The Research Process and Its Relevance to the Culture of Assessment
As higher education evolves, so too does the importance of assessing learning. New regulations, financial constraints, and accrediting agencies are stressing that colleges and universities should strengthen assessment organizationally. However, when assessment is discussed in large faculty forums, the concept often, strangely, becomes very foreign to them. Here is where...
Building a Pathway to Cultural Competence Through Academic Service Learning
As colleges and universities seek to prepare students for professional careers in a diverse, global society, the attainment of cultural competence is an essential capacity that can no longer be overlooked. Cultural competence involves the awareness, knowledge, and skills needed to engage and collaborate meaningfully across differences through interactions that...
Core Curriculum Improves Academic Rigor, Identity, and Retention
Concordia University Irvine recently adopted a core curriculum as a way to increase academic rigor, strengthen the university’s identity, and improve student retention. In May, the university graduated its first students to experience the core. In an interview with Academic Leader, Scott Ashmon, director of the core curriculum, explained the...
Concerning Competency-Based Education
Competency-based education (CBE) is currently touted as an important innovation in higher education that has the potential to disrupt the traditional model and to radically transform the way students receive a postsecondary education. CBE is characterized by an individualized approach to education in which students learn at their own pace...
Why Alternative Credentials Are Critical to Institutional Success
Anyone who has ever attended a program advisory committee meeting knows that it can be a mix of exciting inspiration and terrifying fear that one’s programs are not doing enough to prepare one’s graduates. While members of the business community will often give helpful, positive commentary on the knowledge the...
Supporting International Students
English language proficiency does not eliminate all the special challenges that international students face. Cultural differences—particularly among students from non-Western countries—can create additional burdens. For example, international students may experience difficulty understanding spoken English or an instructor’s use of humor, slang, or cultural references; they may experience a type of...
Working with Complaining Students—and Their Parents
Frequently, academic administrators encounter students who appeal grades, lodge academic complaints, ask for exceptions to academic policies, or otherwise voice dissatisfaction with their academic experience. Frequently, their parents or other family members accompany them, advocate for them, or even request meetings. These encounters force administrators to balance student interests with...
Understanding the Fisher Decision
Two months ago, in Fisher v. University of Texas, the United States Supreme Court gave a lukewarm endorsement of the University of Texas’ affirmative action program geared to attracting more students of color. Suffice it to say that the Court’s decision is limited to student admissions and the very specific...
Freedom of Speech Issues: A Legal Primer for Academic Leaders
Today’s college campus is a laboratory for the US Constitution’s First Amendment provision declaring that government may not “abridge” a citizen’s individual rights with respect to five related freedoms: religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. Public colleges and universities must honor these rights and protect them, but private institutions are...
The Administrative Role in Managing Difficult Students: A Look at the Literature
Community college administrators are responsible for many areas of the institutions they serve. Presidents, directors of student services, those in academic support, and deans and chairs of academic units are all charged with managing institution resources, administrating mandates from legislation, and responding to internal and external constituencies. Much of the...
