IN THIS ISSUE:
• Rethinking Higher Education’s Leadership Crisis: page 7
• Meeting Adaptive Challenges: The New Leadership Skill Set: page 9
• Identifying Leadership Potential in Your Staff: page 12
• Building an In-House Leadership Development Program: page 14
• Deepening Your Talent Bench: Horizontal Career Ladders: page 16
Abstract: Research on personal space has found that individual cultures and ethnic groups have a similar preference for the use of personal space within each respective group. Differences in the use of personal space exist across gender, as women tend to share a closer proximity than men. The purpose of this study was to measure the use of personal space among college students. Use of personal space was defined in this study as the preference or need for a specific amount of personal space. Specifically, the researcher hypothesized differences across gender and ethnicity would be found. Survey methodology was used to measure different variables of personal space among private university students (N=102). The results indicated that male students feel more comfortable than female students in greeting an acquaintance of the opposite gender with a hug or a kiss. Female students reported being more comfortable than male students in greeting an acquaintance of the same gender. An agenda for future research that includes cultural differences among college students was described.
Suzanne Fortier is principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University, and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global University Leaders Forum and Canada's Advisory Council on Economic Growth.
The change in the workplace is of such magnitude that many have likened it to a tsunami. At Davos this year, participants will be discussing technology-driven disruptions that are upending the marketplace: Uberization and the sharing economy, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, fintech and artificial intelligence. Equally important, we will also focus, under the theme of "Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World", on the social disruptions that are creating an uncertain future for many people across the world.
A couple of weeks after the end of my first semester of teaching as the instructor of record, I received "the packet" in my campus mailbox — an interoffice envelope stuffed with course evaluations from my students. Those evaluations mattered a lot to me at the time, as I was still figuring out this whole teaching thing. Was I doing a good job? Did my students like the class?
And, more selfishly, did they like me?
Well, in this particular batch, one student certainly did not like either the course or me. In the comments section, the student flatly declared: "He was a real ashole."
The spelling in that quote is sic. In that moment — as I wrestled with both the shame of being
deemed an "ashole" and the urge to laugh at the absurdity of that being the sum total of this
student’s assessment — I had my first experience with a question that faculty members
regularly confront:
In his classic 1963 study Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter convincingly argues that Americans’ suspicion of purely intellectual pursuits extends even to our thinking about how to structure and value higher education. He might not have been surprised at the currently popular movement on college campuses that goes under the banners of “experiential learning,” “service learning” and “engaged learning.”
Paid Parental Leave LESSONS FROM OECD COUNTRIES AND SELECTED U.S. STATES
The United States is at a crossroads in its policies towards the family and gender equality. Currently America provides basic support for children, fathers, and mothers in the form of unpaid parental leave, child-related tax breaks, and limited public childcare. Alternatively, the United States’ OECD peers empower families through paid parental leave and comprehensive investments in infants and children.
Ontario’s professors and academic librarians are on the front lines of Ontario’s universities. They are uniquely positioned to assess the performance of the sector, and to identify trends that affect the quality of university education.
To take advantage of this insight, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) surveyed Ontario faculty to gauge their opinions on the quality of university education in our province. The survey was also designed to assess the priorities of university faculty, particularly in regards to the balance of teaching and research in their work.
The survey was conducted online between March 21, 2012 and April 16, 2012. Responses to the questionnaire were received from over 2,300 faculty members, with a total of 2,015 complete responses from professors and academic librarians from all Ontario universities and a full range of disciplines. The following report presents the survey findings and provides additional commentary about key results.
Students' understanding and participation in "work" affects their university in many ways. Employment can serve as both a motivator and hindrance to academic success. It can teach valuable lessons while also detracting from academic work. It is the number one reason why students attend post-secondary school. Unfortunately, numerous barriers stand in the way of increasing the employment rates of highly educated youth. These barriers must be treated as distinct yet interconnected, and necessitate multifaceted approaches. This OUSA policy paper outlines how government, employers, educators, and students can work together to overcome barriers and move towards a more prosperous, productive future.
OTTAWA — Federal officials believe the largest federal program aimed at helping aboriginal students pay for postsecondary
education faces numerous issues, including a financing cap which limits the fund's ability to keep up with rising tuition costs.
A federal review from summer 2015 suggests the support program needs more money, because a two-per-cent annual escalator is not in step with the increasing cost of tuition.
Online courses have for years driven enrollment growth at community colleges, but as more students take their
chances in the job market, institutions face new challenges to retain them, a new study found.
During the height of the recent recession, community colleges saw double-digit percentage growth in their online courses, according to the Instructional Technology Council, which is affiliated with the American Association of Community Colleges. But the ITC’s most recent survey of trends in online education at two-year colleges shows growth last academic year sat at 4.7 percent -- the lowest in about a decade.
