The political, social, and institutional environments in which contemporary universities operate have changed rather dramatically over the past two decades in ways that threaten the resilience of the academic core, both in its ability to map knowledge comprehensively and also to maintain a balance between the branches of the humanities, social…

Enacting STEM education reform is a complex task and there are a variety of approaches that might be selected by change agents. When working on an institutional change project to impact multiple parts of the STEM education system, teams of change agents may select multiple strategies and tactics to enact at one time and over multiple years of a…

Institution-wide curriculum change is a costly, time-intensive and politically fraught undertaking. It is a challenge identifying who has responsibility for the curriculum and who is empowered to change it. The unbundling of the traditional tri-partite academic role of teaching, research and service leaves a gap of who in those communities decides…

Teaching-focused professional development (PD) programs offered at institutions of higher education (IHEs) are uniquely positioned to be levers of change that improve the quality of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in ways that broaden participation in STEM education, workforce development, and…

Alumni demographics are rapidly changing, and alumni associations are looking for new ways to increase alumni engagement. Using Lewin's (1947) organizational change theory and Homans's (1958) social exchange theory, this study examines two Research 1 institutions in a comparative case study. By comparing the experiences of two institutions, alumni…

At the intersection of the fields of engagement and organization development lie the strategies, structures, and processes of community-engaged praxis. This qualitative inquiry focused on the experiences of community engagement professionals at an urban, state-related research university. This study provided an understanding of the activities that…

The sabbatical provides an important illustration of the changing nature of academic life and is a symbol of the growing demands of performativity. Drawing on historical literature and archival sources concerning university sabbaticals at Australian and English universities, the paper demonstrates that underlying assumptions about its purposes…

In today's universities, women are still underrepresented in senior leadership positions. The research-focused systems and structures that support the progression of men often work against women who are drawn to alternative career paths within the academy for a variety of reasons. UK universities have seen an increase in teaching-focused career…

Although the Belmont Report and associated federal regulations were written to protect individual research participants from undue risk and harm, Community-Based Participatory Research teams are concerned about insufficient protection of ethical concerns on a community level. This multi-case study examines the process institutional actors at two…

This study explores the agency of academics and the structures that enable or impede agency in curriculum change. The study was conducted at a research university that experienced curriculum change in two waves: the first on a departmental level, and the second as a university-wide curriculum change. Interviews were conducted with the same…

The abrupt onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced a dramatic shift in higher education. Over time, the prolonged and cyclical nature of public-health restrictions conditioned students, faculty, and staff to adopt a crisis mindset as their baseline. Moving from crisis to recovery therefore posed unique obstacles at both individual (e.g. anxiety,…

A case study at a large, public research university was conducted to understand how post-striving environments, defined by those universities that achieved very high research activity classification, influence campus structures and practices related to faculty and organizational approaches to pedagogy, teaching, and learning. Participants…

Under the context of globalization and marketization, the internationalization of higher education has become a common pursuit of nations and higher education institutions. Nonetheless, current studies on the internationalization of higher education are still largely dominated by the westernized paradigm. There is relatively limited research on…

Most higher education institutions in the United States are bound to the triad's regulations, but their methods for integrating external policies with internal ones are unstudied. Employing a single-case, embedded design, this qualitative study centers on a midsize public, research institution in the eastern United States to explore how one higher…

Contexts, knowledge, and theory matter for faculty development (also known as staff, academic, or educational development) because of the complexity of higher education and therefore of faculty professional development. This paper attempts to unpack this complexity by examining higher education contexts more closely, in particular: academic…