The Best Leadership is Useful Leadership

Ever talk with someone joining the community college world as an employee who doesn’t know all that much about community colleges? If I could only recommend one book – and that person was going to take some sort of leadership role – I would definitely recommend  Practical Leadership in Community Colleges: Navigating Today’s Challenges. It is…

A Recipe for Leadership Training

Looking for best and better practice in the community college world? Check out the programs and institutions that are Bellwether Award finalists. The Bellwether College Consortium, through the Community College Futures Assembly, evaluates innovative and successful programs across the nation. In 2005, the Community College of Philadelphia‘s Leadership Institute was a finalist for the Bellwether…

Gen X Community College Leadership: A Sign of the Times?

The United States is home to more than 1,100 community colleges. Since 2012, there have been more than 900 community college presidential transitions. The average tenure of community college presidents is dropping, too, to 6.5 years (a few years back it was 8.5 years). This is a ton of change in a vital part of…

Leadership = Change = Innovation

Way back in 2008, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) published an interesting book called The Creative Community College: Leading Change Through Innovation. Edited by John E. Roueche, M. Melissa Richardson, Phillip W. Neal and Suanne D. Roueche, the book contains profiles of fourteen community colleges that had grown, changed and made significant improvements.…

Learning Leadership – Going Primal?

Leadership – who is a leader, how one becomes a leader, how one learns to be a better leader – is an ongoing topic of discussion at my college, with colleagues, and across higher education. Institutions of higher education only improve through effective leadership. There simply aren’t enough generalized organizing factors that can promote institutional…

Does Reading a Good Book Make You Better? Learning From Librarians

James LaRue, librarian and head of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, gave a short talk at Dominican University recently (the 22nd Annual McCcusker Memorial Lecture). I attended – and as a non-librarian, I was informed and encouraged by the important work that public libraries are doing to secure and strengthen public space…

College and After

Jeffrey Seligno is one of the most well-read and influential journalists of higher education. His first two books, College (Un) bound and MOOC U, were popular and well-reviewed. An editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education for several years, Seligno’s work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and on television. He is an extremely effective when it…