Mobile learning (mlearning) is an emerging trend in schools, utilizing mobile technologies that offer the greatest amount of flexibility in teaching and learning. Researchers have found that one of the main barriers to effective mlearning in schools is the lack of teacher professional development. Results from a needsassessment survey and a post-workshop evaluation survey describe the professional development needs of teachers, technology coaches and administrators implementing an mlearning initiative in K–12 schools across 21 US states. Generally, needs shifted from a focus on technology integration and pedagogical coaching to a focus on the needs for ongoing support and time, reflecting a growing confidence in teachers to develop and implement mlearning lessons.
Additionally, results from the needs assessment indicated that teachers and staff feel less confident about external areas such as support policies and community involvement – these areas may also offer areas for future growth in mlearning professional development.
Keywords: mobile learning; professional development; Essential Conditions
When Western Illinois University’s Board of Trustees on Friday approved cutting four degree programs as majors and modifying four more, it looked like another chapter of belt tightening at a cash-strapped public institution suffering collateral damage amid state budget difficulties.
But administrators didn’t come out and blame finances. The programs arrived on the chopping block because they exhibited declining or low enrollment, Western Illinois leaders said -- not because the university needed to find millions of dollars in savings to make up for an expected plunge.
It’s been nearly three years since I was a fellow in the American Council on Education’s flagship leadership-training
program, yet I still reflect on what I learned there.
A central benefit of the program is the opportunity to spend time with a cross section of senior administrators from a broad array of institutions. During my fellowship, I made a point of meeting presidents and chancellors who were widely regarded as successful. I met more than 40 such CEOs via the program, and they were as different as the institutions they led. But from our conversations, some key similarities emerged in how they succeed at their jobs.
At a special reception Tuesday night to mark the unveiling of the Queen’s Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) Task Force final report and recommendations, Principal Daniel Woolf told the crowd of students, staff, faculty, alumni, and local Indigenous community members that, “Today, our communities come together to change course.”
“By taking steps to ensure that Indigenous histories are shared, by recognizing that we can all benefit from Indigenous knowledge, and by creating culturally validating learning environments, we can begin to reduce barriers to education and create a more welcoming, inclusive, and diverse university,” said Principal Woolf.
The special event, held at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, and the TRC report represent a significant milestone for Queen’s and the local Indigenous communities, signalling a broad and sustained effort to build and improve relations, and to effect meaningful institutional change. The recommendations in the report span everything from hiring practices and programming, to research, community outreach, and the creation of Indigenous cultural spaces on campus. (More detailed list of recommendations below.)
Principal Woolf reiterated his commitment to fulfilling the recommendations in the task force’s final report, and to illustrate that commitment, he announced that the university will be creating an Office of Indigenous Initiatives in the coming months – an announcement met by a loud round of applause from the audience.
For years, many academics have questioned the importance — even the justice — of requiring college students to master standard English. The discussion 20 or 30 years ago was about a student’s right to his or her own language — the implication being that the rest of us have no right to impose "our" language on those who are not native or proficient speakers. More
recently we’ve heard claims that the English language is itself discriminatory, even racist.
This report is the culmination of a three‐year research project conducted by George Brown College (GBC). As a member of the Learning Outcomes Assessment Consortium, sponsored and funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), this project responds to HEQCO’s request for colleges and universities to develop, implement and share new assessment tools that “measure and validate the attainment of these generic learning and cognitive skills.”
In this project, we focused on critical thinking (CT), with the goal of addressing a fundamental question:
How do we measure student learning of this essential employability skill during the course of a program of
study?
No one has ever criticised a hammer for being a hammer; it is an invaluable tool when that is what you need. But it is useless or destructive if used for the wrong purpose, and university rankings can be the same.
There are three main problems that make international rankings a poor mechanism for assessing, improving or differentiating any but the top few dozen universities in the world.
Purpose of Research: In this analysis and synthesis of our recent qualitative and ethnographic studies, we specifically describe the dimensions of local understanding that foster citizenship in the literate community for individuals commonly acted upon as hopelessly aliterate, subliterate, or illiterate due to assumptions surrounding their degree of disability. We contrast these descriptions of local understanding with U.S. education policy that mandates what we believe to be a singular, narrow, and rigid approach to early or initial written language instruction.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is now the law of the land.
Replacing No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) does more than realign the federal government’s role in education. It also elevates technology’s use in education in unprecedented ways. These changes require new thinking from leaders at the school, district and state level.
We’re releasing this handbook as states prepare their initial plans for state accountability requirements and other provisions of the new law. At the time of this writing, many states appear to be gravitating toward familiar models, albeit with considerable improvements in data, targeted interventions and instructional strategies that reflect the law’s emphasis on flexibility and local control. But there are opportunities for more dramatic transitions in what accountability means and how it is measured in schools, as well as in new models of teaching and learning. Technology plays a vital role in these areas, and ESSA provides new ways to help states and districts make these visions a reality.
In a much-discussed article at Slate, social psychologist Michael Inzlicht told a reporter, “Meta-analyses are fucked” (Engber, 2016). What does it mean, in science, for something to be fucked? Fucked needs to mean more than that something is complicated or must be undertaken with thought and care, as that would be trivially true of everything in science. In this class we will go a step further and say that something is fucked if it presents hard conceptual challenges to which implementable, real-world solutions for working scientists are either not available or routinely
ignored in practice.