempel, Inaugural Dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music, Professor, School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Baishakhi Taylor, Associate Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at New York University Abu Dhabi     This is an exciting time for dramatic technological advances and technological investments, ranging from the invention of Chat GPT to the announcement of a $500M new technology campus in NYC. Higher education enrollment trends reflect a similar shift, as it seems everyone want to major in economics, business or computer science. One might ask, where are the similar investments in the arts and humanities? As higher education costs continue to increase, the numbers of arts and humanities majors are shrinking: In 2018, the share of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the humanities (10.2%) was less than a third of the size of the 36.7% share for the sciences (health/medical, natural, and behavioral/social sciences combined; Indicator II-03c). In 2020, it was reported that the number of college students graduating with a humanities major fell for the eighth straight year to under 200,000 degrees given, while other reports noted that the humanities were conferring less than 10 percent of […]

Forging the Future: Five Considerations for Developing Leaders at Your Institution 

by Nicole Pruitt (opens in new tab), Beth Rotach (opens in new tab)

Many have written, studied, and offered advice on the skills higher education leaders need to be successful, and in the wake of COVID-19, some of the needs have shifted and some have reached a fever pitch. Burnout, enrollment declines, artificial intelligence, and political and cultural polarization are just some of the external factors a leader needs to navigate. Internally, there are staffing and salary freezes, politics, racialized hierarchies, and tenure battles – it’s no wonder many institutions are struggling with recruiting and retaining key faculty and staff1.  Although employees have many reasons for leaving their jobs, one stands out. From April 2021 – April 2022, a McKinsey survey2 showed that the top reason for quitting a previous job is a lack of career development opportunities and advancement, outranking inadequate compensation. These results closely mirror those from a Pew Research Center survey3, which found lack of opportunities for advancement tied with inadequate pay as the reasons people quit. So, while there are multiple factors associated with driving employees away, it is telling that lack of growth within the organization ranks so highly.  It’s a message that’s beginning to resonate in higher education. Institutions and departments are beginning to recognize the need […]

Disrupting the Status Quo: 5 Counterintuitive Notions for Inspiring Creativity

by Stephen Whitehead (opens in new tab)

Creativity is an essential aspect of human nature, yet many people struggle to embrace it, either from insecurity or fearing its potential unpredictability. While it is tempting to stick to familiar routines that afford the comfort of not dealing with potential failure or uncertainty, there is no room for personal or organizational growth with this mindset. Today, the need to foster creativity that drives innovation and growth in organizations is a highly regarded requirement for leaders. However, simply telling your team to “think outside the box” isn’t exactly inspiring. To quote Ted Lasso, “Takin’ on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse. If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.” While we all agree that change is scary, what makes creativity so satisfying is the opportunity to see situations from new perspectives. In this article, we will explore five counterintuitive notions that can help to cultivate a creative culture. Embracing creativity is both a challenging and rewarding process. While these examples may appear to be counterintuitive, give them a try and see how they are able to unlock the full potential of your meetings, employees, and organization to help drive innovation. Lean into embracing […]

When Innovation is More Than a Buzz Word

by David Kiel (opens in new tab)

Here’s how department chairs, deans, and unit directors can build and support the innovations that will help their institution thrive in the years to come. On many campuses you will find creative faculty, students, staff, and senior leaders who start programs that grow and eventually become transformative for the institution. These ventures build the school’s reputation, improve services to students and faculty, strengthen the curriculum and co-curriculum, enhance research, and improve community service. Often, they also generate major revenue streams. They make the institution more competitive and attractive in every sense. Yet the internal entrepreneurs (I call them intrapreneurs) who deliver these benefits, lack the support they need to bring their innovative ventures to maturity in a timely way. What would it look like if there were a pipeline of support for such ventures and the intrapreneurs who create and guide them at your institution? What if your college or university leaders had an active process for identifying such promising intrapreneurs, testing their ideas, and helping them with both the skills and resources needed for their ventures to mature? What would it look like if support for such efforts wasn’t haphazard and ad hoc, but structured and planned? To visualize […]

Understanding Those Who Need Us: 4 Types of Students and How to Help Them

by Sue Ohrablo, Ed.D. (opens in new tab)

As next semester’s registration period ramps up, advisors will see an increase in student traffic, experiencing long days juggling back-to-back appointments, walk-ins, phone calls, and emails. It’s a time of year filled with stress. Students are concerned that they won’t get the classes that they need, worried that they may not pass a prerequisite course, and eager to get some direction from an advisor. Advisors are busy trying to triage the student traffic, struggling to respond to and assist all the students who are seeking their help, and managing a myriad of administrative duties between students. It’s the same thing every semester. Or is it? Does it have to be? These are the thoughts and questions I’ve posed to myself throughout my career in higher education. There must be a better way to avoid the mad rush of registration leading up to the start of the semester. While institutions struggle with managing this workflow throughout the year, I have not found any system that effectively reduces or eliminates the rush. Such is the nature of human beings in need. They seek us out, which is a very good thing. The problem is, there are usually not enough of us to […]

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