Distributed leadership has been explored internationally as a leadership model that will promote and advance excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. This paper presents an assessment of how effectively distributed leadership was enabled at five Australian institutions implementing a collaborative teaching quality development…

This chapter is a case study of one institution's effort to institutionalize a process through which student development is promoted through active engagement with the community.

The framework for understanding the management difference is neatly captured by the "red ocean" and "blue ocean" strategies described by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne in "Blue Ocean Strategy" (Kim & Mauborgne, 2004). In the original, the terms refer to alternative market strategies. Red ocean means competition in a market defined by a zero sum…

Charter Theatre is a small professional theatre in Washington, DC. Its mission is to develop and produce new plays. Like other organizations, Charter Theatre wants to be accountable. Its members saw early the need for evaluation--a repeatable process to assure the quality of their work, and have infused their development process with evaluation.…

Background: This article serves as a conclusion to a TCR special issue devoted to understanding the impact of the Spencer Foundation's Research Training Grant (RTG) initiative. We examine four case reports prepared by scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Los Angeles…

Analysis of the first cycle of academic program review at the College of St. Catherine (Minnesota) discusses recommendations resulting from reviews, insights about faculty and committee perceptions, and new directions for the second cycle. It is noted that the second cycle will focus more on program activities and output than on traditional input…

Recent literature on academic program review or evaluation is reviewed, including case study reports of ways in which systematic reviews of programs have been designed and carried out at selected colleges. Attention is given to procedures that have been used or suggested for collecting information. (MLW)

The "academic ratchet and administrative lattice" framework for examining costs and productivity in college administration is applied to the University of Delaware. The productivity of academic units is analyzed quantitatively and issues in overstaffing and overbudgeting of administrative units are discussed. Faculty staffing trends from…

A current trend in evaluation to balance quantitative measures and qualitative judgments provided the philosophical context for this case study. In the late 1960's a balanced methodology was devised to evaluate doctoral programs in the School of Education at Indiana University. The model of doctoral education that emerged facilitated analysis, but…

The imperatives of institutional planning in an environment of scarce resources have brought program evaluation activities under more systematic processes serving varied needs. Evaluation processes at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Houston are examined. (Author/MSE)

The British experience with nationwide research quality assessment exercises and newly-introduced measures to improve research program accountability is described. Consequences for institutions of higher education and for the system as a whole are examined, using the University of Glasgow (Scotland) as an example. Utility of performance indicators…

Reports on a five-year ethnographic, longitudinal study of a British higher education college during a process of change in quality assurance. Identifies tensions experienced during the process and stresses the influence of context, the unpredictability of change, and the lack of simple prescriptions for managing change projects. (DB)

The political processes involved in an academic program evaluation are discussed. The focus is on how evaluative information is politically linked to programmatic decisions within the context of various organizational and evaluative utilization models. To examine the explanatory power of the various theories and models, information from a program…

The process of developing program evaluation models for Florida International University's college of education is described. One lesson learned was that a combination of macro- and microlevel planning is necessary for purposeful evaluation. A grid to aid decision making is also presented. (Author/MSE)

Involvement of the institutional research office at the University of Texas at Austin in integration of student-athlete data into the central database is described, including identification of data maintained in different offices, internal and external data reporting needs, and expansion of central files. Lessons learned from the effort are…