Change Articles

Changing Engineering Education: Views of U.S. Faculty, Chairs, and Deans
JEE_April_2014 Many reports present a vision of what engineering education should look like, but few describe how this should happen. An American Society for Engineering Education initiative in 2006 attempted to bridge this gap by engaging faculty, chairs, and deans in discussion of change in engineering education; results were reported in a Phase I report (2009). In a second phase, survey data were integrated into a Phase II report (2012).
Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups
HBR_March_2001 When managers first started hearing about the concept of emotional intelligence in the 1990s, scales fell from their eyes. The basic message, that effectiveness in organizations is at least as much about EQ as IQ, resonated deeply; it was something that people knew in their guts but that had never before been so well articulated. Most important, the idea held the potential for positive change. Instead of being stuck with the hand they’d been dealt, people could take steps to enhance their emotional intelligence and make themselves more effective in their work and personal lives.
Developing academic strategic alliances: Reconciling multiple institutional cultures, policies, and practices.
front_cover_JHE Colleges and universities have often been required to evolve in response to shifting societal priorities. Over the past century, this occurred in the context of an ever-expanding system of higher education built with a substantial investment of public money. If society needed more professional programs, institutions added them. In the current context, however, the expectation of institutional accountability remains undiminished despite an increasingly resource-constrained environment. This places colleges and universities in a double bind. They are expected to address society’s needs, yet they often do not have the resources to respond to them. Our institutions of higher learning are limited in the ways they can generate additional capital, and efforts to free resources by reducing administrative overhead and reallocating responsibilities have often produced pyrrhic victories (Eckel, 2003).
On change III. Taking charge of change: A primer for colleges and universities
On_Change_III This resource book reflects the assumptions, structure, and insights of the American Council on Education’s Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation, a 6-year study that involved 26 institutions involved in comprehensive change. The first section of the primer, “Creating the Context,” focuses on key issues that form the backdrop for any change initiative: institutional characteristics that influence the change process; procedural issues; and aspects of institutional culture.
Facilitating change in undergraduate STEM instructional practices: An analytic review of the literature
JRST_Oct_2011 This article reviews current scholarship about how to promote change in instructional practices used in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. The review is based on 191 conceptual and empirical journal articles published between 1995 and 2008. Four broad categories of change strategies were developed to capture core differences within this body of literature: disseminating curriculum and pedagogy, developing reflective teachers, enacting policy, and developing shared vision. STEM education researchers largely write about change in terms of disseminating curriculum and pedagogy.
The Discipline of Teams
HBR_JulyAugust_2005 Groups don’t become teams because that is what someone calls them. Nor do teamwork values by themselves ensure team performance. So what is a team? How can managers know when the team option makes sense and what they can do to ensure team success? In this article, drawn from their recent book The Wisdom of Teams, McKinsey partners Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith answer these questions and outline the discipline that makes a real team.
Cultivating Partnerships in the Digital Humanities
William_Pannapacker As academics we can be too snug in our institutional silos. We sometimes think of one another as competitors for students, and as a result we duplicate scarce resources in mutually damaging ways. Without more coordinated programs, will we go on teaching the way we have since the Industrial Revolution? Will our students, knowing it doesn’t have to be that way and worried about their future, lose patience with us?
The New Science of Building Great Teams
HBR_April_2012 If you were looking for teams to rig for success, a call center would be a good place to start. The skills required for call center work are easy to identify and hire for. The tasks involved are clear-cut and easy to monitor. Just about every aspect of team performance is easy to measure: number of issues resolved, customer satisfaction, average handling time (AHT, the golden standard of call center efficiency). And the list goes on.
Organizational Culture in Higher Education: Defining the Essentials
JHE_JanFeb_1988 This article presents a case study of a state college illustrating a framework to diagnose culture in collegiate institutions. It explains why organizational culture is a useful concept for understanding management and performance in higher education and outlines previous attempts to define culture in higher education. Essential elements of academic culture are highlighted.