Eight years ago, our oldest son was deciding which of the two main high schools in our town to attend. Both schools were highly rated, but in reviewing their pros and cons, what emerged as a key difference could be summed up in their mottos. One was “Education for Excellence,”
University administrators and registrars often rely on deans and department chairs to promote departmental compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Likewise, such individuals are frequently the first people in the reporting chain when a student believes that a professor has violated their privacy rights. But without
Now that I am a rank-and-file full professor and not an administrator, academic leadership is starting to look a bit different. I no longer am invited to the meetings at which deans and central administrators discuss policy possibilities or campus responses to external events. (And I seem to be smiling
Since starting my role as director of the Office of Faculty Professional Development at my institution three years ago, I’ve had the pleasure of attending the opening session for our faculty Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) each year. Led by a former campus dean, ELP is designed as a collaboration between
Albert Einstein is credited with the observation that “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Perhaps nowhere is this principle truer than when trying to evaluate the work of faculty members and administrators in higher education. Yet the difficulty of the task
If you are reading this, you believe in higher education and are committed to making your program and unit as dynamic as possible. This requires hard work every day:
Today’s environment for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) looks dramatically different than just a year ago. Several state legislatures are now asking colleges and universities to report on their
Students, parents, and the public need to understand the value of higher education if colleges and universities are going to rebut the omnipresent hostility to the enterprise that we see
