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The Academic Workplace
SPRING/SUMMER 1996 VOLUME 7, NUMBER 2
In This Issue
The New England Resource Center for Higher Education is devoted to strengthening higher education's contributions to society through collaboration. It does this by working on a continuing basis with colleges and universities in New England through think tanks, consultation, workshops, conferences, research, and action projects.
Letter from the Director
Why not run a university like a good business? This seems to be the implicit -- and sometimes not so implicit -- question in many of the calls for change in higher education today. What if we were to turn the question around, while still using the language and criteria of the corporate world? What if we asked "Why not run a business like a good university?" This was the title of a short essay in The Christian Science Monitor a few years ago by Robert Woodbury, former Chancellor of the University of Maine system and now Director of the McCormack Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Woodbury argues that higher education is one of the few industries left in the U.S. that is widely seen as a world leader. We could hardly make such a claim for the auto industry or even electronics. Higher education's balance of payments is healthy and expanding, as many of the best international students come here to study. Our industry has been growing for almost fifty years, in spite of a decline in the college-going population in the last twenty years. Criticisms about costs aside, Woodbury observes that "no industry that I know has assembled, retained and energized so much educated talent at such a low cost... A college supplies housing, food, association with the best minds in many fields, art centers, athletic events, entertainment, libraries, and all the amenities and intellectual resources of a small city." And return on investment is very high: Graduates of a four-year college or university earn on the average approximately 50% more than a high-school graduate over a lifetime.
And finally, in the unkindest cut to business, Woodbury points out that "cases of college bankruptcy, defaults on loans, or high-level malfeasance are all but unknown. Certainly many colleges are run better than others, but the overall record of fiscal stewardship would be the envy of many boards of directors."
What accounts for these successes? Quite simply: decentralization. First of all, this means that control of the fundamental work of colleges and universities teaching and research is in the hands of the main workers the faculty with minimal central control by management. Furthermore, the workers are in daily touch with the customers. With its flat hierarchy and shared governance, work controlled by the faculty, close touch with customers, and focus on long-term results, the university is a model for business, not the other way around. It is the first and most prominent enterprise to be engaged in total quality management.
There is plenty of research about efforts to decentralize production and decision-making in other industries that demonstrates why universities are successful according to business measures such as growth, productivity, return on investment, costs, balance of payments, and fiscal responsibility. For high productivity and high quality, workers must be involved in the production process and decision-making in their workplaces. They need to feel that they are working in a place that takes them into account.
Few companies take these ideas seriously, despite the strong research evidence supporting them. It would be a pity if higher education should follow suit. It will pay a high price for doing so, because it will destroy the very basis for its success.
This is not to say that higher education can rest on its laurels. With a rapidly changing resource picture and challenges to their market share, colleges and universities have to innovate, and fast. This issue of The Academic Workplace offers several examples. NERCHE's very existence is an innovation, an investment in the professional development and sophistication of college and university people throughout New England. The think tanks, the funded projects, the outreach -- all emphasizing the power of collaboration are directed to increasing the organizational effectiveness of higher education. The featured article by Cheryl and James Keen describing their collaboration as a couple sharing the job of Dean of the Faculty/Vice President at Antioch brings a fresh perspective to the academic workplace. Originally conceived as a way for two women with young children to share a full-time job, job-sharing is an idea whose permutations have yet to be fully explored. I have heard about academic couples in the same field who share a single line, but sharing an administrative job is not at all common. Yet what better way to insure continuity, longevity and sanity? Well-planned, job-sharing may be just what is needed for one of the killer jobs in academia.
Taking another tack, as Walter Eggers observes in his review of William Sullivan's Work and Integrity, professionalism, reconstructed and reconceived, offers an opportunity for universities to articulate their importance to society. Arguing that the university is a good business and open to innovation of all sorts is not enough in the current climate of cynicism. Showing how our colleges and universities can make a good society is much more compelling and more practical in the end. While we are making a good society, let's also have fun! I wish you a happy summer and look forward to hearing from you.
