Discusses organizational changes in educational institutions needed to attract minority students to the health professions and retain them, focusing on the University of Massachusetts Medical Center program and its initiatives for high school and college students. The program is increasing enrollment and retention of minorities at the medical…

School reform efforts require teaching teamwork and goal setting to school personnel. Describes a number of strategies for managing organizational change with examples at specific schools. Lists Coalition of Essential Schools materials. (MLF)

Common sense proposals for school restructuring suggest promising directions, but issues of the content needed to give educational direction and show how to link the factors that influence this content must be addressed. An agenda of content for teacher commitment and competence is proposed. Problems of linkage are addressed. (SLD)

Some organizations are having difficulty with the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach. Problems appear to come from reliance on prepackaged TQM programs, large-scale, diffuse implementation, mass training programs, measurement paralysis, overemphasis on tools, process selection, outmoded reward structures, and simplistic views of change and…

This study examined three districts that redesigned teaching, two with career ladders and one with shared governance. The reforms, both professional and bureaucratic, had important consequences for the process and outcomes of the redesign of teaching. Discrete organizational and political factors were identified. (TJH)

Metropolitan universities are in the forefront of developing new administrative approaches to support and expand minority opportunities in higher education. Three design principles are at the heart of successful efforts to institutionalize diversity: strategic planning; the learning model; and integration across goals and functions. The experience…

Assessment can be viewed as innovation to be adopted by the people in an institution. It is up to leaders in higher-education institutions to identify early-adopter and majority groups of faculty in schools, colleges, and departments and work with them to adapt assessment to local conditions in a way that overcomes any perceived disadvantages.…

Assessment can have a profound transformational impact on a college or university, but for this to occur, such core values as improvement of student learning through collection of performance-related data must be integrated into the institutional culture. At Truman State University (Missouri), an initially modest commitment to improving student…

Describes the faculty development efforts at eight medical schools participating in a large-scale medical curriculum development project, exploring faculty-development topics and the methods and ways the institutions motivated faculty to participate. Outcome measures used to gauge program effectiveness are also discussed. Concludes that approaches…

Discusses the changing environment of the academic library, highlighting the role of collection development librarians and listing issues for collection development officers: ownership/access, consortia, collections analysis, intellectual property/fair use, public relations, allocation formulas, library research, collection balance, rising costs,…

New technologies lead higher education institutions to question their academic structures and processes, but effective implementation of the technologies and positive changes in traditions will occur only if basic research about teaching and learning is incorporated into discussions and planning. Issues related to instruction, faculty development,…

The challenge of recruiting, retaining, and retraining information technology (IT) staff in colleges and universities affects the entire institution, not just the IT organization. Some of the issues surrounding the projected IT staffing crisis are outlined, and steps campus IT leaders can take to minimize the effect of staff turnover on…

This article presents an overview of a research project that was designed as a way to understand the role of Australian academic librarians in internationalising library, university, and higher education practice. In an attempt to discover what it is that librarians actually do, a survey of university librarians was undertaken to find how they…

Leading the modern university in the twenty-first century is a nearly impossible task. According to Parker Palmer (2006), the answer for all university presidents and faculty alike lies not in looking outward at competing demands, but in facing inward. Palmer would agree that new leadership is needed for new times, but it will not come from…

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on organizational learning and the learning organization, sets out key concepts in each area, and reviews the way that organizational learning and the learning organization have been applied within higher education.