Succession Planning: Developing Future Leaders from Within
Succession planning, or targeted leadership development, is not very common in higher education institutions, perhaps because of the corporate cronyism it often calls to mind. Certainly, the values and hiring practices in higher education are inconsistent with the "good ol' boy" network found in the corporate sector, but perhaps higher...
Avoiding Groupthink
With the spate of books and articles that deal with the issue of incivility in higher education, it’s easy to conclude that destructive disharmony is the single biggest problem facing colleges and universities today. To be sure, lack of collegiality has become a significant challenge, and nearly every academic leader...
5 Recommendations for Completing the Flexible Sabbatical
At my institution, academic administrators on a 12-month contract can receive up to a full semester of paid leave to complete scholarship in their fields. Unlike a traditional sabbatical, which is taken for a full semester, flexible sabbatical weeks are taken in clusters throughout the academic year. In this way,...
On a Shoestring
This simple strategy can play a role in bringing a campus together around priorities that are shared widely and building a leadership team that is broadly regarded as unified and legitimate. Although, honestly, I cannot quantify its success, from years of experience I can attest to its far from negligible...
Change for the Sake of Change
Nearly all forms of academic leadership involve supervising change. Curricula have to be adapted to keep up with advances in pedagogy, the evolving needs of the student body, and new discoveries in the discipline. Research expands continually, building on the discoveries of other scholars and moving in new directions. As...
Collegiality: The Cornerstone of a University (and a Profession)
Accepting and sharing responsibility for creating a productive work setting within the department and institution result, at least to a great extent, from how well each member of the community carries his or her own fair share of the common workload. The challenges faced by higher education institutions in the...
Speed Mentoring
Mentoring is a common yet powerful way for people to learn a variety of personal and professional skills. Most adults can identify a person who, at some time in their lives, had a significant, positive influence on them. While some mentoring relationships are formal, with clear goals and regular meetings,...
Is Time Up for the Credit Hour?
How do we know if a student has learned enough to attain a degree or credential? Likely, the answer is currently phrased in the form of credit hours: 64 semester hours to earn an associate’s degree, 128 semester hours to earn a bachelor’s degree, and so on. But the credit...
To MOOC or Not to MOOC? That Is Just One of the Questions!
It seems that each new day brings a barrage of articles regarding massive open online courses (MOOCs) and their successful use in education and business. Both large and small educational institutions feel compelled to respond to internal and external stakeholders about MOOC development, and for those institutions unable to partner...
Seven Ways to Combat Attrition in Online Courses
One of the biggest issues in online education is attrition. “Student retention is a noteworthy issue for higher education institutions and is closely tied to accountability,” write Melanie Shaw of Northcentral University, Scott Burrus of University of Phoenix, and Karen Ferguson of Colorado State University-Global Campus. In an article in...
