Dealing with Serious Employee Issues
Like all employers, institutions of higher learning are experiencing increasingly serious issues caused by troubled or troubling employees. Personnel exhibiting serious conduct or performance issues can threaten the mission of the entire organization—which, in the case of higher education, is ultimately to serve the interests of the institution's student population.
Finding Administrative Balance
When we think of the qualities that are central to great academic leaders, a commitment to balance usually doesn't head the list. We may talk about the leader's need for vision, integrity, superb communication skills, collegiality, decisiveness, and resourcefulness. But we may overlook balance entirely, dismissing it as a soft, almost weak, quality—the sort of trait more suitable for a manager than a leader. Providing genuine leadership, we may think, requires us to be determined and focused; seeking balance is the sort of thing people do when they're willing to compromise on key principles simply to avoid a little conflict. And yet there are many ways in which administrators who don't give balance its due end up harming their institutions and undermining the very leadership they thought they were demonstrating.
How to Create a Successful Service-Learning Project or Program
Service-learning has been recognized by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and other groups as being an effective way to increase student engagement and contribute to their learning.
Barbara Jacoby, who implemented a service-learning program at the University of Maryland in 1992, taught other institutions how to build or improve their own service-learning programs during the online seminar "Building Service-Learning Programs: 10 Essentials" in November.
Recruitment and Retention at the Program Level
What role do faculty in your program play in student recruitment and retention? It's an important issue. Faculty represent their disciplines and have the potential to influence students' choice of major and the likelihood that students will remain in a program until graduation. The role of faculty in recruitment and retention also has the potential to significantly affect the health and even the continued existence of the program.
Magna Publications
2718 Dryden Drive • Madison, WI 53704-3086 • 800-433-0499
support@magnapubs.com
