Way back in days of yore, people who worked in higher education communicated with each other without using email or PowerPoint. Students and younger colleagues find this difficult to imagine. Hard copy typed memoranda and reports were the medium of choice. When making presentations, words were key. Sometimes we talked to each other on telephone. A chalkboard or overhead…
Category: Deanspeak
Posts about the wide realm of higher education from a deanly perspective
Spurs to Rethink Race
The recent race-hatred murders in Charleston, South Carolina and the heightened debates about reforms to mass incarceration and criminal justice, highlight the urgency of examining race as a critical factor shaping contemporary American life. It is inescapable – whether we think we are beyond it, whether we focus our attention on it, or wish that we have…
Case Studies and Higher Education Leadership
Bill Rezak, former president of Alfred University, offers a different kind of case study in The Best Dang Job in the World. The book tracks the imagined career of Rick Nedic, a made up ambitious dean with a facility with numbers and blessed with a supportive wife. Nedic’s professional life is played out in the broad middle…
Lower-Income Working Families in the Post-Welfare World – Lessons for Higher Ed
Caring for students will not guarantee success. Ongoing critical attention to students’ histories, experiences and values is essential for institutional effectiveness in higher education. For those of us who work at open access institutions, this means special awareness and sensitivity to issues of money, poverty, and agency. According to the federal government, a working family of…
Higher Education Career & Credentials – An Introductory Map
A senior head hunter once said to me “free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it” just before suggesting how to improve my c.v. The warning of that recruiter often comes to mind when I am asked for professional development help. I think of my unfortunate decisions and remember my awkward mistakes. Nonetheless, the obligation to…
Building a Better Teacher: Many Ways, Many Challenges
A mix of history, journalism, education policy, and social critique, Elizabeth Green’s Building a Better Teacher, How Teaching Works (and How To Teach It To Everyone) is a fascinating hodgepodge of a book. It is about the world of teaching, from kindergarten through high school – and it has lessons for higher education. Green, a talented journalist and…
Engagement and Student Success: No Shortcuts
The Center for Community College Student Engagement recently published Engagement Rising, an optimistic report on eleven years of results of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). The CCSSE is a survey that asks students about their involvement with their college, classes, faculty and peers. Many institutions have used the CCSSE, providing a sample size large…