Senior leadership teams are the key decision-makers invested with authority who work collectively to achieve organizational goals. While there is a rich literature on this topic across many disciplines, there is a dearth of research on this topic in higher education. In this article we argue for the need for research on senior leadership teams…

This toolkit helps design teams engage in this process of implementing the "Design for Equity in Higher Education" model. For each phase of the model, this toolkit provides a short description and offers some questions and suggestions to guide practice. [For the companion report, "Design for Equity in Higher Education," see…

This article presents a model of shared equity leadership that helps transform campus cultures so that students, faculty, staff, and administrators from all backgrounds experience greater inclusion and ameliorates equity gaps. The research team studied campuses that have made diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) a campus-wide priority and made…

In this report, the second in the On Shared Equity Leadership series, we highlight four distinct ways to structure Shared Equity Leadership (SEL) that we observed from our participating institutions. We lay the groundwork for understanding these structures by first describing some of the more common or traditional ways that diversity leadership…

A customized guide about liberatory design thinking processes that have been tested within college settings to support changes that enhance equity in policies and practices within institutions. This research is based on case studies of several institutions, including focus group interviews with the campus design teams and an analysis of artifacts.…

In this article we report on our examination of the challenges faced by four successful and long-standing national STEM reform communities. Drawing primarily on interview data from a large-scale, multi-year study informed by literature on "communities of practice" (CoPs) (Wenger et al. 2002), we describe five categories of challenges…

This study broadens our understanding of conditions that shape faculty composition in higher education. We surveyed academic deans to evaluate their views on the professoriate, values, pressures, and practices pertaining to the use of non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF). We utilized [ordinary-least-squares] OLS regression to test a model for…

In 2015, the University of Southern California (USC) began a longitudinal, mixed-methods evaluation of the Thompson Scholars Learning Communities (TSLC), a comprehensive college transition program that provides students with multiple, integrated types of support. The evaluation as a whole examined whether, how, and why TSLC, as implemented at the…

This report presents an innovative approach for higher education institutions to better support students from diverse backgrounds. It explores how colleges and universities can fulfill a student success agenda through the creation of a diverse infrastructure that enables the overall institution to effectively mobilize to serve diverse student…

This study examines the values held by 264 academic deans and the decisions they make pertaining to supporting non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF). Multiple analyses are utilized to examine the prevalence of supportive policies for both full- and part-time NTTF, as well as the extent to which deans' values are associated with the existence of these…

Why are so many non-tenure-track faculty being hired? The answer may at first seem so obvious as to make the question itself seem absurd. Most department chairs, deans, and tenured or tenure-track faculty members would likely point to budget shortfalls, last-minute increases in enrollments, and the inability to win approval for new tenure-track…

In this article, the authors explain why examining the way institutions model democracy on campus is an important, but often overlooked, step in advancing students' democratic learning. First, they note how a decline in shared governance produces an educational environment that adversely affects students' civic inclinations and agency. Next, they…

The study advances higher education leadership and change scholarship by examining a mostly unexplored area--the convergence between grassroots leadership with top-down leadership. The study is framed by two theories: tempered radicals framework and distributed leadership. Three common example of convergence are described as well as strategies for…

Changing structures may be a less important factor in creating an effective approach to governance than leadership, relationships, and trust.

The question addressed in this article and one that has been the focus of the author's research is: how can colleges and universities have greater success with collaborative work? The author argues that to foster group and cross-divisional activities that have trouble succeeding in a context structured to support solo work, academic organizations…