The higher education Spring semester of 2020 was heavily impacted by stakeholders' calls for a complete shutdown of in-person gatherings. This call to action forced instructors and students to transition from face-to-face education to the virtual, online classroom. Institutions were given a few days to 2 weeks for this transition. During this…

Background: The National Science Foundation (NSF) and other organizations have spent millions of dollars each year supporting well-designed educational innovations that positively impact the undergraduate engineering students who encounter them. However, many of these pedagogical innovations never experience widespread adoption. To further the…

The 2022 Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Blended Learning Symposium was a response to the events of the past decade, such as an absence of a concerted blended learning program, the pandemic, flagging student interest in higher education, technology's explosive development, and pressures to reconsider what constitutes a responsive and effective…

This chapter delineates the consortial activities of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) to explore models of undergraduate research and to address the impact of undergraduate research on faculty workload. The significant progress made on the member campus of the University of Wisconsin-Superior over the last 10 years is…

Much of the literature criticizing university-based school leadership preparation programs concludes that programs are, at best, reluctant to change, a conclusion often based more on anecdotal stories than a more systematic inquiry. This article provides evidence on the extent of change in programs since passage of the "Standards for Advanced…

From the fall of 2008 through the spring of 2011, 47 colleges and universities, organized and supported by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), administered the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) to their students. The CLA is a test of critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and written communication developed by the…

The Leadership Training Consortium (LTC) integrated academic preparation with reality-based school clinical experiences to prepare school administrators for certification. Although a suitable response to external reform demands, LTC faced significant barriers because it challenged established rules and norms. (SK)

Backers of Western Governors University hope it will revolutionize the ways colleges compete for students, professors teach, and education is measured, and believe the virtual university can help contain the costs of educating growing numbers of students in the 16 participating states. However, the administration faces challenges in areas of…

Reflections on a year-long demonstration project infusing the principles and practices of career education throughout the divisions and departments of a major State university are presented in this document for use in institutional renewal in higher education along the lines of the education-work problem. Institutional renewal is discussed in…