I spent a decade of my time as a faculty member and academic leader in a very small art college with an enrollment of less than 150. The enrollment was so small and the community so close that I used to joke that one didn’t take attendance in class; rather, you just looked around the room and let people know who had left their lights on in the parking lot and who needed to air up their tires a bit before the drive home.
Connections Are Everything: Putting Relationships at the Heart of Higher Ed
As academic leaders, we are under so much pressure to deliver—enrollment targets, strategic plans, graduation rates, AI policies, and on and on—that we can lose sight of what our students