The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal

It can seem at times as though all of academic administration today is focused only on the need for continual change and the endless pursuit of "the big idea." But most academic leaders, from department chairs and program directors through university presidents and chancellors, are far too busy helping their institutions flourish for them to divert critical energy and resources to yet another untried theory or management principle. Academic Leadership Day by Day takes an entirely different approach to developing your proven academic leadership: It introduces one practical and field-tested idea each day for an entire academic year. Read More.

As the responsibilities entailed in being a department chairperson are ever evolving, those who occupy the position must continually adapt and build upon their skills in order to meet new challenges and expectations. In the first edition of Academic Leadership, Deryl R. Leaming helped thousands of chairpersons navigate changes in higher education and effectively lead their departments. While maintaining its focus on practical application, this new edition has been significantly revised and expanded to address new aspects of the role of department chairs. Read More.

Higher education professionals have moved from teaching- to learning-centered models for designing and assessing courses and curricula. Faculty work collaboratively to identify learning objectives and assessment strategies, set standards, design effective curricula and courses, assess the impact of their efforts on student learning, reflect on results, and implement appropriate changes to increase student learning. Assessment is an integral component of this learner-centered approach, and it involves the use of empirical data to refine programs and improve student learning. Read More.

This book offers a how-to resource for campus leaders who want to take a strategic approach to creating change within the university and in relation to the community. It emphasizes what to do to expand community engagement at the university, and explains how to minimize the risks that can accompany this work.  Read More.

The number of part-time faculty members is increasing steadily, to the point that most colleges and universities could not function efficiently without them. The evening and weekend availability of adjunct faculty enables us to expand class schedules to serve the educational needs of nontraditional students, and their expertise offers students important real-world perspectives.Yet there is often a lack of preparation or support for their vital role. Best Practices for Supporting Adjunct Faculty is written for a full range of academic leaders, including instructional administrators, department chairs, and directors of teaching and learning centers. It showcases proven initiatives at a variety of institutional types—two- and four-year, public and private—that help achieve the needs of adjunct instructors, while increasing their effectiveness within institutions’ existing delivery systems. Read More.

In today's challenging economic climate, college and university administrators need reliable financial advice for helping their institutions thrive. Thoroughly revised and updated, this book is designed to help new administrators understand and become more proficient in their financial management role within the institution. Written in an accessible style, so that the book's guidance to immediate use, the book is grounded in the latest knowledge and filled with illustrative examples from across all types of institutions. This is an ideal resource for courses in graduate programs in higher education leadership and administration. Read More.

What role does the position of department chair occupy in higher education today? Once characterized as largely a management function, the 21st-century department chair is now facing a host of emerging challenges that require additional skills and fresh approaches to fulfilling the role. Read More.

Department chairs are both faculty and administrators, but neither the skills of a faculty member nor the stature of an administrator can alone make an effective department chair. Because department chairs occupy a dual role, it is imperative that they establish and maintain credibility with both the faculty and the central administration. Such a challenge requires strong communication skills. Read More.

ePortfolios perform many functions in higher education at both an institutional and student level. This book offers online instructors guidance in creating and implementing eportfolios with their students. It helps them assess the needs of their students then design and implement a strategic, comprehensive eportfolio program tailored to these needs. Further, it lets instructors see how such programs can be used as an example of their own personal and professional academic development. This is an essential resource for any online instructor or student wishing to use eportfolios as a tool. Read More.

Conflict can appear with varying degrees of intensity or hostility, but if ignored or managed ineffectively, it can slow or jeopardize an institution's success. Chairs and deans, who have leadership responsibilities to both administrators and faculty, often find a significant portion of their jobs devoted to conflict management. Their leadership success depends on their ability to effectively manage a variety of conflict-laden situations, and negotiate people’s varying needs and personalities.  Read More.

Engaging Ideas, Second Edition is a practical nuts-and-bolts guide for teachers from any discipline who want to design interest-provoking writing and critical thinking activities and incorporate them into their courses in a way that encourages inquiry, exploration, discussion, and debate.  Read More.

This is a revision of the first title in Jossey-Bass Online Teaching & Learning series. This series helps higher education professionals improve the practice of online teaching and learning by providing concise, practical resources focused on particular areas or issues they might confront in this new learning environment. Read More.

