The Obama presidency ushered in many educational initiatives, including a more comprehensive look at what role universities and colleges might take in strengthening communities. The idea of an “anchor institution” has been in play for several decades as scholars, politicians, activists and others considered the many ways that placed-based nonprofits impacted their surrounding communities. Institutions…
Author: David Potash
Learning from Southwest
The airline industry, in its many permutations, is fascinating. Not only is the very idea of flight amazing (How many tons of equipment get up in the air?), but equally so is crafting a business that can profitably move masses of people around the world safely, inexpensively, and in a timely manner. When one flies…
Latino Change Agents
In 2008, Leonard A. Valverde and Associates published Latino Change Agents in Higher Education: Shaping a System that Works for All. An emeritus professor at Arizona State University, with more than 45 years of education under his belt – at all levels in a host of different kinds of institutions – Valverde is one of…
A Closer Look at Grit
Some ideas seem so accessible and “right” that we accept them without much question. They resonate with our assumptions and align with common sense, or at least our common thinking. I don’t know if higher education is more susceptible than other sectors to these kinds of group-think trends, but we know that it happens. Certain…
Democracy and Higher Education
Colleges and universities are products of and contributors to our broader civic culture. Higher education reflects the world and often can point to where things are headed. Occasionally it may even influence direction. Untangling what our collective responsibilities are, within academe, to the development of a healthy civic culture, particularly an engaged democracy, is a…
Whitehead’s Long Shadow
Alfred North Whitehead (1862-1947) was an influential philosopher who worked across disciplines. One of his more famous and influential arguments is that reality was best understood as a process. More than a few thinkers agreed with him, leading to schools of process theology and process philosophy. In the US, perhaps the most influential process thinker,…
Wise Pivots
Accenture, a global professional services company, is one of my college’s most active and generous business partners. We have learned so much from them through meetings, projects, collaboration, and day-to-day interaction. Consistently collegial and extraordinarily professional, the team at Accenture have helped to strengthen us and our students – and we’re not even their clients.…