The Board of Regents appointed President Thomas to the helm of Nuestra University, a large and urban Hispanic-Serving University. In the first years of his presidency, Nuestra achieved important milestone in its quest to better serve and graduate students from underrepresented populations. However, Thomas's hiring and presidency has faced critical…

UMass Boston has been a campus in turmoil for the past 20 months. Internal upheaval first became public in January 2017 when the UMass Board of Trustees (BoT) refused to extend Chancellor Keith Motley's contract. In March 2017 the trustees disclosed that the campus was facing a budget deficit of up to $30 million with just three months remaining…

Purpose: This study aims to describe and illuminate the ways in which Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU)--an urban, undergraduate institution with a strong focus on teaching, learning and related research and scholarship, and a substantial international student population--adapted to pandemic conditions in 2020 in an effort to meet community…

Universities consist of students, faculty and staff, interacting through multiple layers of organization and on a variety of time scales. They are complex adaptive systems (CAS) yet the bulk of scholarship on higher education analyzes them using conventional social science methods, with little work that tries to understand them using complexity…

This reflection centres on how existing tensions in academic development work were magnified and challenged as competing imperatives sought to (re)define the roles of academic developers at a UK university during the pandemic in 2020. In a situation of heightened anxiety amongst all stakeholders, issues relating to professional agency, expertise,…

To further live our mission, Marquette has launched many new initiatives over the past five years that strategically connect our university to our community. In this paper, we will highlight three of these initiatives. The first relates to connecting the anchor institutions in our neighborhood through an effort called Near West Side Partners. The…

What personal challenges and tactical problems arise when a leader attempts to turn around an educational organisation regarded as failing and not given much prestige by the media and wider public? The London Metropolitan University had for several years been designated by its regulator as 'At Higher Risk'. In 2012, it had lost its 'Highly Trusted…

Upholding an equity-focused mission can be challenging for administrators, particularly in light of recently implemented policies that center funding based on student performance. Based on interviews with administrators across four universities in the same state, this work examines the ways in which performance-based funding (PBF) requirements are…

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) is an urban, four-year, public institution serving over 30,000 students. Like other institutions, we were caught off-guard by the COVID-19 pandemic and scrambled to move our instruction online to comply with our state's stay-at-home order in mid-March 2020. The shift to remote…

University middle leaders play a significant role in change management. While research examines the outcomes of change management, far less attention has been paid to how middle leaders develop agency and negotiate their identities in achieving these outcomes. This study presents the cases of two middle leaders in Shanghai enacting a curriculum…

Internationalisation is a cross-cutting theme in the strategic plans of many universities, and an increased international profile is a core goal for many cities. At the same time, even the leaders of some of Europe's most avowedly outward-facing, 'global' universities have begun to prioritise relations with their city counterparts in recent years.…

The University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) is a public metropolitan university that has developed a highly collaborative relationship with the Greater Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (HC). This partnership unites several UCO divisions and the HC in support of a set of shared goals, articulated in UCO's "Vision 2020" strategic…

By using the concept of "alignment," this case study explores how a Sino-U.S. university partnership creates university transformation through the multitude of interconnections both within and between the two universities. The study investigates how the contextualized alignments of both universities co-shape and are impacted by the…

This study explores how the decentralization law of 1991 in the Philippines has provided the conditions for the interface of higher education and politics by virtue of Local Government Units (LGUs) establishment of Local Colleges and Universities (LCUs). Anchored on educational politics framework, it specifically looks at the experience of Mandaue…

The security of international students in regional higher education spaces in Australia has been overlooked. Contingency theory provides the framework for this case study to explore the organisational structure and support services relevant to a regional higher education space and how this impacts the security of international students. In-depth…