February, 2007

Academic Leader - February, 2007 - Full Issue PDF
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Now is the Time to Prepare for Millennial Faculty
The Millennial generation (people born in 1980 and later) will soon begin to make its mark as college and university faculty members. Immersed in technology all their lives, they will bring unprecedented levels of experience and comfort with the tools that earlier generations have had to adapt to. They will also bring new attitudes, behaviors, and expectations. The ways that institutions adapt to differences between Millennials and previous generations and capitalize on their strengths will have long-term implications for every institution.

Lessons Learned from Breaking New Academic Ground
Greg Dees, professor of social entrepreneurship and nonprofit management at Duke University’s Fuqua Graduate School of Business, has been involved in the creation of social entrepreneurship centers in three business schools. Each center came into being under different circumstances, but Dees’ experiences in each instance offers lessons beyond the individual institution and the discipline.

Teaching Awards: A Look at Selection Criteria
One of the staples for the recognition and reward of teaching excellence is the department or, more often, college-wide teaching award. Generally it comes with a stipend (often quite modest, considering how much work truly excellent teaching requires), some sort of plaque and public recognition. Frequently, nominations or letters of support for receipt of the award are solicited from current and former students. Many faculty find these student affirmations as meaningful as the money and public pat on the back.

Portfolio System Provides Integrated Assessment across the Institution
In 2000, the college of education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) introduced an electronic portfolio system for its students. The goal was to get students to understand their own learning by requiring them to create these portfolios that highlight their work. Building on that success, the university is in the process of implementing myMAPP, (Mapping Academic Performance through ePorfolios), an electronic portfolio system that integrates student, faculty, staff, department, college, and campus performance measures.

University of Missouri’s Faculty Accomplishment System
The University of Missouri recently implemented its system-wide Faculty Accomplishment System, an electronic database that provides a convenient way for faculty members to document their achievements for themselves and for administrators.

The Accountability Conundrum
By Thomas R. McDaniel , PhD
Many states (including South Carolina, where I try my best to be a “responsible” college administrator) have some kind of state law mandating that public schools—and, in some cases, colleges--demonstrate that they are indeed “accountable.” Typically, this means that institutions file reports that show the institution to be in compliance with certain standards as demonstrated by statistical assessments. (Remember that the art of statistics is the ability to draw a perfectly straight line from a faulty assumption to a fallacious conclusion.) Who could be opposed to “accountability,” a term as revered as “Mom” and “apple pie”? The conundrum is in the details: Who is accountable to whom for what?