Surveyed recipients of the Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate award given annually by the National Resource Center for The First-Year Student Experience and Students in Transition and Houghton Mifflin Company. Found that advocates played politics, worked across boundaries, had well-articulated plans, co-opted the opposition, tackled tough…

Describes all aspects of Olivet College's successful diversity initiative, which incorporated an institution-wide commitment to multiculturalism and minority student success. Efforts involved mission, curriculum, co-curriculum, students, faculty, and staff. Describes these strategies for the benefit of other institutions attempting to create an…

The organizational transformation process begun several years ago by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers has resulted in the association's once-solid financial base collapsing, bringing internal tensions about the transformation to the surface. Debate centers on the organization's ability to be a policy leader…

Presents a holistic ecclesial vision contained in the academic, practical, and ecumenical work of Letty Russell. Derives a systemic design of the Christian church that promotes it as a transformative agent in postmodern society from Russell. Suggests a theoretical model to make the church more proactive in contemporary society. (DSK)

Suggests that the new information services will be composed of interacting institutions and standards, that technologies and institutions can and should be designed together, and that the distinctive opportunities and requirements of each should be brought to bear on the other. (AEF)

A long-standing accountability system in Tennessee is now subject to change.

Efforts to create systemic change in most organizations stall despite an intense push from leadership because these efforts are built on a model that does not accurately represent how organizations truly operate. Reeves argues that most leaders attempt to communicate directives about new initiatives from the top layer of a hierarchy downwards.…

In this article, the author proposes to describe some of the developments that have taken place in public education in American Samoa in the past few years. This has really been a period of rapid change and although many challenges remain, there has been considerable progress on several fronts. One of the fundamental organizational reforms that…

This essay describes how University of Alaska Anchorage (a) mapped academic-based engagement activities into its institutional context and mission and (b) explored academic and administrative leadership strategies to reflect its commitment to engagement. Higher education governing bodies, legislators, administrators, and faculty increasingly…

Embedding community engagement into the fabric of the university requires a well articulated strategic vision. This article shares lessons learned by the president of a comprehensive research university, focusing primarily on two case studies, both urban institutions. The article discusses two strategic planning processes-one at the University of…

Illinois Wesleyan University's Ames Library opened in January 2002. The vision for this library focused on creating a user-centered arrangement of information regardless of format. Much of the library's collection was integrated during the move to the new building; however, several discrete collections remain separate. This article will discuss…

A theoretical model of collective learning has been developed based on complex systems theory. The need for collective learning is illustrated by an empirical study of an "unsuccessful" organizational-renewal project in a Swedish Telecom firm. The conclusion, using chaordic systems thinking as a diagnostic framework, is that its interior…

Purpose: To develop a theoretical model for strategic change that links learning in an organization to the strategic process. Design/methodology/approach: The model was developed from a review of literature covering a range of areas including: management, strategic planning, psychology of learning and organizational learning. The process of…

The last quarter-century bore witness to a sea change in academic involvement with commerce. Widespread university-based efforts to identify, manage, and market intellectual property (IP) has accompanied broad shifts in the relationship between academic and proprietary approaches to the dissemination and use of science and engineering research.…

This article explores the use of an evaluation model of learning and development utilizing formative, summative, and confirmative steps, along with a framework for developing evaluation tools aligned with organizational change goals. A case study is presented in which formative, summative, and confirmative evaluations were used to assess materials…