In her latest IngenioUs blog article, Kristine Barnett asks us to reflect on how we are doing with delegation and leadership strength spotting and cultivating. According to Barnett, we are more likely to achieve great things institutionally when we can mentor our team members to be adaptable leaders who know how to respond to what is needed in the moment. As she concludes: "Teams and organizations almost always function best when everyone knows what to do and how to lead from where they located in the institution. You and your campus are more likely to thrive when there is a leader in every seat."

With new student enrollment pressures on the rise, many college leaders are now looking at student retention as a critical means to ensure institutional health and viability not to mention student success.  Along with data-informed planning comes the need to build cross-campus partnerships with faculty, staff, students, and a wide span of college departments. Effective advising, the use of key technology tools to understand, monitor, and communicate with students, tailored support services, and adjusting retention strategies based on inputs must all come into play.  At our upcoming free Leading Edge Thinking in Higher Education webinar, scheduled for June 13 at 12 noon (EST), participants will hear from nationally renowned enrollment expert Dr. Tim Culver about the latest best practices for building a strong retention effort.  

Webinar participants will have the opportunity to engage in discussion and Q&A to share their own experiences and ask questions about how to adjust, adapt, and apply cutting-edge strategies to their own institutions. All webinar registrants will receive a link to the recording following the webinar to share with colleagues. Listen to the companion recording with Dr. Lauren Way and Dr. Culver to hear key webinar highlights.

To register.

In this episode, we speak with Randy Bass, Vice President, Strategic Education Initiatives and Professor of English at Georgetown University, and Ashley Finley, Vice President for Research and Senior Advisor to the President at the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) about the course they co-teach at Georgetown: University as a Design Problem. This course approaches the problem of learning and education through the lens of “the university”

No matter how seasoned you may be, this time of year can unmoor even the most balanced academic leaders. From last-minute requests to unanticipated campus conflicts and schedules that leave little time to breathe or think, this time of year can test the mettle of even the toughest among us. Do you have a plan for self-care to ensure you emerge on the other side with your resilience intact? Check out Kristine Barnett's latest IngenioUs blog where she shares her top strategies for practicing self-care.

In this highly dynamic conversation, Bernard Bull shares his insights about everything from the importance of mission-informed innovation and understanding that innovation is not a one size fits all endeavor to building consensus and support for a new and creative effort, working through resistance to knowing when to move on, and what it takes to develop the mindset and capacity for educational innovation.

Dr. Bull is not new to educational innovation. He launched one of the earliest online high school programs in the 1990s, led many curricular innovations, studied and learned from over a hundred innovative learning organizations and products, and launched the first master's degree program built upon competency-based digital badges. Bull is the author of eight books including the highly popular ⁠Missional Moonshots: Insight and Inspiration for Educational⁠ Innovation (2016), he created the blog Etale, which eventually ranked as one of the top 50 education blogs on the Internet for almost a decade, created the Moonshot Edu Show podcast, served as CEO of Birdhouse Learning Labs, and has given well over 100 invited and keynote presentations throughout the United States and around the world.

Bull, a leader in Christian Lutheran higher education, assumed the presidency of Concordia University (NE) in 2020, after leading a turnaround effort as Goddard College (VT) president.

When Meredith Woo took over as the president of Sweet Briar College in 2017, the nonprofit Virginia women’s institution was seen as a troubled place. Alumnae had wrestled the college back from the brink of closure, but it still faced financial issues, resulting in a warning from its accreditor.  Understanding that there is no playbook for how to bring back a college from the brink of closure, Woo and her leadership team set out to create their own playbook. By leveraging Sweet Briar's historic missional strengths as a liberal arts women's college with a breathtakingly beautiful campus in Virginia, and with the extraordinary support of alumni and friends around the globe, the College has been revived and the recent projections for long-term viability are positive. During our conversation, Woo reflects on the experience of taking over a college in a catastrophic state. She shares her insights about finding opportunities for growth and innovation, what works, and why change always takes longer than you think it will.

In her latest IngenioUs blog article, Kristine Barnett asks us to consider what leadership attributes and approaches do we look for in building our teams. As Barnett's article makes clear, 'getting the right people on our bus' can be critically impactful for our own leadership effectiveness. She shares her top list for what she looks for when she hires and promotes to leadership roles and suggests good questions for us to consider in exploring our leadership expectations. Read here.

The challenges facing higher education are enormous. Some are known to us while others are not. For example, most higher ed leaders did not have the emergence of a global pandemic on their list of concerns even five years ago. And yet, a handful of futurists like David J. Staley did raise the possibility of a pandemic as something that higher education should be preparing for. What other significant trends are most likely to impact higher education and our own college and university campuses most immediately in the days ahead? Join us on April 26 for our monthly Leading Edge Thinking in Higher Education webinar as Staley shares his latest insights and teaches us all how to see the future.

Register here, All registrants will receive access to the webinar following the live presentation.

More than four decades ago, the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (MSPP) opened its doors to offer graduate education in psychology to students who wanted to make a real difference in their communities. Thanks to a postcard in the mail, MSPP was renamed William James College in 2015, after the father of modern, applied psychology and someone who embodied the roles of educator, innovator, advocate, and influencer—all roles that William James College students, faculty, and alumni embrace and embody today. Under the 20+ year leadership of Dr. Nicholas Covino, the College has grown from a single-department, financially troubled institution to one that now has multiple departments and offers specialty training and consultative services. During our conversation, Dr. Covino shares the school's turnaround story including his insights about leading during periods of change. An oft-quoted mental health advocate and spokesperson, Covino also offers valuable guidance for college and university leaders about how to respond to the burgeoning mental health crisis impacting scores of college students, faculty, and staff.

In a recent New York Times piece, the writer asks a critically important question: Colleges have been an important small-town lifeline--what happens when they shrink? In their hot-off-the-shelf new book, Knowledge Towns: Colleges and Universities as Talent Magnets, David J. Staley and Dominic D.J. Endicott suggest that this current scenario is an opportunity for such institutions to rethink and redefine their missions with their geographic place at the center. In Staley's most recent IngenioUs blog article, he describes what this might look like and offers that both the institution and the surrounding community have much to gain by partnering together to design a strategy for creative place-making.