August, 2005

Academic Leader - August 2005 - Full Issue
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Academic Culture Feeds the Imposter Phenomenon
Do you sometimes feel incompetent, like you don’t deserve the success you’ve experienced, and that it’s only a matter of time before you’re exposed as a fraud? If you answered yes, you’re not alone. This “imposter phenomenon” is widespread among high-achieving people, particularly in higher education, where cultural factors contribute to the problem, says Diane Zorn, course director in the philosophy department at York University.

Managing a Diverse Interinstitutional Research Center
Managing differences among diverse institutions, maintaining fairness, and motivating faculty are some of the challenges of directing interinstitutional collaborative research, says Reza Khanbilvardi, director of the NOAA-CREST Center (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Cooperative Remote Sensing and Technology) at the City College of New York. When its new data archiving, mining, and processing station opens, the NOAA-CREST Center will become a center of excellence in remote sensing, one of a select few U.S. academic institutions receiving and processing data from all major federal government weather and environmental monitoring satellites. Academic Leader recently spoke with Khanbilvardi about how the center achieved its success.

When Colleagues Are Brats
By Jacqueline Waggoner, Ed.D.
Have you ever left a meeting in which you were trying to work with some colleagues on aligning the curriculum for a course that several of you teach, and decided that the best (printable) word to describe a colleague was “brat?” Does it seem like there is someone in your work environment who has a chronically poor attitude?

Supporting Technology Innovation and Scholarship: A Department Chair’s Perspective
By John Fischetti, Ed.D.
As a faculty member, keeping up with emerging technologies in my discipline area, as well as in the teaching and learning process in general, is as difficult as scanning through the 300 choices on my television cable box to try to find a show to watch. By the time I finish perusing what is available, the options have changed and I have to start all over. As chair of a department of 30 full-time faculty and 20-plus part-time members, the issue of encouraging technology innovation and supporting faculty in these efforts is a nonstop business.

Using Stress to Create Change, Just as Nature Intended
By Mark J. Carroll, M.Ed., P.T.
Organizations are often anthropomorphized—attributed with the characteristics of living things. One might describe an organization as strong or weak. Organizations might be said to flourish or wither. They might be said to experience periods of peace or other periods in which they are under attack and in a position of mortal danger. We might describe an organization as a family or as a team. The stock price of a company may be said to dive or to soar. Organizations are said to be born and, sadly, they often die.

Informal, Frequent Communication Helps Dean-Chair Partnership Thrive
Department chairs and deans make more decisions without the involvement of central administration at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota than they did 15 years ago, when Tom Connery, dean of the college of arts and sciences, was a department chair. This “pushing down” of authority, Connery says, makes the partnership between chairs and deans more important than ever.