This research brief highlights three effective financing strategies that successful youth-serving organizations are using to maintain quality services despite difficult economic times. The brief provides examples of how organizations have implemented these strategies and offers tips to help leaders consider how best to adapt these strategies to…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") is a bimonthly report from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). This special issue includes the following articles: (1) Themes within the ARL Strategic Plan 2010-2012 (Charles B. Lowry); (2) ARL…

Purpose: The purpose of this case study is to describe the design and delivery of a leadership programme for a diverse group of clinicians and middle managers within a British mental health organisation. Design/methodology/approach: This paper shows how the course was co-designed between managers, clinicians and higher education, specifically to…

The "United States v. Fordice" was decided in the United States Supreme Court in 1992, and it represents the most recent ruling on desegregation for those states that have historically maintained racially segregated systems of higher education. This study raises the question of what would Mississippi higher education be without public…

Now that the first decade of the 21st century has been completed, the authors contend that it's time to stop talking about the qualities of 21st century schools and actually start being 21st century schools. The challenge for most school leaders in schools is not in establishing a relevant mission, but in being too cautious and deliberate about…

Data-driven planning or evidence-based decision making represents nothing new in its concept. For years, business leaders have claimed they have implemented planning informed by data that have been strategically and systematically gathered. Within higher education and student affairs, there may be less evidence of the actual practice of…

In an age of knowledge, the capacities of professional and continuing education to open up new networks, overcome organizational hurdles, and foster an environment for innovation have assumed great relevance. This article makes the case as to why. It discusses key forces driving change--the knowledge economy, demographics, technology, and…

Mergers are common phenomena in higher education institutions. Improving educational quality is typically one of the stated goals of university mergers. Yet, little information exists about how merging institutions approach this goal. This paper presents results from a study of planning documents created prior to four mergers in the Finnish higher…

Leadership is a discipline that has been studied to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Owing to the attention and emphasis that education has been subject to in recent decades, the study of successful school leadership presents an area worth examining (Smith & Piele, 1997). Therefore, the research underpinning this article…

Analysis of classroom use and utilization data provides essential information for strategic space planning. However, efforts to improve use and/or utilization metrics can be thwarted by ingrained cultural practices, campus politics, lack of understanding, failure to recognize the impact to programmatic needs, absence of a coordinated campus…

This article presents the text of a presentation given by California Council on Teacher Education (CCTE) executive secretary Alan H. Jones at the CCTE Fall Conference in San Diego on October 15, 2009. Jones explores the concept of marginalization, and explains why he believes it applies very appropriately to the field of teacher education and…

The literature on educational peer review (EPR) has focused on evaluating EPR's impact on faculty and/or student learning outcomes; no literature exists on the potential organizational impact. A qualitative (case study) research design explored perceptions of 17 faculty and 10 administrators within a school of nursing in an Ontario university…

To get a feel for the last time Vanderbilt University confronted economic volatility and stress similar to what U.S. colleges and universities have experienced over the past two years, the author carefully reviewed his predecessors' notes. His conclusion: the early 1930s. That was the last time a chancellor at Vanderbilt University detailed…

This article profiles Margaret A. Smith, superintendent of Volusia County School District in Florida. In the six years since her appointment as superintendent of Volusia County--a district that has 63,000 students in 16 cities, including Daytona Beach--Smith has had her share of success. But what makes her so different from other superintendents…

In 2007, New York University's Bobst Library assembled a group of staff charged with suggesting improvements to circulation policy. As a result of these efforts many changes were implemented at the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year, including extended loan periods and the elimination of routine daily overdue fines. The changes were…