Category: Blog

Reflections From 14 Years as a Department Chair

By Gordon E. Harvey, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor & Department Chair,Jacksonville State University Thinking about becoming a department chair? Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I started. As a junior faculty member, I envisioned a life of teaching and writing, but never one of supervision and leadership. To be sure, I still teach and write, but not at the volume of my pre-chair days. And the solitary lifestyle of the scholar is one I haven’t lived since 2007. I’ve been a department head for a total of almost 14 years for two universities, one as an internal appointment and the other an external hire. I have served far longer than I expected: the momentum and the need to finish what I started has kept me in this position. As I look back, there are several things that—had I sought a mentor or known about them at the outset—would have better prepared me to lead a department. I had no idea what I was doing when I first became a chair. Scared and anxious, I was afraid to make mistakes, I checked email incessantly, and I second-guessed every decision. I put myself under so much stress that it took […]

If You Want to be a Creative Leader, Cultivating Curiosity is a Good Start

by Jason Lane

Share this article and webcast with colleagues. Curiosity drives learning.  Indeed, curiosity is what brought many of us to work in higher education. We’re trained to be curious – at least within certain domains. Even Albert Einstein revealed that “I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted…I am only very, very curious.” Yet for many of us, it is not uncommon to feel constrained in our curiosity as we take up leadership roles.  Fear of failure, lack of training, reticence to challenge the norm, intolerance to ambiguity or simply forgetting the power of curiosity can leave leaders limited in their ability to deal with complex problems. When we do not push beyond our limits and fail to foster curiosity as a leader, we often miss out on the most valuable opportunities that can move us, our teams, our students, and our institutions ahead.  For example, many mid-career and senior leaders in higher education began their leadership journey during periods of seemingly ever expanding domestic and international enrollments. Those conditions allowed for many institutions to manage through problems by enrolling more students and/or raising tuition. Today, many colleges and universities are facing significantly declining revenue streams, fewer enrollments, increased international competition, and rapidly shifting student interests. Looking forward, institutions that thrive, not just survive, will […]

How the University of North Florida Integrated Academic and Student Affairs

By Daniel Moon, Associate Provost and Professor, University of North Florida Higher education institutions are facing pressure to increase student success measures and become more efficient. Each of these can present significant challenges for universities but having to solve both challenges simultaneously can be daunting. The COVID-19 pandemic has only served to add layers of complexity and urgency to this challenging puzzle. A potentially powerful mechanism for addressing this challenge is integrating Academic Affairs and Student Affairs into one cohesive unit. Doing so at the University of North Florida has contributed to all-time high retention and graduation rates, and yielded more than $2 million in savings and reallocation. The challenges we faced Higher education is focused on student success now more than ever, with unprecedented layers of accountability to students, parents, boards, and others (e.g. see Kelchen, 2018). This accountability is increasingly tied to a university’s bottom line. For example, most states have a performance-based funding mechanism that explicitly ties funding to student success measures. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the challenges that students face in pursuit of their degree, making this problem even more urgent for universities to solve. Significant shifts in improving student success measures require a more […]

Land Acknowledgement as an Equity Practice in Higher Education

by Dr. Nichole S. Prescott

Aya ceeki eeweemaakiki. Niila Myaamia. Neehweeta weenswiaani myaamiaataweenki. Nichole akala shima tawengi. Hello all my relatives. I am Myaamia. My Myaamia name is Neehweeta, which means she speaks. Nichole is my English name. _____________________ The Myaamia first emerged as a distinct people along the banks of the Saakiiweesiipi (St. Joseph’s River near South Bend, Indiana). We call our homelands Myaamionki (the place of the Myaamia). Today, we consider Myaamionki as along the Wabash River in Indiana (our heartland), the Marais des Cygnes River in Kansas, and the Neosho River in Oklahoma, reflecting our history. Our history consists of two forced removals, one literally at gunpoint from our original homelands in the Great Lakes region to Kansas, and one from Kansas into Northeastern Oklahoma, where we are currently based. As for so many other native peoples in the U.S., the history of our forced relocations is a painful memory and the cultural scars of that removal are still felt. Our original homeland in the Wabash River Valley in very real ways contributed to the creation of our culture, identity, spirituality, lifeways, and ways of knowing. Land is inextricably bound to who we are as Miami people. _____________________ Over the past several […]

Developing Social Justice Training for Student Staff: One Administrator’s Experience

by Tammi Kohl Kennedy

As the administrator of a one-person office at a small, private, liberal arts university, I rely heavily on my teams of student staff. Together we provide academic support for just over 2,000 undergraduate students and 200 graduate students through several targeted programs that lead to increased success and retention. Training my student staff is a vital part of our programs’ and our students’ success. To build my teams’ foundational knowledge around enhancing cognitive function as it relates to academic success, I developed a training program centered on evidence-based approaches to effective learning strategies. Leaning on scientific research and data lends credibility and relevance to the work we do. By helping students understand why strategies are effective and working with them to develop individually tailored approaches they can use now around their busy schedules, students begin to see my teams as legitimate and qualified resources as they start to realize improved success through their evolving approach to learning. Connecting our work to social justice Core-shaking events in the spring and summer of 2020 demanded a voice in this year’s training. As I reviewed materials to prepare my student staff of 40 for our work ahead, it became clear we would need […]