Written by experts in teaching and administration, this guide offers practical, research-based information for faculty members and administrators in search of new approaches for assessing and improving faculty potential. By recognizing that faculty evaluation can be a difficult, time-consuming, and costly process, the authors of Evaluating Faculty Performance have distilled existing evaluation practices into useful recommendations for strengthening the overall system. Read More.

Collegiality is a key element that department chairs value when recommending faculty members for tenure. This practical book (written for chairs and deans) offers a reference of “what to do” proactively so that departments function effectively. The book is filled with the most current ideas and research of what has worked to enhance the climate, culture, and collegiality in the department, as well as the university.  Read More.

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) compliance has always been challenging due to complex regulatory language and exposure to risk. However, institutions that do not comply are in jeopardy of losing federal funding. Accessible and user-friendly, FERPA Clear and Simple clarifies the regulations and provides a ready reference for compliance and problem solving. This need-to-have guide offers critical and relevant material (including the 2008 Amendments) from a new perspective to help staff in student affairs, academic departments, and administrative support positions understand and comply with FERPA guidelines. Read More.

Helping Faculty Find Work-Life Balance gives voice to faculty and reveals the myriad of personal and professional issues faculty face over the span of their academic careers. Based on years of in-the-field research and two gender-based studies, Maike Ingrid Philipsen and Timothy Bostic give the issue of work-life balance a fresh perspective by taking a comparative approach to the topic in regard to both gender and career stage. The authors' research reports on the experiences of male and female faculty at early-, mid-, and late-career stages. In addition, the book goes beyond the typical "family-friendly" approach and takes an all-encompassing "life-friendly" view, recognizing the need to strive for balance in the lives of all faculty members. Read More.

Institutions of higher education are being challenged on all fronts and are attempting to change their ways of doing business in order to answer calls for accountability, transparency, access, and relevancy. There have been many incremental changes in response to these challenges, but incremental change is not enough. In order to respond to our rapidly changing environment, we need comprehensive change, a change in paradigms. As campus leaders face increasing pressure to show that their institutions are doing all they can to achieve successful student learning outcomes, the need for moving beyond learner-centered teaching to learner-centered campuses will become increasingly crucial. Read More.

Universities continue to struggle in their efforts to fully integrate information and communications technology into their activities. Based on examination of current practices in technology integration at twenty-five universities worldwide, this book argues for a radical approach to the management of technology in higher education. Read More.

Based on years of research, this book provides an analysis of the data gathered from extensive interviews with university presidents. Each of these women offers candid information about their lifelong journey to becoming a leader. Read More.

On campuses and among trustees there is often a lack of understanding of what the president does (and should do), the larger issues facing the institution, and issues that the president grapples with on a daily basis.  Read More.

Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration provides needed guidance and advice for how colleges and universities can reorganize to foster more collaborative work. Read More.

This newly revised best-selling classic Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services continues to offer a proven step-by-step approach to reallocating resources in tough times. This updated text includes templates, available also online, for prioritizing communications plans to ensure more successful campus implementation and to avoid mistakes. Based on the author's extensive consulting experiences including serving several hundred two- and four-year colleges and corporations ranging from hospitals to bank holding companies, this revised edition is necessary and timely for the current economic concerns affecting colleges and universities. Read More.

In Reframing Academic Leadership, Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos offer higher education leaders a provocative and pragmatic guide. Throughout the book, the authors integrate powerful conceptual frameworks with rich and compelling real-world cases to support academic leaders searching for the best in themselves and in their institutions. Read More.

If higher education is to fulfill its mission, the academy must continue to emphasize the ideals of thought, reflection, and development as well as action. This practical book stresses the importance of understanding that service is a prerequisite to leadership. Read More.

In Teaching for Critical Thinking, Stephen Brookfield builds on his last three decades of experience running workshops and teaching courses on critical thinking to explore how student learn to think this way and what teachers can do to help students develop this capacity.  Read More.

Practically focused, easily accessible, this book is directly relevant to the academic environment in which department chairs operate. The authors—internationally known experts in academic administration—conducted interviews with department chairs and heads at 38 academic institutions from across the U.S. and Canada, public and private, two-year and four-year. Read More.

