Best Practices for Conducting a Faculty Search
“The success, stability, and morale of an academic department largely depend on its faculty.” This is according to Thomas Weidner, chairperson of the School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science, and Samuel Cotton, chairperson of the Department of Technology, of Ball State University. At the 32nd Annual Academic Chairpersons Conference, they shared some of their best practices for conducting a faculty search that will result in a new hire who fits well within the department and will make a lasting contribution to its success.
Locating the Academic Leadership Land Mines
Beginning a position as an academic leader can be challenging under any circumstances. But those challenges increase exponentially when you’re hired into an institution. You enter a world where nearly everyone knows more about most local issues than you do. Alliances have already been formed. Coalitions that stand in opposition to those alliances have emerged. People have strong opinions about what should and shouldn’t be done, and they all have plenty of evidence to support their views. How do you know whom to believe and whom to regard with a bit of skepticism? If you make the wrong choice on an important enough issue, it can make it much harder to accomplish your goals. You can find that people mistakenly believe you’re aligned with this or that faction, causing them to interpret everything you say with a certain degree of distrust. Even in the best of circumstances, being in academic leadership can sometimes feel as though you’re constantly negotiating a minefield. But how do you locate the land mines in new and unfamiliar terrain?
An Intellectual Property Policy for Online Education
Does your institution have an intellectual property policy specific to online courses and course materials? If so, do you know and understand it? Do faculty know it? If faculty receives a financial payment or release time to develop online course materials, does that change who owns the rights to course materials? As the number of online courses and degree programs offered at institutions in higher education continues to expand, intellectual property rights will continue to garner increased attention.
After Promotion and Tenure: Maintaining Faculty’s Upward Trajectory
While a necessary and worthy milestone, earning promotion and tenure is not an end goal of an academic career. During the pretenure years, a faculty member is gearing up for growth in the areas (e.g., teaching, research and teaching) defined by the institution to meet the mark for tenure. Ideally, the latter part of the pretenure period is one where the quality of the work is on the rise, there is an emerging reputation, and the products (e.g., presentations, exhibitions, publications, proposals for/success in funding) of success are generated at an increased pace. At the time of dossier submission, there should be a record with a definitive upward trajectory. The challenge at this point is to capitalize on the momentum created to begin planning for the next step, the promotion to full professor. This, however, is not the way all cases proceed.
Creating a Strategic Plan for Global Engagement: Ideas for Academic Leaders
“Our goal was to make sure students on campus understood that they would be working in a global environment,” says Karen Kashmanian Oates, Peterson Family Dean of Arts and Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. As scientists and engineers, WPI students are poised to enter a truly global marketplace, with companies headquartered outside the U. S. or requiring working in or with these other locations.
Constructing a strategic plan for global engagement that will benefit both students and the institution, however, requires more than a simple study-abroad program. In a presentation for the American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD), Oates and her co-presenters explained the situation thus: “Without a strategic plan for global engagement in place, most interactions have been reactive instead of proactive, with engagements neither initiated nor coordinated with central university aspirations.” By constructing a strategic plan, the institution can help meet institutional goals.
10 Student Recruitment Tips for Department Chairs
Student recruitment is not the exclusive domain of admissions staff. There are many things that department chairs and faculty can do to promote their programs to potential major and minors. In an interview with Academic Leader, Victor Vallo, Jr., chair of the music department at Newberry College, offered the following recruitment techniques at the program level:
What Students Are Looking For In An Institution
One of the most difficult decisions for upper leadership in a university is how to apportion funds for capital improvements and new and ongoing academic programs. Often, the decision comes down to perceptions of what students are looking for in the admission process. However, data about what factors students seek when choosing a college often comes from qualitative reports from the admissions department and perceptions about what leaders expect students and parents to prioritize. For example, many leaders believe that students look for the nicest residence halls, the best meal plans, and easy access to workout facilities when selecting their institution, a perception that might not be true.
Rebranding a University: Lessons Learned
“To rebrand, or not to rebrand”—that is the question that many higher-education institutions are asking these days to increase student applications, donors, engaged alumni, governmental funding, and community supporters. Whether it’s a college or the university as a whole, or a specialized program, telling the story through brand promise is becoming an integral part of academic conversations.
A brand is the promise you make to your constituents—students, faculty, alumni, and donors. It’s about who you are, how you deliver your services, and your commitment to your mission. Telling the brand story is more than developing a new website or glossy viewbook. It’s done through a compelling, ever-changing narrative of the impact you’ve made on your constituents’ lives.
Using Social Media to Support University Branding
Timothy Cigelske, currently the social media director for Marquette University, discovered the power of social media in his previous life as a journalist. “I stumbled on social media as a way to research stories; it’s a useful reporting tool,” he says. Years later, both he and social media have matured, and Cigelske currently runs Marquette’s social media endeavors with the help of four interns.
Having a social media presence is no longer unique for an institution of higher education, but Marquette’s reach and consistency of message set it apart. The university has a presence on 10 different social media platforms (see http://www.marquette.edu/social/) with the addition of Snapchat, and all of the communications support the university’s mission.
The Research Process and Its Relevance to the Culture of Assessment
As higher education evolves, so too does the importance of assessing learning. New regulations, financial constraints, and accrediting agencies are stressing that colleges and universities should strengthen assessment organizationally. However, when assessment is discussed in large faculty forums, the concept often, strangely, becomes very foreign to them. Here is where understanding and employing the process of research can very helpful in completing such tasks.
Historically, the process of research is associated with tenure, publications, and the doctoral process. Through the passage of time, research is now a balanced undertaking between gaining content knowledge and the process one goes through creating new knowledge. In breaking the traditional mold, it appears that having an understanding of the process of research may also help institutions in another area. This article examines the usefulness and paralleling of the research process and its application to institutional and academic assessments.
