The ability of colleges and universities to implement strategic academic decisions is constantly challenged by a variable external environment, mounting public expectations, and evolving academic priorities. Although academic decision making is often dismissed by critics both inside and outside higher education as slow, parochial, and ineffective, institutions can and have developed processes to effectively address today's complex challenges. With the proper attention by administrative, faculty, and trustee leaders, academic decision making can comprise a robust set of processes essential to defining the mission, priorities, and activities of colleges and universities. This book explores the intersection of academic decision making with contemporary, cutting-edge challenges for which no simple solution exists. It moves the issue of decision making outside the contested arena of stakeholder responsibilities, and presents a series of distinct and unique chapters that illustrate how colleges and universities are creating and sustaining dynamic and effective decision-making processes. Issues such as entrepreneurial and commercial strategies, changing research infrastructure, inter-institutional cooperation, evolving expectations for student involvement and campus community, and technology and its required investments create ongoing challenges that colleges and universities must address. To respond to these challenges, campus leaders often cannot draw upon their wealth of experience or time-tested processes. Instead, they must find new ways to create and use decision-making structures and processes. Furthermore, as the issues change, the people, their roles, and their interactions will be different. In some cases, new people will enter the decision-making arena: For instance, students may play stronger roles, as may trustees or outside stakeholders including faculty from other institutions involved in joint academic degree programs. Faculty roles may also change as institutions become more entrepreneurial, wi

The Shifting Frontiers of Academic Decision Making: Responding to New Priorities, Following New Pathways (American Council on Education: Ace/Praeger Series on Higher Education)

Eckel, Peter D.

Reference

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Most American colleges and universities face difficult choices about how they will meet new demands in an environment of fiscal constraints. For many, growth and expansion are no longer feasible. To make necessary changes, institutions facing these challenges may have to close select academic programs. This book explores the process of program termination. It discusses the context leading institutions to consider program reduction and provides in-depth examination of the discontinuance process at four universities through rich case studies by focusing on the roles of leadership, shared governance, and external factors. Academic program terminations are not well documented in the literature, nor are they well understood by those charged with making and carrying out decisions.
Much of what we know about how colleges and universities function as organizations and how they change is based upon assumptions of growth and not the opposite. This book explores the process of program termination. It discusses the context leading institutions to consider program reduction. It provides in-depth examination of the discontinuance process at four universities through rich case studies by focusing on the roles of leadership, shared governance, and external factors. It discusses the use (and non-use) of criteria to identify programs for closure and offers advice for institutional leaders seeking to close programs, as well as for faculty leaders seeking to keep their program from termination. Its findings also suggest that program closure may be more important to the future direction and livelihood of the institution than saving money.

Changing Course: Making the Hard Decisions to Eliminate Academic Programs (Greenwood Studies in Higher Education)

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Praeger Pub Text

Peter Eckel and Adrianna Kezar have written this book to offer insight to campus leaders who face transformational change—to help them mount a proactive, rather than a reactive, process to effect transformation. They believe that most institutional leaders have little to no experience with implementing large-scale change and lack a solid literature base upon which to rely. Although some scholarship exists on the content of change or change outcomes and conditions, very little information is available concerning the process through which leaders must go to bring about change—and particularly transformational change. Based upon empirical data, this book offers practical, specific advice for leaders faced with attempting to implement deep and pervasive change. Taking the Reins is based on the ACE Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation, a five-year effort funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation involving 23 diverse institutions working on transformational change. This book focuses on a sub-set of six institutions that had made the most significant change at the end of five years. The key findings of the study include an identified set of core change strategies, the interrelationship among these strategies, the importance of helping people think differently, and the need for sensitivity to institutional culture. The authors formulate a coherent model, which they call the Mobile Model of Change. The mobile is used as a metaphor for the process of transformational change because it illustrates how the identified change strategies work together. The audience for this book includes presidents and provosts, deans, and department chairs and faculty committee chairs, as well as other campus administrators. Other potential readers include higher education scholars and leadership development programs that incorporate modules on change management.

Taking the Reins: Institutional Transformation in Higher Education (American Council on Education/Praeger Series on Higher Education)

Kezar University of Southern California, Adrianna J.

