Lesson Learned—Lesson Shared: Give It a Dignified 24 Hours
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on June 22, 2017© Magna Publications. All rights reserved. Recently, I was in an informal conversation with a group of faculty members and chairpersons. We were discussing challenges frequently encountered in our daily work. One faculty member noted that he is often unsure of how...
Making Diversity, Equity and Inclusion a Mission, Not Just an Initiative
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on February 3, 2020 © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. When I was appointed Central Michigan University’s (CMU’s) first chief diversity officer in April 2018, I was charged with making the campus a more inclusive environment for students, faculty, and staff. At CMU, diversity, equity,...
Building Alliances and Networks of Support in Higher Education: A New Era in Higher Education
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on April 15, 2019. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. An irony of higher education is that as college degree attainment has become more common and necessary for employment and economic growth, governmental investment has declined. Many state legislatures have reduced their support for higher...
Fundraising: Lead with Gift Officers in Mind
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on October 1, 2019. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. In higher education fundraising, the people who identify, cultivate, and solicit charitable contributions are critical assets. These gift officers strengthen the bonds between alumni and their alma maters by facilitating the donation of major...
On Mixed Marriages: Building Community Between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on November 1, 2018. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. My partner and I often joke that we have a mixed marriage. Our joking is not exclusively because one of us is Black and the other is White. It is not because one...
Four Strategies to Improve Faculty Buy-In for Online Education
As an online administrator, I can tell you that it feels like we have been talking about ways to improve faculty buy-in for online education for the past 10 to 15 years. And we have. While online courses and degree programs are becoming more accepted and mainstream at many institutions,...
Follow-up Budget Questions for New Chairs: Flexibility, Carry Over, and Incentives, Part II
Incentives in the Budgeting System After the first two questions posed in a previous article on budgeting and finance, namely identifying the sources of academic income and how the department’s budget is established, have been answered, the new chair should quickly align the answers to see if the department’s budget...
Follow-up Budget Questions for New Chairs: Flexibility, Carry Over, and Incentives
To provide some basic budgeting and finance information to new chairs with little or no experience in this area, in my June article I recommended some questions for them to ask their dean prior to or at the outset of their terms as chairs. The questions on the sources of...
Creating Dialogue in the Interest of Social Justice on Campus
In a polarized national climate, free speech and First Amendment protections have drawn increasing attention on college campuses. With the advent of open white nationalism, expressions of white supremacy, and the potential for hate speech, campuses have sought to protect student safety and guard against the harassment of minoritized students....
Why and How We Should Choose Civility in Academic Workplaces
A positive and productive departmental climate can often seem like love. We might admire it from afar and wish we had that luck, although we can learn to cope by developing a hobby, lowering our expectations, or cultivating other relationships. We might blame our current unhappiness on our own mates...