Zelda F. Gamson
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Events
SYMPOSIUM ANNOUNCEMENT
Members of NERCHE's five think tanks and their guests will gather on June 21st for a day-long symposium, "Rethinking Academic Community." Alan E. Guskin, Chancellor of Antioch University, will speak on "Facing the Future: The Change Process in Restructuring Universities." This topic is Part III of his series, Reducing Student Costs and Enhancing Student Learning The University Challenge of the 1990's. NERCHE Director Zelda Gamson will moderate a panel made up of think tank members who will respond to Dr. Guskin from their particular campus perspectives. In a series of breakout sessions, participants will discuss topics including: new roles for faculty, use of technology to support teaching and learning, new roles for students and moving from resources to results. The symposium will offer a unique opportunity for think tank members to interact across both institutional and functional areas. NERCHE will publish a white paper on the symposium next fall.
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Funded Projects
PROGRAM ON FACULTY PROFESSIONAL
SERVICE AND ACADEMIC OUTREACH
This Spring, NERCHE's Program on Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach sent research teams to visit Bentley College, Lesley College, Providence College, Salem State College, Trinity College, the University of Hartford, and the University of Massachusetts Boston to identify a range of faculty service activities, institutional support for service activities, barriers and problems, and the effect that faculty service has on teaching and research. We selected these sites on the basis of their responses to a 1995 mail survey and follow-up phone inteviews. Teams are meeting with CAO's, institute and center heads, directors of service learning projects and outreach, and faculty representing a range of academic departments and specialties. Initial results point to a rich array of activity in the New England area and a growing commitment to the links between institutions and their external communities.
This summer, we will compile our findings on internal organization, faculty roles and rewards, and student involvement in case studies that represent examples of good practice.
PROJECT COLLEAGUE
This spring NERCHE inaugurated Project Colleague under the umbrella of the Program on Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach. The project will help faculty members with different kinds of expertise work collaboratively in professional outreach and service activities.
We've been busy hiring staff, developing materials, fleshing out concepts, and building the project infrastructure. Project Colleague activities are scheduled to begin in Fall, 1996. Stay tuned for more information in the fall/winter issue of The Academic Workplace.
The Program on Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach offers workshops and technical assistance to campuses with faculty service and outreach issues. For more information, contact Cathy Burack, Director, (617) 287-7740.
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Sharing the Job of Academic Leadership
by Cheryl and James Keen, Deans of the Faculty/Vice President, Antioch College
Since September 1995 we have shared the job of Dean of the Faculty/Vice President at Antioch College. To our knowledge we are the first couple to share a chief academic officer position in higher education. We are pleased that The Academic Workplace has asked us to reflect on our experience (and key issues and implications of job sharing at this level of institutional leadership). We credit Antioch with having the courage to invite us to apply for this position. Antioch has a long history of innovation and we are delighted to be working at a college with Antioch's legacy.
In the best of times, chief academic officers and deans face profound challenges in their jobs. As institutions confront deficits, deans often get squeezed in the vortex of pressures from above and below. This job requires high levels of tolerance for ambiguity, frustration, complexity and diversity. Having a thick skin helps. It also helps to have a collaborative work style that conveys an interest in the views of faculty, students and administrators. Most importantly, you need to see your work as fulfilling an institution's highest values even though the actions available to you often fail to demonstrate that clearly. We have shared or worked in parallel in seven different job settings over 20 years as college faculty, researchers and administrators. Most recently we led New JerseyΤs Governor's Schools and shared the Millicent Fenwick Research Professorship at Monmouth University. We've developed a practice that allows each to know the other's responsibilities well enough to permit one to cover should the other need to attend to special projects, crises, business travel or be out sick. We believe that Antioch benefits from our collaboration by getting a wider array of intellectual interests and academic backgrounds as well as more energy and flexibility than would normally be available from one person. We offer the perspectives of two personalities and genders which, taken together, make us accessible to many different colleagues. In addition, because there are two of us, we are more available to meet faculty and student needs.
