A blueprint for effective university leadership in Philadelphia
The College Ed Opportunity
4 local universities will exist searching for new presidents in the next couple of years. Let's be sure, a longtime college president says, they are principled leaders who can help transform the region.
Aug. 04, 2021
In his first printing conference as new president of Temple University last month Jason Wingard demonstrated that he understands at to the lowest degree i complication of the job he is about to undertake: For alter to exist meaningful and enduring, it must connect past, present, and hereafter.
Wingard referenced his passion for the university, going dorsum to his eight-year-old self, listening intently to inspirational advice from legendary Temple basketball coach, John Chaney. Then he articulated iii guiding themes for his leadership: to be main ambassador; to raise Temple'south value suggestion; and to promote community engagement, standing Temple's identity every bit Philadelphia'southward university.
Good start, President Wingard!
Wingard is the newest university president in Philadelphia at a time when nosotros are about to see a tremendous turnover in who leads our higher-education institutions. Penn's Amy Gutmann is leaving side by side June to become President Biden's ambassador to Deutschland, awaiting Senate approval; Widener'due south Julie Wollman is leaving her post to go back to teaching; La Salle'due south Colleen Hanycz departed in June, for the presidency of Cincinnati's Xavier University; and Drexel's John Fry announced he'south ready to move on sometime before or around the terminate of his contract in two years.
This could have huge implications for non merely higher ed in Philly, merely for the urban center itself. Our region has a adventure to lead the nation in higher education reform—reform that is crucial to democracy, to ensure the story of the 21st century is one of economic equality, rather than farther stratification.
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Philadelphia, the Quaker Urban center, has a long tradition of equity and access. Benjamin Franklin founded the Academy of Pennsylvania to provide an instruction based on praxis, the combination of theory and exercise, for a broader grouping than those educated at Harvard, which was focused predominantly on preparing elite young men to be church leaders.
Gutmann honored this tradition, in part with her efforts to ensure the university was accessible to beginning-generation college students, who at present make up one in seven of the school's undergraduate population. At Drexel, for his part, Fry has strived to brand his university a cardinal to creating economical growth in the surrounding expanse with Schuylkill Yards, Drexel Square and customs development work, and in the urban center writ large through his leadership of the Chamber of Commerce.
Our region has a take chances to lead the nation in college education reform—reform that is crucial to republic, to ensure the story of the 21st century is 1 of economic equality, rather than further stratification.
Nosotros at present have the opportunity to build on what these leaders, and the other two approachable presidents, have started. Higher education has a special role in creating opportunities for the urban center and its residents, both through the brain power of university research and by tapping into the homo uppercase nascent in the city.
A proposed agenda for new college and university presidents
Lead Regional Cooperation
For too long, the region'south university presidents have been working in silos, focused on their ain institutions and missing the opportunity to combine efforts. Information technology's now time for universities and colleges to cooperate. Competing for the diminishing number of traditional-age upper-middle-class students has never made sense—or been equitable.
Local institutions, for example, exercise not compete for the millions of Americans who have earned some higher credits just no degree. They accept never competed to serve what is now the New Majority in college education (first-generation, students of color, adults, and military veterans). What'southward needed at present is a regional, cooperative programme to serve the New Majority. And nosotros need academy presidents who volition lead this attempt.
I'm astounded at how little Philadelphia-area college and university presidents communicate. If they talked with each other more they might detect that each establishment had its unique role but that the whole tin can exist more than the sum of its parts.
I have direct experience in the value of inter-institutional cooperation. For 13 years, I participated in the Illinois Council of Public University Presidents, and I served iii years equally the group's convener. If information technology was Midweek at 3 pm, the 12 Illinois public academy presidents were on a conference call. Each of usa, of grade, remembered our obligation to our own university, but the calls were essential to our amend serving students land-wide.
Higher didactics has a special role in creating opportunities for the city and its residents, both through the brain ability of academy enquiry and past tapping in to the human being capital nascent in the city.
Under University of Illinois President Tim Killeen and Executive Vice President Barbara Wilson (now president of the University of Iowa), the state's powerful and mammoth flagship found ways to cooperate with the small state regional universities. For case, the University of Illinois sponsored articulation recruiting events with less-well-known Illinois universities on the theory that the smaller campuses were the right places for many students.
The Illinois multi-campus cooperation served u.s. well during the pandemic. University of Illinois epidemiologists provided detailed scientific information to supplement what we were learning from the CDC. Together we worked out shared principles providing unity in our response, while at the same time assuasive for local differences in implementation.
Develop Innovative Pathways from Community College to Four-Twelvemonth Universities
These pathways get in across articulation agreements. Loftier schoolhouse graduates should be able to enroll full-time in two-degree programs (associate and bachelor's) with the balls of customs colleges and universities sharing advising and financial back up over the iv years. Such programs exist, as at Governors State University in Illinois, where I served as president for 13 years. We should steal the idea for Philly.
Encourage kinesthesia and staff to decline old models of education in favor of the harder task of of pedagogy to students' strengths
Colleges and universities can draw on inquiry washed past the Gallup organization and by scholars like Shaun Harper at the University of Southern California (formerly at the University of Pennsylvania) to transform institutions where New Majority students can thrive. For example, the enquiry shows that graduates who had a mentor and professors who cared well-nigh them as people, and were encouraged to exist excited nigh learning are three times more likely to succeed post-graduation. Ensuring that happens starts at the top.
Same with breaking down silos inside the university: To create successful citizens who can back up themselves and their families requires a combination of skills. Universities must observe means for English majors to learn about technology and for engineering science majors to study philosophy and history. Education programs must prepare Thou-12 teachers who can bring out the best in kids, which goes a long way in keeping our streets rubber and in educating future leaders..
Characteristics to wait for in future university presidents
Accomplishments in leading existent-life modify
What has the presidential candidate done to leverage intellectual capital to help local government and/or nonprofits? Does the individual take experience in applying inquiry to real-life situations? What nearly cross-sector collaboration?
These prior experiences take sometimes been achieved non-traditionally. The conventional academic route—department chair, dean, provost, president—is not e'er the career route for true change-makers. For case, I'm currently working with a distinguished faculty member who has initiated transformations at her institution from the platform of her endowed professorial chair. She too has community-based philanthropy in her groundwork.
A set of principles from which to lead
Presidential search committees should ask for an articulation of these principles and heed for those that reflect core academic values, like academic freedom and responsibility. Potential presidents must sympathise that frail balance. I'thou not a fan of presidential hires from outside the academic world. Studies have shown that it takes at least x years to gain expertise in just about anything—from playing chess to understanding a university. It's also true that insiders know how to accomplish deep, lasting change in ways that newcomers simply cannot fathom. At the same time, potential university presidents should know how to use the intellectual ability of the university to the public foursquare.
Courage, character, and integrity
These personal characteristics are essential but difficult to ascertain from documents and interviews. It's important to remember that leaders with these qualities are not e'er universally loved. If they take courage, they have sometimes put the institution's best interest above their own popularity.
A sense of humour
They are going to need information technology. It's also truthful that a sense of humour is usually based on a sense of perspective.
Elaine Maimon , PhD, is author of Leading Academic Change: Vision, Strategy, Transformation . Follow @epmaimon on Twitter.
Header photo of Amy Gutmann courtesy Flickr 
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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/higher-ed-opportunity/