In This Issue Current Issue Archives

January 2006

Academic Leader - January, 2006 - Full Issue
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Outcomes Assessment Is Here to Stay, Get Faculty Buy In
The trend toward greater accountability is often viewed as something that is imposed upon higher education institutions, something that infringes on an institution’s autonomy and faculty members’ academic freedom and adds to their workload. When framed in this manner, is it any wonder that some faculty members are reluctant about or downright opposed to learning outcomes assessment?

Communicating Change to Adjuncts
By Sandra Allen
The debate rages. How to communicate for change? As early as 350 B.C., Aristotle had a theory. Most of us communications professionals turned educators have at least one answer. In our contemporary world, T.J. and Sandar Larkin (Communicating Change, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1994) tell us that if communication is to change behavior, it must be grounded in the values and interests of its receivers. When the receiver is an adjunct faculty member and the objective is to raise the standards for learning outcomes in his or her classroom, “change” can be a four-letter word.

Changing Roles for Chairs
As at other institutions, department chairs at Black Hills State University are feeling the impact of some major changes at the institutional, state, and national level. The changes mean a more complicated and labor-intensive position that leaves less and less time for teaching and scholarship.

Quick Quotes
Holly Downing, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Black Hills State University

AAC&U Works Toward Global General Education
The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently announced the creation of a network of 16 colleges and universities with the goal of infusing their general education curricula with global learning. Academic Leader spoke with Kevin Hovland, associate director of Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility, a multiproject, national initiative of the AAC&U’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives, about the project.

Shared Futures: Two Universities’ Global Learning Initiatives
Despite Marquette University’s emphasis on global learning, including study abroad and international service learning programs, students ranked global issues as very low in importance when they participated in the National Survey of Student Engagement. “When we got the NSSE results, we were mystified. We have lots of co-curricular [activities] and core course that address global issues. Why aren’t students identifying global issues as important to their education?” says Christine Krueger, Marquette’s director of core of common studies.

Teaching Circles: Low-Cost, High-Impact Faculty Development
By Barbara A. Mezeske
Two years ago, a midcareer colleague in the mathematics department sent around an e-mail to all faculty at our college, inviting us to read a book with her. And as simply as that, a teaching circle was formed.

More Time Teaching Correlates with Less Pay
In the early 1990s, higher education researcher James Fairweather used data from the National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty to explore relationships between teaching, research, and faculty pay. Five years after this first analysis, Fairweather repeated the study to see if a growing emphasis on teaching was being reflected in faculty pay.

Academic Leader 2005 Index