LOGISTICS
From the outset, it was necessary to be clear with ourselves and our new colleagues about our division of labor. We divided the tasks as evenly as possible with some attention both to our individual strengths and preferences as well the division of higher status responsibilities. Although we confer on important decisions in all areas, Cheryl handles the budgets; faculty reviews, development, and contracts; the registrar's office and the catalog. Jim works on academic policy, faculty governance, the Administrative Council, (the joint governing body of the college), and long range planning. Both of us report to the president and work with the associate dean. As much as possible, we try to divide up committee tasks, having learned that when we're in the same place at the same time, one of us is probably working overtime. On the whole, the faculty, administration and staff have adapted well to these arrangements and have been very supportive. That we've encountered fewer difficulties than we anticipated has been most remarkable. We sense that we get no more opposition than usually confronts deans, and when resistance comes, it is often directed at one or the other rather than both of us.
EVALUATION
Evaluation presents an interesting problem. Overall we work as a team and must be evaluated that way. But as with any team, each individual must also be evaluated, particularly with regard to the tasks and areas for which one of us has taken primary responsibility. The president conducts a formal assessment of our work annually. We also receive informal feedback on a regular basis from the president's senior staff.
TIME AND MONEY
A question we have often heard over the past 20 years is, with the two of you sharing a position, how do you each keep from working more than half time? We know of no chief academic officer who manages to limit work to 40 hours a week on a regular basis. In our situation, each of us carries additional responsibilities beyond the original definition of the chief academic officer's job in order to produce two full-time appointments. Each of us spends an additional quarter time on student retention issues and another quarter on a research grant. This arrangement has enabled us to keep the shared job under control. Other workable combi-nations include combining a dean's position with an associate dean's position, or having each partner carry a teaching and advising load that yields full-time work for each. In our view, the latter is the best option, because it clearly identifies the Dean as a member of the faculty. Unless an institution is willing to take seriously the need for a dual career couple to be fully employed even as they share a position, such arrangements will be limited to those who are prepared to get along on a single salary or wish to work part-time.
NAVIGATING THE SEARCH PROCESS
The second job is a crucial issue a partnership must negotiate in order to share a chief academic officer's job. When to raise the issue is the critical question. We believe that it must be addressed in the first round of conversation or correspondence, even though this may turn off a search committee at the outset. If the institution raises no objection at this point, the situation merits further investment of time. If you make the issue clear at the beginning of the search process, you place the responsibility on the institution to consider a partnership. If you don't, you invite problems later on. The institution can make note of this consideration and put it aside while it turns to the primary issue: candidates' qualifications for the job. Once the committee has decided to go with a partnership and offers the job, it may or may not include a proposal for a second job. If it does not, remind the committee that this was a condition from the start. An institution that really wants a partnership will try to work out an appropriate arrangement, as Antioch did for us. If it does not, and you accept the offer, each partner is likely to end up working full-time for half the salary.
In the case of a shared presidency, because this position is usually paid substantially more than chief academic officers and customarily includes housing and other prerequisites, the issue of a second full-time job declines in importance -- although it may not completely disappear.
BENEFITS
What are the benefits to us? Over the years of job sharing, we have come to value our steady collaboration. As a couple, we can debrief during off hours, which provides us additional opportunities for reflection. We don't have to spend a lot of time explaining our work life to our partner and can counsel and support each other about issues with which we are both familiar. Just this week, after intense 9 to 5 budget deliberations, we were able to debrief at night about the implications of several difficult decisions. The next day, one of us continued talks at the budget table while the other worked on refining implications of possible courses of action. We tend to be pulling in the same direction and have few conflicts when it comes to organizing our home life. For instance, we understand why the other might have to be out three evenings a week.
