Vision statements in organizations help CEOs provide focus and direction to a company's activities and motivate employees toward improved performance. This article explores if an instructor can use a vision statement to overcome course design challenges and motivate students toward improved learning and then presents a process used for developing…

Leadership gurus often put creating a "shared vision" at the top of their pyramid of what successful leaders do. These visions are best when they are an anchor or a North Star -- unwavering goals that the district works toward. Author Jon Saphier proposes this North Star for districts: Make every school an engine for continuous…

This playbook provides ways in which Governors and teams can blur the lines between high school, postsecondary education, and the workforce. Governors play a significant role to Raise the Bar for student success by developing an "education-to-workforce system" that focuses on Unlocking Career Success.

Researchers have considered how school choice policies affect student achievement, but less inquiry explores how the organization of schools may change in the presence of choice. This descriptive and exploratory paper analyzes a state representative sample of school mission statements at two time points: before the enactment of choice policies in…

This guide describes how community college presidents can embed strategic enrollment management (SEM) into mission fulfillment. It emphasizes the importance of setting a vision, ensuring adequate resources, and fostering collaboration. By leveraging data-driven strategies and continuous improvement, colleges can enhance student recruitment,…

This dissertation demonstrates the interdisciplinary integration of critical appreciative inquiry (a qualitative planning process focused on inclusion in decision-making) and multi-attribute utility theory (a quantitative evaluation process focused on rationality in decision-making). Principles of positive psychology and decision-making underlay…

The pandemic brought new attention to the challenges high schools face, and, concurrently, communities are raising their expectations for graduates and demanding that high schools set students up to succeed and persist with college and career. While districts are creating inspiring visions for high school graduates and aspirational descriptions of…

This article describes how a large Institutional Research and Decision Support (IRDS) office engaged in efforts to promote culturally responsive and inclusive institutional research (IR) practices that take into account the increasingly diverse student, faculty, and staff populations we serve. We describe how we developed a diversity, equity and…

In the fall of 2019, our large southeastern metropolitan university launched a campus strategically situated in downtown Orlando. As we all remember, in the spring of 2020, as our campus was starting to build momentum as a student and community-centered hub, the world shut down because of a global pandemic. Our challenges over the last several…

This article critically examines how selected schools in Qwaqwa (a remote town in the eastern Free State province of South Africa) imagine and "image" schooling through mission and vision statements, mottos, and emblems. We use the word "image" to refer to the way in which schools often use images to represent particular views…

Policy cycles are initiated via a variety of context-bound causal drivers. In situations where systemic reform is desired, agenda-setting is vital to this process. This paper examines 'The National Discussion on Scottish Education', which was a sequence of stakeholder engagements promoted as a listening exercise to enable policy agenda-setting for…

Universities can play a key role in contributing to a sustainable future for our planet and its inhabitants. In times of constant changes, there is a growing urgency to reflect on the vision of universities as well as their respective practices and projects that can promote the creation of sustainable societies. As is evident in scholarly…

Leaders of state agencies and systems of higher education (SHEEOs) are in unique positions to expand higher education's positive impact on the human condition through an intentional and systematic focus on educational equity. The opportunities and challenges are noteworthy, and the authors of this paper sought to identify these. It is also the…

Purpose: This study aims, first of all, to analyze the extent to which Italian higher education institutions declare their mission statements in their official documents; then, to examine their content; and finally, to investigate whether mission statements include considerations on sustainability dimensions. Design/methodology/approach: After a…

Proponents of social justice and equity in higher education declare a need to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices into curricula, student support services, hiring practices and professional development, as well as system-wide mechanisms for students, faculty, and staff of color to better care for and retain an increasingly…