Next Generation Equity

For the past decade forward thinkers in higher education have been researching, advocating and exploring equity as a goal and catalyzing concept. Much has been learned throughout the academy, from the examination of individual assignments in a course section all the way to system-wide policy and analysis. Equity thinking is now found throughout higher education,…

Organizational Matters

At a gathering of education and non-profit leaders, I was asked to facilitate a conversation, to provide a “spark.” The organizers gave me a prompt, a statement as the basis of a short presentation. The prompt queried the effectiveness of networks of institutions to advance change. Do they? The organizers wanted to get the participants…

Oh So Many Costs

The value of a college education. The value proposition. The importance of getting that degree. The college experience. All of us who work in higher education, at one level or another, buy into the value of what a good college education can to do improve a student’s life. We see the benefits regularly, from the…

Life on a Tightrope: Where Are The Nets?

Nicholas Kristof is an award-winning reporter for the New York Times, and husband to Sheryl WuDunn, a business executive and writer. The couple often work together and have won two Pulitzer prizes. In 2020 they wrote Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, a close look at the Oregon community that was Kristof’s childhood home. A sobering…

On Coaching – With Wit & Humor

Business books are usually serious, grounded in wisdom, data, and an unshakeable faith that reading to learn will facilitate improvement. We don’t read business books for pleasure; we read them for action. As a literary form, they are inherently earnest. It’s the outlier that often defines the norm. The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More…

In Praise of the Field Trip

On a chilly, grey Chicago afternoon not that long ago, I drove to the Pullman National Monument. The rain was intermittent and traffic thin. I was a tourist in my own city, pulling into an empty parking lot and wondering if others found nineteenth century labor history equally fascinating. Short answer: very few people were…

Honoring Chandler Davidson, Social Justice Scholar and Teacher

Good teachers teach students a subject. Great teachers do that and more. They change how we think. Chandler Davidson was a great teacher. I was fortunate to learn from him in my undergraduate days at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Davidson, sadly, recently passed away. Reading his obituary brought back memories and a deeper appreciation…