Trusteeship - November/December 2023 - 32

FOSTERING CHANGE IN HIGHER EDUCATION
If you as a board member only hear about university successes,
your " Spidey sense " should tingle that perhaps you aren't actually
getting the full picture, and if nothing else, this is an indication that
your institution is not pursuing innovation vigorously enough.
The most important factor in whether a president stays for the
long haul and makes real change happen is the relationship with
their board. A collegial relationship with trusted advisors united
around a shared commitment to the institution goes a long way
toward making a presidency one that a person refuses to leave,
while a hostile relationship with a board is the fastest path to end a
presidency and force them to look elsewhere.
Of course, leadership transitions are necessary from time
to time. Ideally, planning for a transition starts long before a
presidency or other key role is open. UMBC and the University
System of Maryland, for example, started seriously discussing
and planning for Hrabowski's transition long before it happened.
The goal was to find a leader who would put their own mark on
the presidency, but who also would lead with the compassion,
innovation, and commitment to diversity and equity that were
hallmarks of Hrabowski's leadership and had become core to the
university's culture.
The search was deliberate, and in August 2022, Valerie Sheares
Ashby became just the sixth president of the young university.
" The challenges and opportunities our institution has today
aren't the same ones we had ten or even three years ago, so our
strategy and investments are of course evolving, " Sheares Ashby
recently said. " But our core commitments are, and must be, steadfast.
In our case, that means everything we do is animated by the
belief that you can't have excellence in higher education without
equity and inclusion. "
To ensure transitions that keep innovation on track, boards
should be talking to their presidents about succession planning
and building a bench. Not every promising leader can become
president, but having a bench of leaders from which to draw when
a president or other senior leader exits will increase the likelihood
of maintaining momentum on innovative practices until they reach
the point where they are embedded in the university culture.
And when it's time for a search, the process should focus on
identifying promising leaders who have demonstrated their capacity
for innovation and are willing to commit to their new post for
a while. Many talented administrators are capable of leading an
institution and see it as the natural progression of their career-but
they aren't excited about the transformation work required. Boards
should think twice about hiring those candidates.
32 TRUSTEESHIP NOV.DEC.2023 ©2023 AGB.ORG
The Bet We Have to Make
The typically slow pace of change within university administration
has led many to believe that universities cannot change-that
they're too cumbersome and bureaucratic to be responsive to students'
needs. Yet they made enormous changes to how they taught
and operated almost overnight when the pandemic hit.
When colleges and universities were forced to innovate, they
did-and quickly. Competition and fear of failure went out the
window because they had to.
Trustees can help create that same sense of cover now. They
can help leaders see that, just as with the pandemic, there is no
choice but to act. Changing attitudes about higher education and
shifting demographics have made the status quo no longer viable.
Institutions can try stop-gaps to manage that decline-doubling
down on competition for a limited pool-or they can take the long
view. They can do the hard work of transforming how they serve
students and the country.
That may come with short-term risk, but in the long run it's the
only bet worth making.
Bridget Burns, PhD, is the founding chief executive officer of the University
Innovation Alliance.
Endnotes
1. Susan D'Agostino, " More Traditional-Age Students Enroll at Fully Online Universities, "
Inside Higher Ed, October 13, 2022, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/10/14/
more-traditional-age-students-enroll-fully-online-universities.
2. National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, " Completing College: National and
State Reports with Six- and Eight-Year Completion Rates Dashboards, " November 29,
2022, https://nscresearchcenter.org/completing-college/.
3. IHI Multimedia Team, " Like Magic? ('Every System Is Perfectly Designed...'), " Institute
for Healthcare Improvement, August 21, 2015, https://www.ihi.org/communities/blogs/
origin-of-every-system-is-perfectly-designed-quote.
4. Kevin Carey, " The Incredible Shrinking Future of College, " Vox,
November 14, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/
college-enrollment-population-education-crash.
5. Kent McGuire, " A Majority of Public School Students Live in Low-Income Families, "
Philanthropy News Digest, January 26, 2015, https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/
news/a-majority-of-public-school-students-live-in-low-income-families.
6. Dick Startz, " First-Generation College Students Face Unique Challenges, "
Brookings Institution, April 25, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/
first-generation-college-students-face-unique-challenges/.
7. University Innovation Alliance, University Innovation Alliance 2022 Annual Report,
https://annualreport.theuia.org.
8. Bridget Burns and Alex Aljets, " Using Process Mapping to Redesign the Student
Experience, " Educause Review, March 26, 2018, https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/3/
using-process-mapping-to-redesign-the-student-experience.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/10/14/ https://www.nscresearchcenter.org/completing-college/ https://www.ihi.org/communities/blogs/ https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/ https://www.philanthropynewsdigest.org/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ https://annualreport.theuia.org https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/3/ http://www.AGB.ORG

Trusteeship - November/December 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Trusteeship - November/December 2023