Engineering graduates are facing changing requirements regarding their competencies, as interdisciplinarity and globalization have transformed engineering communities into collaboration arenas extending beyond uniform national, cultural, contextual and disciplinary settings and structures. Engineers no longer manage their daily tasks with plain…

The period 1995 to 2005 was one of significant turbulence for Ontario colleges, marked by increasing globalization, immigration, disruptions in the labour market, new technologies and dramatic reductions in government operating grants. This study examines how colleges and their leaders responded to those strategic challenges in their official…

The call to be strategic--and with it the concept of strategic management--can bring to mind a wide range of definitions, and there is now a huge array of academic literature supporting the different schools of thought. At a basic level, however, strategic thinking is probably most simply about focusing on the whole, rather than the part. In…

When Arthur Stellar came to Massachusetts' Taunton Public Schools in 2005, he knew that part of his job as superintendent would be cost cutting. That's no easy task without sacrificing the quality of education the district provided. How to decrease what you spend without eliminating vital resources? One way, Stellar says, is to assess what you're…

In this article, the author discusses responsibilities that accompany leadership roles, explaining that difficult situations can often teach leaders valuable lessons about principles, loyalty, and their own strength of character. Examples of challenging situations encountered on his own career path are shared. Guiding principles for achieving…

In today's globalizing and hypercompetitive marketplace, knowledge and learning are the only capabilities that can provide sustained competitive advantage. "Knowledge" is the content of learning, and a firm gains competitive superiority either by knowing something that its competitors do not know or by having a certain type of knowledge that…

The University of Western Ontario, having established a fully functional continuing medical education (CME) office over the last 4 years, needed to plan the future for its academic CME unit. It needs a method for evaluating the progress and shaping the organizational future of the CME unit. A literature search and consultations suggested focus…

This article describes the design and evaluation approaches to address the complexity posed by systems change initiatives. The role of evaluations in addressing the following issues is briefly reviewed: moving from strategic planning to implementation, impacts on system-level coordination, anticipated timeline of impact, and individual level…

Most "performance evaluation" or "performance development" programs in higher education today are little more than metrically-weak, bureaucratic programs aimed simply at establishing a legally-grounded employee record and a rough basis for merit increases. This article outlines the rationale and procedural framework for a talent development and…

Recent discussions among HR practitioners in higher education have focused on talent management; specifically, the concept of developing a college or university talent management approach balanced between planning and action. Talent management as a planning tool looks very similar to workforce planning, but where HR will experience a real…

Conditions for teaching and learning in higher education are changing and, thereby, demand development in teaching practices and the student learning experience. This paper explores some issues and processes in relation to strategic change in higher education institutions (HEIs), with a focus on educational developers and their ability to…

This paper presents an investigation of management accounting in four major Italian universities, which have been struggling to build their strategy in a context of significant change. Following many OECD countries the Italian government has been changing its higher education system by giving more autonomy to universities. These changes pose a…

Dramatic reductions in the dollars available for public education require a new and systemic approach to balancing school district budgets. This manual provides numerous examples of successful budget reduction strategies based on a six-step process that has demonstrated its effectiveness in small, medium, and large school districts. Supported by…

The purpose of this research study was to acquire greater insight into how educational leaders learn to develop strategies for their institution. Through a better understanding of the process by which such learning occurs, the researcher sought to uncover the factors that facilitate or impede these learning opportunities, particularly with regard…

Fifty years ago, state policymakers and higher education officials adopted California's Master Plan for Higher Education. This plan still largely defines policies concerning the state's public higher education systems: the California community colleges (CCC), the California State University (CSU) system, and the University of California (UC)…