What do chairs need to know from their very first day on the job? Research has shown that most chairs receive little or no training to prepare them for the demands of their new roles. They may not understand the tasks they will need to perform, how much time they will have to spend on parts of the job, and what the emotional and social requirements are. Read More.

The Department Chair Primer provides the practical information that chairs need to do their jobs well. Many of the book's ideas come from practicing chairs and are proven strategies for dealing with a variety of issues. Read More.

Thoroughly revised and updated, this second edition of the classic book The Essential Department Chair is designed to be more comprehensive and up to date.  Read More.

This book is the quintessential manual for what department chairs must know to excel at the many administrative tasks assigned to them on a day-to-day basis. For instance, how do you cultivate a potential donor for much-needed departmental resources? How do you interview someone when your dean assigns you to a committee searching for an administrator in a different academic area? How do you fire someone? How do you get your department members to work together more harmoniously? How do you keep the people who report to you motivated and capable of seeing the big picture? Read More.

The hiring, training, and evaluation of good online instructors is a high priority for online institutions. This book shows what it takes to develop a new instructor in order to promote excellent online teaching and describes the qualities of a good online instructor and reveals how to evaluate good teaching online. In addition, It includes illustrative models of faculty training for online teaching based on adult learning principles and best practices in faculty training and identifies how technology can be used to facilitate and enhance the training process. Read More.

There is a need for a resource that focuses on writing for publication that discusses the components of a manuscript, the types of manuscripts, and the submission process. This groundbreaking book fills that need and includes information on how to develop writing skills by offering guidance on becoming an excellent manuscript reviewer and outlining what makes a good review. Read More.

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The Innovative University illustrates how higher education can respond to the forces of disruptive innovation , and offers a nuanced and hopeful analysis of where the traditional university and its traditions have come from and how it needs to change for the future. Through an examination of Harvard and BYU–Idaho as well as other stories of innovation in higher education, Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring decipher how universities can find innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions. Read More.

Most of the scholarship on learner-centeredness is focused on individual classroom pedagogy, but this book takes learner-centeredness beyond the classroom and asks academic leaders to consider the broader implications of making their institutions fully learner-centered. Systemic change is needed, and curriculum is at the heart of what higher education does. Read More.

Thoughtful and rich with advice, The Mentor's Guide explores the critical process of mentoring and presents practical tools for facilitating the experience from beginning to end. Now managers, teachers, and leaders from any career, professional, or educational setting can successfully navigate the learning journey by using the hands-on worksheets and exercises in this unique resource. Read More.

A fundamental revolution in higher education is being sparked by the ubiquity of mobile devices used by students, faculty, and administrators. The opportunity is ripe for institutions, instructors, and instructional designers to take advantage of mobile technology to enhance the learning experience. To do this, we need to understand the power on tap, examine fundamental principles, review illustrative examples, and ultimately think through ways to improve the learner experience. Read More.

Drawing on the experience with the individuals, campuses, and professional associations associated with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and the Institutional Leadership Program, this important resource examines four critical areas where engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning can have a significant effect. This book is intended for a broad audience of campus leaders, faculty, and people in foundations and other education associations with an interest in supporting new directions in teaching and learning. Read More.

In Turnaround Leadership for Higher Education, international authorities on organizational change Michael Fullan and Geoff Scott reveal how campus leaders can proactively meet the challenges and expectations facing their institutions. They show how certain leadership capabilities and change-capable cultures in higher education institutions must mirror each other—for the benefit of students and their futures, and for the academy and society. The authors draw on a solid knowledge base of change, which advocates for stimulating and integrating strong moral purpose and equally strong partnerships and relationships inside and outside the academy. Read More.

Assessing student learning effectively has become a priority in higher education. Faculty and administrators must demonstrate to various constituencies and stakeholders that their programs are effective and that there is correlation between teaching and learning. This book uses selected performance criteria benchmarks to assist undergraduate programs to define their educational missions and goals as well as to document their effectiveness. It helps faculty and administrators use benchmarks not only to assess outcomes of student learning, but to program assessment, evaluate student learning, create meaningful faculty scholarship, ensure quality teaching, and forge connection to the community. Read More.