OBSTACLES
As for problems, they are few. During intense periods, however, the demands of the job weigh heavily on us both, and we may feel too absent from home. While this may have an impact on our child, we feel it is balanced by shared time for relaxation. Our son is quite familiar with our work -- and shares our belief in its importance. We believe that our parenting responsibilities are no different than they'd probably be if we weren't sharing our jobs. We anticipate that there may be moments in the future when we both will feel stretched beyond our limits and unable to support the other, but so far that hasn't happened. Instead we seem to take turns buoying the other up. When a blistery faculty member made a particularly acerbic comment in a faculty meeting, one of us had trouble not taking it personally, while the other maintained a healthy detachment.
ADVICE TO OTHERS
We are uncertain about how a shared dean's job would work for two people who aren't a couple. We credit our ability to collaborate at work with our ability to collaborate in other parts of our lives. There are, of course, powerful models of collaboration between two people in other spheres, such as business partners, co-authors, and co-pastors. The Chronicle of Higher Education sometimes describes people who are sharing faculty jobs. In a changing academic workplace with its increasingly complex demands, we advocate that institutions consider several models of job collaboration whether they involve couples or non-related partners.
Our advice to couples wishing to pursue our path is to begin with sharing teaching, research, or program or departmental administration, rather than a top level administrative position. It s very clear to us that we are drawing on the reservoir of our shared experience buttressed by collaborative patterns that have become second nature. This allows us to place the job in the foreground and let the question of job sharing become background. We're concerned that a couple or partnership collaborating for the first time in such a position might find themselves focusing too much time on developing collaborative patterns to the detriment of job performance. We would recommend five years of collaborative experience as a minimum amount of preparation for senior administrative positions.
FUTURE PLANS
In addition to our work as Dean of Faculty/Vice President at Antioch we will also continue on a partnership with another couple. Our research with Larry Parks Daloz and Sharon Daloz Parks on how people develop and sustain commitments to work on behalf of others is presented in a co-authored book, Common Fires: Lives of Commitment in a Complex World, published this spring by Beacon Press. Eventually we hope to do an in-depth study of collaborative couples in higher education. We are interested in talking with other couples who are working in parallel, or who are considering such arrangements. We hope this article will be helpful to them and to those interested in making workplace innovations succeed.
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Think Tanks
One of NERCHE's hallmarks is its Think Tanks for faculty and administrators from New England colleges and universities. Think tanks meet five times a year for intense discussions of the most serious issues facing higher education.
Academic Affairs Think Tank
The theme of the Academic Affairs Think Tank for 1995-96 is Inter-institutional Collaboration. At the first meeting, Walter Eggers, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of New Hampshire, helped the group map the territory of inter-institutional collaboration. This territory proved to be complex and variegated, covering student and faculty exchanges, study abroad programs, collaborative research arrangements, consortia of all kinds, and many others. In subsequent meetings, members turned to case studies of several different collaborations. Tamar March, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty, New England College, described a joint effort between her institution and a new college in Israel. A wide-ranging discussion identified both the benefits and the pitfalls involved in operating in other countries.
Following the advice in the best-selling book by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, World Class, that the most successful organizations operate locally as well as globally, think tank members moved from the international perspective to their own back yards. Under the leadership of Albert Hamilton, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Salem State College, and Ira Rubenzahl, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Greenfield Community College, the group examined several situations involving collaboration between academic institutions and non-academic organizations in the same locality. This session fleshed out some of the national discussions about professional service for faculty and the public mission of higher education, a subject close to NERCHE's Program on Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach.
Jack Schuster, on leave from Claremont Graduate School, will discuss findings from a national study of faculty at the final meeting of the Academic Affairs Think Tank. The theme of the think tank for 1996-97 will build on this year's discussions.