“DECLINED” Can my proposal be revived?

by Rick Nader

Why do so many grant proposals get rejected? Funding rates hover at about 20% across all federal agencies: the competition is fierce. For new faculty who are inexperienced, their chances of getting funded are more like 10-15%. This is due in part to PI inexperience with proposal writing and/or interpreting review comments and constructively utilizing feedback. However, to shelve the proposal without considering the reasons why it was rejected—and if there are subsequent opportunities to improve and resubmit it—is a mistake: the worst thing faculty can do is to never try again. At many funding agencies (like the NSF), it takes somewhere between 2-3 submissions on average before a PI’s first award decision. So, it’s wise as a faculty member to think of the declined proposal as “declined for now” rather than “declined forever.” In this article, I offer a handful of tips that will help you a) interpret your reviews, b) use your critiques to understand the cause(s) for the declination, and c) make an evidence-based decision about whether and how to revise and resubmit. Reviewing your declined proposal: What to look for? Review your ratings carefully. The first question you should ask yourself is, what were your ratings? Can […]

Academic Entrepreneurship: Managing your academic program portfolio in times of disruption

by Melissa Morriss-Olson, Ph.D.

We recently sat down with Dr. Melissa Morriss-Olson, former Provost at Bay Path University, to discuss her recently-released book “Academic Entrepreneurship: The Art and Science of Creating the Right Academic Programs.” The following interview—which contains myriad practical suggestions for academic leaders looking to think creatively to move their divisions and institutions forward—is what materialized. 1. What inspired you to write your new book about academic entrepreneurship? Academic Entrepreneurship is the guidebook I wish I’d had when I started out in higher education many years ago.  Most academic leaders come to their roles without experience in entrepreneurial leadership.  Nor do most of us have any training in how to strategically manage and leverage our institution’s academic resources. And yet, helping our institutions do well and thrive in this current environment means that academic leaders need to think and act differently than our predecessors did even a few years ago. Today, most of our colleges and universities are facing unprecedented levels of disruption—and this was before the coronovirus pandemic took hold!  The pandemic has accelerated the change that was already underway. From the research I have conducted over the course of my career about successful college management practices, one thing emerged time […]

Six Months In: Leadership Lessons Gleaned from the COVID Crisis

by Mary Hinton

Introduction Six months ago, I wrote a piece about what I had learned as a university president in the early days of the pandemic. We were less than 30 days into the national shutdown. It was hard to imagine that the pandemic, and our lives on campus, would evolve as they have. The subsequent surfacing of long-unaddressed issues of injustice and the necessary outcry for the dismantling of racist systems further compounded the challenges – and accelerated learning – during this time. Today I found myself wondering what I have learned since April. As I reflect on those five early lessons, all of them continue to feel relevant. Community, and intentional building of community, be it virtual or face-to-face, is still critical. Clarity about what matters (the mission!) remains relevant. Listening to and seeking others’ counsel continues to be an essential strategy as we sojourn on, and as public health needs shift along with the virus. And, daily, the gift of imperfection is a reminder of our humanity. Those five lessons remain, but the ensuing six months have taught me a great deal more and, I hope, made me a better person and leader. The lesson of connection Perhaps more […]

The Higher Education Business Model is Broken, But We Can’t Lose Sight of Why We Broke It, and Who We Needed to Break It For

by Mary Hinton

“The pandemic has forced us to confront higher education’s broken business model more directly. While we can no longer afford to be broken, the fundamental items that caused the problem are not resolved. The very thing that broke us – our missional focus on those who we must serve, though such service is not ‘profitable’ – is what sustains our communities during the pandemic. With a spine of steel and great will, we must reinvent ourselves in order to serve those who need us most.” by Mary Hinton, President, Hollins University “The economic model is broken.” “Your expenses are too high. “ “We can find all the answers through technology and you are no longer needed.” “There’s no real value to what you offer.” As a college president, I have heard these statements and the attendant negative narrative about higher education for far too long. At every opportunity, those of us in higher education are forced to articulate and provide concrete evidence of our value proposition: Again and again, we repeat our value. Having served on the board of a health system, I often heard the president respond to a similar narrative decrying the broken healthcare model, the questionable value […]

The Reopened Academic Library: Strategies for the Support and Safety of Students and Staff

by Daniel Fusch

“We’re already seeing … you tell someone to cover their nose with their mask and they roll their eyes at you. Our staff have a lot of anxiety. But we’re all in this together.” “We need students to physically distance and stay safe, and to wear masks, but the academic library is not set up to be, and doesn’t need to be, the ‘COVID police’; what do we do?” by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions In mid-August, we held a four-hour virtual workshop in which academic library leaders from across North America convened to share challenges and strategies as they prepare for the fall. Amid all the uncertainty and unpredictability, one thing is clear: For many institutions, the academic library – long core to both the academic and social life of the campus – is only going to be more critical this fall. This is the case both for institutions that have a reopened physical campus and for institutions that are primarily virtual, at which the academic library may be one of the few sites on campus that remains open to the campus community. Our virtual workshops are unique in providing a space where participants can connect with their peers and leading […]