Search Results for: meeting

Our Lost Colleges

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Amid rising public doubt about the continued accessibility of US post-secondary institutions, university leaders need to think differently about how they operate. Until that happens, our colleges will remain lost in a fog of cultural skepticism about higher education. Here are questions every institution’s leaders need to be asking. A friend’s daughter applied to 10 universities last year. All of the institutions offered admission. But financial aid packages were a different matter. One top-ranked state university sent her an offer with this punch line: your net tuition for this year is 0. Wonderful, but the breakdown included $2,500 for work study and a $59,000 loan requirement. In other words, she would have nearly free tuition, room and board, while in school, but after graduation a $236,000 student loan debt would become due. How could an admissions officer craft such an insensitive and misleading financial aid letter? William Bennett claimed to know the answer. In 1987, as Secretary of Education he wrote a combative NY Times op-ed titled “Our Greedy Colleges.” He argued that higher education has no incentive for operating efficiently because government guaranteed loans cover escalating tuition prices. His contention became known as the “Bennett Hypothesis.” Thirty years later, […]

4 Essential Leadership Competencies Department Chairs Need to Lead in the New Normal

Posted on by Brady Stanton

Introduction As a higher education leader for almost 20 years and a former department chair for ten, I have witnessed time and time again how the right department leader can animate an academic program. As John C. Maxwell once said, “The reality is that 99 percent of all leadership occurs not from the top, but from the middle of an organization.” Sitting at the nexus of the student body, the faculty, and the administration, department chairs are poised to provide crucial leadership in the effort to help students progress toward graduation and their institutions toward transformation. Despite their important positioning, department chairs are rarely taught how to lead nor are they typically rewarded for good leadership. Nearly 50,000 currently serve as department chairs in the United States with about a quarter of them being replaced each year (Gmlech and Buller, 2015). And yet only 3.3 percent of department chairs came to their positions with formal coursework in the administrative skills they need (Cipiano and Riccardi, 2012). While challenges facing higher education grow in intensity and become more complex, many department chairs enter the role woefully unprepared for the challenges that await them. The convergence of interconnected crises in recent years—including […]

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

Posted on by Shawn Herbert

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.*role=”document”, aria-multiline=”true”, aria-readonly=”false”**aria-label=”Block: Paragraph”* 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 […]

Reflections From 14 Years as a Department Chair

Posted on by Shawn Herbert

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 […]

How Bay Path Boosted STEM Success for Underrepresented Women

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Establishing a Center of Excellence for Women in STEM has improved academic success, engagement, and retention of underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation undergraduate women in Bay Path University’s STEM majors. Here’s what Bay Path did, and some lessons learned that may be key if you would like to undertake a similar initiative. by Gina Semprebon, PhD, Professor or Biology, Founding Director of the Center of Excellence for Women in STEM, Bay Path University; Christine Bacon, D.HEd, Associate Professor of Biology, Chair of Science, Bay Path University; and Lamis Jarvinen, PhD, Director of Partners for Scientific Inquiry The Challenges We Faced As seen in many other higher education institutions, our female students have become increasingly attracted to pursuing STEM majors over the past several years. At Bay Path University, a women-serving institution at the undergraduate level, we have responded by expanding our STEM offerings and have sought for effective ways to both attract and retain women in our STEM majors, as well as to serve as a networking and educational center for professional women in STEM fields in our region – many of the latter being our own graduates. However, the typical academic challenges faced in gateway, foundational courses within the first two years of […]

Dynamic Recruitment Communications: Planning for an Uncertain Fall (Virtual Workshop Recording)

While we don’t know what exactly fall recruitment will look like this year, we do know that the communication plans of the past will no longer be sufficient. Recycled messaging that used to work to move students through your enrollment funnel will not be as relevant to prospective students in the current context of campus closures and uncertainty. As enrollment communicators shift focus from mitigating summer melt to updating their communications plans for fall 2020 and beyond, you should take the time to plan now and be able to pivot later. Join us for a two-hour virtual training that will provide you with a framework to review and strengthen your fall workflow, allow you to brainstorm with colleagues from other institutions, and give you an opportunity to practice developing agile communication plans in real time.

Loading survey...