Associate Deans Think Tank
Supporting Teaching and Learning is this year's theme of the Associate Deans Think Tank co-led by Deborah Hirsch of NERCHE and Milton Kornfeld, Associate Dean at Brandeis University. The first meeting of the semester focused on the teaching side of the equation. James McCroskery, Associate Dean at Rhode Island College, used Ernest Boyer's notion of the scholarship of teaching to frame a discussion of campus practices that support faculty in their role as teachers. Milton Kornfeld reported on results of a survey of think tank members on formal and informal mechanisms for improving teaching. Some of the effective strategies included: regularly scheduled informal "chat" sessions to talk about teaching, collegial review and peer support for faculty, interdisciplinary faculty development programs, teaching seminars for new faculty, funds for course development and travel to conferences and, perhaps most important, a reward system which recognizes teaching.
In the spring, the group addressed supporting students' learning. Myra Lerman, Associate Dean at Suffolk University, surveyed the group on the screening instruments most often used to place students in courses. This stimulated a comprehensive discussion of issues involved in accommodating students' needs for remediation while fulfilling requirements and maintaining academic standards. Susan Lane, Associate Dean at Massachusetts College of Art, and Sarah Rockett, Associate Dean, University of Rhode Island, will lead this year's final discussion on how colleges and universities can accommodate students' learning styles and differences in an environment of accountability for diverse academic and social considerations.
Think tank members Jean Woodbury and Victoria McGillin join Student Affairs Think Tank member Lynn Willett in offering a workshop on how faculty and administrators can collaborate to meet the needs of disabled students. Please contact NERCHE for more information.
If you would like more information about the Associates Deans Think Tank or are interested in joining the group, please contact Deborah Hirsch, Associate Director of NERCHE, at (617) 287-7740.
Liberal Learning Think Tank
The Liberal Learning Think Tank, under the leadership of NERCHE Senior Associate Jan Civian and Charles Combs, Chair of the General Education Department at the Berklee College of Music, focused this year on envisioning our institutions in the year 2015. Of primary concern was the influence of technology on curriculum, learning processes, institutional structures, and faculty and student interaction. Think tank members discussed innovative ways to provide students with the technological background they need, natural connections between technology and pedagogy, the investment on the part of faculty and staff that technology requires, and the effects of technology of student culture.
The group considered other factors that affect both the nature of the campus community and the coherence of the general education program. Among them were increased use of part-time faculty and graduate programs that narrowly educate the professoriate they produce -- a situation reinforced by campuses that hire such specialists and reward them over generalists.
Turning to the relationship between the campus community and the development of students, members grappled with the questions: Who are the best "faculty citizens" and is this a dying breed? How do we develop the citizenship values of students on our fragmented campuses? They emphasized the importance of faculty and student affairs personnel working together to meet the developmental needs of students' intellect and character.
To learn more about the Liberal Learning Think Tank, contactJan Civian at (617) 283-2557.
Department Chairs Think Tank
At its winter meeting the Department Chairs Think Tank, co-led by NERCHE Senior Associate Janice Green and Judith Miller, Chair of Communica-tion Studies at Sacred Heart University, weighed the pros and cons of the rotating chairpersonship vs. a career track position.
This topic is central to the current debate over increasingly complex and demanding departmental roles and responsibilities. Think tank members underscored the benefits to shifting the chair to a professional position. A longer tenure as chair would facilitate long-range planning and implementation and evaluation of initiatives. Efforts to build departmental community and mutual responsibility would not be interrupted by change of leadership and the attendant changes in procedures and priorities. The chair would have more time to learn about the job and would be able to see his or her work come to fruition.
Professionalization of this position would require a change in campus policies for evaluation and reward of department chairs. Among the recommendations were: the development of performance and achievement criteria and recognition of departmental leadership in tenure, promotion and merit pay decisions; sabbaticals to permit scholarly renewal and, upon return, a reduction in institutional commitments for one year.