Peter Eckel and Adrianna Kezar have written this book to offer insight to campus leaders who face transformational change--to help them mount a proactive, rather than a reactive, process to effect transformation. They believe that most institutional leaders have little to no experience with implementing large-scale change and lack a solid literature base upon which to rely. Although some scholarship exists on the content of change or change outcomes and conditions, very little information is available concerning the process through which leaders must go to bring about change--and particularly transformational change. Based upon empirical data, this book offers practical, specific advice for leaders faced with attempting to implement deep and ervasive change. Taking the Reins is based on the ACE Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation, a five-year effort funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation involving 23 diverse institutions working on transformational change. This book focuses on a sub-set of six institutions that had made the most significant change at the end of five years. The key findings of the study include an identified set of core change strategies, the interrelationship among these strategies, the importance of helping people think differently, and the need for sensitivity to institutional culture. The authors formulate a coherent model, which they call the Mobile Model of Change. The mobile is used as a metaphor for the process of transformational change because it illustrates how the identified change strategies work together. The audience for this book includes presidents and provosts, deans, and department chairs and faculty committee chairs, as well as other campus administrators. Other potential readers include higher education scholars and leadership development programs that incorporate modules on change management.

Taking the Reins: Institutional Transformation in Higher Education (Ace/Praeger Series on Higher Education)

Kezar, Adrianna

Higher & Continuing Education

Rowman & Littlefield Education

Discontinuing academic programs is a disruptive decision, but potentially one of the most important a campus can make. Leaders struggle to make priorities among departments and programs that are not easily or frequently compared, and because program elimination is rare, most leaders have little experience. Resistance emerges from expected as well as unexpected places. Changing Course focuses on the process of eliminating academic programs and provides advice for leaders seeking to close programs and those seeking to prevent closures. The book gives an in-depth look at the decisions and leadership associated with program closures. It illustrates the processes of closing academic programs at four universities and draws insights across those cases. It highlights the role of shared governance in program closure and examines the criteria campuses use to identify programs. It also highlights points of effective and ineffective resistance. The insights can help leaders examine the need to close academic programs, craft sound processes, and ensure a lasting positive impact on the institution.

Changing Course: Making the Hard Decisions to Eliminate Academic Programs (Studies on Higher Educationi)

Practical Wisdom

Practical Wisdom: Thinking Differently About College and University Governance

Co-published with Inside Higher Ed.This series of essays written for trustees and administrative leaders of universities and colleges draws on the authors’ extensive consulting experience, research into the dynamics of boards, and service as trustees, to focus on practical insights that will help readers improve governance. The authors have contributed a series of essays on governing well to Inside Higher Education, which formed the inspiration for this volume.The primary aim of the book is to provide insight that boards can use to enhance their governing practices. The author’s take is not a “how to do” book but rather one on “how to think.” Their basic premise is that too many boards are underperforming because they adopt or continue ineffective practices. However, thinking in more intentional if not new ways about not only what they do as boards, but how they go about their efforts, will help boards add value to the institutions and state systems they govern. The authors use thought provoking-titles and a conversational tone to engage the readers, get them to reflect on their work, and broaden their horizons.

Trower, Cathy A.

Routledge

Co-published with This series of essays written for trustees and administrative leaders of universities and colleges draws on the authors’ extensive consulting experience, research into the dynamics of boards, and service as trustees, to focus on practical insights that will help readers improve governance. The authors have contributed a series of essays on governing well to Inside Higher Education, which formed the inspiration for this volume.The primary aim of the book is to provide insight that boards can use to enhance their governing practices. The author’s take is not a “how to do” book but rather one on “how to think.” Their basic premise is that too many boards are underperforming because they adopt or continue ineffective practices. However, thinking in more intentional if not new ways about not only what they do as boards, but how they go about their efforts, will help boards add value to the institutions and state systems they govern. The authors use thought provoking-titles and a conversational tone to engage the readers, get them to reflect on their work, and broaden their horizons.

Stylus Pub Llc

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eckel, Peter D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Eckel, Peter D.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eckel, Peter D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Shifting Frontiers of Academic Decision Making: Responding to New Priorities, Following New Pathways (American Council on Education: Ace/Praeger Series on Higher Education)

Changing Course: Making the Hard Decisions to Eliminate Academic Programs (Greenwood Studies in Higher Education)

Taking the Reins: Institutional Transformation in Higher Education (American Council on Education/Praeger Series on Higher Education)

Taking the Reins: Institutional Transformation in Higher Education (Ace/Praeger Series on Higher Education)

Changing Course: Making the Hard Decisions to Eliminate Academic Programs (Studies on Higher Educationi)

Practical Wisdom

Practical Wisdom

Practical Wisdom: Thinking Differently About College and University Governance

Practical Wisdom: Thinking Differently About College and University Governance