This research focuses on identifying successful approaches used by university ombuds offices to enact change regarding dispute resolution options within their academic institute. The field of Ombuds has grown steadily in North America since the 1970s and is widely used by private industry, academia, and government organizations to deploy…

In universities worldwide, there has been a movement away from mono-disciplinary towards multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary education, motivated by the notion that complex societal issues call for more than a single disciplinary perspective. To prepare students for a role in addressing these issues, flexibility within educational programs is…

Informal academic conversations constitute a valuable addition to the repertoire of academic development initiatives. This article proposes that a Change Laboratory methodology may enhance the productivity of such conversations. Support for this proposal comes from a detailed analysis of participants' transformation of conversations on individual…

Background: Evidence exists that some aspects of engineering as a disciplinary culture are problematic for students' mental health and help-seeking attitude (HSAs). In order to promote positive cultural change, it is critical to further characterize those problematic aspects of engineering culture. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to expand…

I am an example of a transformed higher education administrator. In this essay, I describe how my journey to an education doctorate impacts my work as a scholar-practitioner in higher education. The CANDEL program challenged what I thought I understood about the status quo in higher education with respect to race, socioeconomic impacts,…

US colleges and universities have long been the envy of the world. Institutional autonomy has fostered creativity among faculty, students, and staff. But this autonomy means that colleges tend to create their own solutions for every need. As a result, higher education suffers from costly redundancies that drive tuitions ever upward, putting higher…

It's time to design the next iteration of higher education. There is no question that higher education faces significant challenges. Most of today's universities aren't prepared to tackle issues like demographic change, the continued defunding of public education, cost pressures, and the opportunities and challenges of educational technologies.…

In "Equity Learning Communities," Daniel Reinholz recommends sustained, collaborative professional development group meetings as a launchpad for higher education instructors to enhance classroom equity and inclusivity. In Reinholz's approach, community members make use of debrief sessions, collaborative problem solving, and empirical…

This study analyzes educators' conceptions of STEM education at the beginning of an online graduate course for in-service teachers. It offers a qualitative thematic analysis of educators' initial conception of STEM education and their roles as STEM educators through the use of concept maps and reflection statements. Conceptions of STEM varied…

For 15 years, Complete College America (CCA) has been building movements for scaled systemic change and transforming institutions. While CCA has expanded their efforts over the past 15 years, they have studied the best ideas and co-designed the most promising practices to move the needle on college completion. They have learned a lot about how to…

Purpose: The purpose of this practitioner paper is to explore whether the principles of Design Thinking and the Lean Startup could be employed in developing a disruptive model for delivering educational programs within higher education in a way that attempts to eliminate the multitude of problems facing this industry, while simultaneously adhering…

Academic work in universities is in flux with staff increasingly being confronted with multiple and conflicting roles, often leading to academics experiencing feelings of fragmentation and despair. Though much has been written about the changing nature of academic work and its effects on the academic workforce, there has been less exploration of…

Despite decades of conversations about student engagement, student success is rarely measured in terms of the capabilities of students to learn with, from, and for others--what Clifton Conrad and Todd Lundberg define as collaborative learning. From their perspective, positioning individual learning as the cornerstone of a college education falls…

Transformative participatory approaches in education are positioned to challenge traditional models where instructors bear all responsibility for knowledge creation and learners are passive recipients of knowledge. The promotion of participatory learning and critical pedagogy is essential to helping professionals seeking to understand oppressive…

The researcher investigated how university faculty in graduate education programs incorporated multiple intelligences (MI) theory into their teaching strategies and acknowledged the interconnectedness of andragogy and MI theory. The researcher addressed the significant shift in teaching paradigms from traditional methods to approaches that foster…