At the final meeting, members will discuss the relationship between department chairs and the administration. We invite interested chairs of humanities and social and natural sciences departments to contact Janice Green at (508) 689-8494 for information about membership in the Department Chairs Think Tank.
Student Affairs Think Tank
In February, the Student Affairs Think Tank, co-led by Cathy Burack of NERCHE and Lynn Willett, Vice President for Student Affairs at Bridgewater State College, explored issues of student affairs' relationship to the academic mission with special guest, Arthur Chickering of George Mason University. Chickering highlighted recent changes that influence student affairs work, such as privatization of counseling, health and wellness centers, and other services that have traditionally been the purview of student affairs, and the increased use of technology as a bridge between diverse and distant groups. Members discussed the significance of identifying and evaluating the impact of the co-curriculum on educational outcomes and defining the role of student affairs in students' intellectual development. Chickering offered George Mason's new University Learning Center as an example of how student affairs and academic affairs can collaborate to achieve educational goals.
At the subsequent meeting, the discussion turned to the values student affairs professionals hold about learning. Three questions raised in the new NASPA Monograph Preview, Redefining the Landscape: Student Affairs Work and Student Learning formed the basis for a lively discussion:
"How must student affairs professionals spend their time if the quality of their work is to be judged by the criteria of how much students learn?"
"How can we demonstrate that what we do fosters learning?"
"How might most student affairs staff respond if asked to complete this sentence: "`I contribute to student learning by...?'"
At this year's final meeting, members will identify major themes from this year's topic, Values About Learning from the perspectives of student affairs, students, and academic affairs, and will apply these themes to practice.
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NERCHE Consultation & Outreach
Consultants affiliated with NERCHE provide workshop and evaluation services to a number of New England colleges and universities, as well as institutions in other parts of the country. NERCHE prides itself on working closely with campus contacts to determine the institution's needs and design a forum or process to meet them.
Beginning this spring, NERCHE is offering The Challenge of ADA -- What faculty and Administrators Can Do To Support Disabled Students, a workshop presenting models of collaboration between administrators and faculty. Workshop presenters are Jean Woodbury, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Framingham State College, Vicki McGillin, Dean for Advising and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College, and Lynn Willett, Vice President for Student Affairs at Bridgewater State College.
While NERCHE continues to offer assistance on a variety of issues affecting campuses, we focus on two areas: faculty professional service and general education. We offer consultations and specially designed workshops to campuses at all stages of thinking about or implementing policies and structures that support faculty professional service. Our consultation services in general education grow out of NERCHE's work in this area and coincide with the publication of Revitalizing General Education in a Time of Scarcity, by Sandra Kanter, Zelda Gamson, and Howard London.
If you are interested in learning more about NERCHE's consultation services please call (617) 287-7740 or return the form on NERCHE's Back Page.
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Book Review
Work and Integrity: The Crisis and Promise of Professionalism in America
Sullivan, William M., NewYork: Harper Business, 1995, 268 pages. Reviewed by Walter Eggers, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of New Hampshire
Professors who justify their scholarship by its independence fail their profession; higher education will recover its value only as it affirms its interdependent, social purpose.
William Sullivan offers an important argument in Work and Integrity. It will take a revived spirit of "civic professionalism" to restore faith in American social institutions and avert a deepening social crisis. Those whom we call "professionals" and esteem as independent in their judgments and actions have seceded from social responsibility; for the sake of the nation, they must recover a sense of "calling." Sullivan was a collaborator in Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, and continues to meet with his colleagues to reflect and revise together. His book is a credit to that continuing project.
