Edgar H. Schein’s Organizational Culture and Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2010), now its fourth edition, is one of the most important works in explaining organizational culture as well as defining the field. The title is today much more than a course in an MBA; it rates a wikipedia site and can be its own degree program at…
Category: Deanspeak
Posts about the wide realm of higher education from a deanly perspective
Innovation and Differentiation
Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring’s The Innovative University is an important book. Christensen is the Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Eyring is a long-time administrator at Brigham Young University-Idaho. Bringing them together are shared ties with Harvard and BYU-Idaho, two very different institutions who have charted different paths towards success. Despite a baffling…
Metaphors and Institutional Understanding
Change is a constant if an academic unit is going to stay active and engaged in the professional world, both within and outside of academia. Change does not come easy to higher education, however, as its benefits are rarely clear while its costs are all too apparent. As a dean, I do much of my…
2011 Convocation
August 30, 2011 Welcome, faculty, staff, colleagues, alumni, friends and above all, new students to Convocation. On behalf of everyone at Curry College, we are absolutely thrilled you are here – and I am honored to speaking before you this morning. Now you may be wondering – why am I here? And what, exactly, is…
Academia’s Dilemma
Important and interesting questions are often difficult for higher education to digest. Michael Pollan raises just such a vital question in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The book has reached into America’s public intellectual consciousness in a thoughtful and profound way. It is related, perhaps, to a similarly provocative…
Career Advice Can Appear in the Strangest Forms
Career development centers are hot spots on college campuses. Prospective students and their parents inspect them, faculty seek their perspective on student success and failure in the world of work, employers liaise with them to find talent, and alumni offices partner with them to keep graduates engaged. In a world that demands outcomes, higher education…
The Educator’s Dilemma
Mark Kurlansky’s The Last Fish Tale: the fate of the Atlantic and survival in Gloucester, America’s oldest fishing port and most original town is not a particularly good book. Written without great care and poorly thought through, the book teases with the engaging anecdote and arresting observation, but disappoints when it comes to more substantive…