The first half of the book traces the history of the idea of professionalism from the founding of the nation to the new global order, centering on the Progressive movement and figures like John Dewey, Louis Brandeis, and Jane Addams. Sullivan explains that social philosophy is embodied in the drama of culture change as the forces of individualism and specialization threaten the ethical basis of professions, the "social compact which links professions to the larger society" (p. 28). He applies this argument to the present moment of "historical discontinuity" and builds the future on an image of interdependence: "professional freedom of opportunity is only realized through the individual's acceptance of responsibility for the purposes and standards which define the profession" (p.146). He "reinvents" professionalism as an ethic which extends the promise of happy life in a good society: "what makes one free and renders life worth living is finally neither satisfying one's desires nor accomplishing one's purposes, valuable as these are, but learning to act with the good of the whole in view, building life act by act, happy if each deed, as far as circumstances allow, fulfills its proper end" (p.237).
I quote at length to convey something of Sullivan's tone, which may have special value as an antidote to despair in the profession of higher education. He pays direct attention to the institution of the contemporary American university at several points in his argument to the "research" university in particular not only because it provides professional credentials but because the characteristic tension between "research" and "teaching" is an instance of his subject. Professors who justify their scholarship by its independence fail their profession; higher education will recover its value only as it affirms its interdependent, social purpose. To establish the third traditional mission of "public service" as a way of resolving the other two, Sullivan subscribes to Donald Schφn's concept of "reflective practice."
In a talk at this year's AAHE Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards, Sullivan recognized that he faced a profession on the defensive, preoccupied with measures of productivity and market share, and therefore less inclined than in the past to assert its intrinsic value. That, he said, is just our problem.
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News
NERCHE Hosts Arthur Chickering
Distinguished University Professor Arthur Chickering from George Mason University visited UMass Boston on February 1st and 2nd. Chickering is internationally renowned for his writing on higher education. A guest of NERCHE, Chickering met with students and faculty in the Graduate College of Education's doctoral program in higher education, with NERCHE's Student Affairs Think Tank, and with planners of a UMass Boston campus center. In partnership with the Center for the Improvement of Teaching, NERCHE also organized a session on teaching, technology and students with faculty from across the university.
News from the Doctoral Program
The Doctoral Program in Higher Education Administration at the Graduate College of Education, UMass/Boston, offers a four-year sequence of courses, field-based research and dissertation work focused on urban higher education, designed for working professionals and leading to the Ed.D.
To receive a brochure or other information about the program, please call Virigina MacKay at (617) 287-7601; (617) 287-7664 (fax).
Program faculty include:
Robert A. Dentler, Linda Eisenmann, Zelda F. Gamson, Bernard W. Harleston, Harold Horton, Sandra Kanter, Joyce A. Kirby, Jean F. MacCormack, David E. Matz, Michael A. Novak, Joan A. Tonn
NERCHE News
NERCHE is pleased to welcome four new Research Associates to the Project on Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach.
Jane Dixon has done research on low-income and minority students' access to higher education and has been a project manager for The Education Resources Institute (TERI). Glenn Gabbard has held a number of administrative and faculty positions and focuses on developmental education, writing, and intercultural education. Kate Harrington has an extensive background in student affairs both as an administrator and a faculty member in a student affairs degree program. Nancy Thomas has many years of experience as legal counsel to universities, independent schools, and non-profit organizations.
New Associate
Arthur Chickering, University Professor at George Mason University, has been named a NERCHE Senior Associate. He is best known for his book, Education and Identity, which laid out a conceptual framework for understanding student development during the college years. His edited volume, The Modern American College, brought together the leading writers on disciplinary approaches to knowledge, on student life, and on adult learning. With Zelda Gamson, he developed "The Seven Principles for Undergraduate Education." His most recent book, Improving Higher Education Environments for Adults, is co-authored with Nancy Schlossberg and Ann Lynch. He is also well-known for his work on adult learners and the assessment of prior learning, innovative use of time in courses, professional education, and the use of campus architecture to support student learning.
Visiting Fellows
Susan M. Brady joins NERCHE while on leave from her position as Vice President for Student Affairs/ Dean of Students at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire and Arundel, England. She has been a member of the Student Affairs Think Tank for four years and is currently working on an article reflective of last year's think tank topic: "Change and Reorganization in Student Develop-ment." She earned her doctorate in Higher Education and Evaluation Research from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and began working at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. After being selected as an educational policy fellow, she served in the Chancellor's Office for the Minnesota State University System and then became Dean of Students at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. As a Sloan Fellow at MIT, she earned a Master's Degree in Business Administration with a special emphasis on international issues. She has been an active member of National Association of Women in Education (NAWE), National Assoc-iation of Student Personnel Adminis-trators (NASPA) and the American Council on Education/National Identification Program (ACE/NIP) network. She served as Chair of the Pennsylvania ACE/NIP network and has a strong interest in mentoring women who seek leadership positions in higher education.
Paula Gagnon is the Dean of Student Affairs at Lyndon State College in Vermont and a member of the Student Affairs Think Tank. During her tenure at Lyndon, she founded the Community Service Learning Program, the Leadership Institute, and the Northeast Kingdom Initiative, a collaborative program dealing with social issues and funded by an Ameri-corps grant. Prior to coming to Lyndon, she was the Dean of Students at Norwich University. In 1994, Vermont Women in Higher Education received an award for the outstanding women student leadership conference, which she co-chaired with Susan Brady of New England College. Among her current positions are State Co-coordinator for Vermont to National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) Regional, member of the Caledonia County Diversion Board and member of the Board of Directors for the Orleans County Prevention Partnership.
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Congratulations To
Academic Affairs Think Tank member, Barbara Murphy, formerly Academic Dean and now President of the Community College of Vermont.
Jack Warner, former Student Affairs Think Tank member and President-Elect of National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), is on leave from position as Dean of Students at Bristol Community College to become Vice Chancellor at Massachusett's Higher Education Coordinating Council.
John Weston, Academic Affairs Think Tank member, has moved from Endicott College where he served as Vice President for Academic Affairs to become Vice President for Academic Affairs at Newbury College.
Student Affairs Think Tank member and Vice President for Student Affairs at Bridgewater State College, Lynn Willett is President-Elect of the American College Personnel Association.
Sponsors
The New England Resource Center for Higher Education has received support from the Graduate College of Education, the Office of Graduate Studies and the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston; Pew Charitable Trusts, the Exxon Education Foundation, Mellon Foundation, The Education Resources Institute; and an anonymous gift.
Web Sites
Over the last few months, we've been keeping track of interesting sites on the World Wide Web (www).
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NERCHE's Back Page
New Publications:
Does Service-Learning Have a Future?
A New Working Paper by Edward Zlotkowski
Until very recently the service-learning movement has had an "ideological" bias; i.e., it has tended to prioritize moral and/or civic questions related to the service experience. Such a focus reflects well the movement's past but will not guarantee its future. What is needed now is a broad-based adjustment that invests far more intellectual energy in specifically academic concerns. Only by paying careful attention to the needs of individual disciplines and by allying itself with other academic interest groups, will the service-learning movement succeed in becoming an established feature of American higher education.
The NERCHE Working Papers Series covers a range of educational and workplace concerns in the following areas: General Education, Faculty Labor Market, Professional Service, and Organizational Change. See below for ordering information.
A New Book by NERCHE Staff and Associates
Revitalizing General Education in a Time of Scarcity: A Navigational Chart for Administrators and Faculty edited by Sandra Kanter, Zelda F. Gamson, and Howard B. London, with contributions by Gordon Arnold and Janet Trabucco Civian. To be published by Allyn and Bacon, this book draws on visits to fifteen campuses making changes in their general education programs. Revitalizing General Education focuses on the general education change process and analyzes how campuses deal with change. It offers useful suggestions about how to make general education reform more effective, less costly -- and even fun!
Please Send Me More Information
If you would like more information on NERCHE Working Papers or other NERCHE offerings, or would like to order Revitalizing General Education when it is available, please fill out and submit the form below.
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