Building Communities of Practice:

From Ferment to Focus,

From Context to Contact

Overview:

• National Trends: Six Big Issues Everyone Must Address

• Period of Transformation: Seven Points of Contact Where Intentional Leadership Can Make a Difference

• Leadership: Six Strategies for Results

• Convergence: Why Does the First Year of College Matter

• The IUPUI Story: One Example

Trend #1Finances: Money, Money, Money

• Federal Financial Aid: Higher Ed Reauthorization Act

• State support • Research• New Revenue

(1) Tuition(2) Reallocation—focus(3) Expanded markets

Trend # 2Technology

• Costs

• Transformative powers

• New generation of learners

Trend #3Accountability

• Rankings, ratings, and rantings: From USN&WR to “Measuring Up”

• Accreditation

• Moral responsibility: what DO our graduates know—and how do WE know?

• Globalization of learning

Trend #4Sense of Place

• Economic development

• Quality of life: for everyone

• Who’s coming to college

Ready for Tomorrow: A Report of the National Governors Association

• Income gap: $46,300 versus $21,400

• Cost/Benefit Gap: $1M• Pipeline Gap: 1/3 of

students who enter high school do not leave with a regular diploma (as high as 2/3 in urban schools)

• Expectation Gap: 90% of high school seniors expect to attend college

Who’s Coming to College (con)

• Reality Gap: For every 100 students who enter 9th grade, only 18 earn an associate’s degree in three years or a baccalaureate in six years

• Economic Gap: Upper income students are SEVEN TIMES more likely to complete a degree than low income

• Ethnicity Gap: White students are TWICE as likely as African American or Latino students to complete

The Challenge

• In the next 50 years, it is estimated that 97% of the NET change in the workforce will be accounted for by these very groups with the lowest college success rates

Trend #4Sense of Place

• Economic development

• Quality of life: for everyone

• Who’s coming to college

• Democratic society

Trend #5Portability of Credit

• What IS credit

• The “swirl”

• Life long learning and communities of practice

Trend #6Competition

Among traditional peers

With for-profits

With corporations: What IS workforce education

With the world

Transformation and Intentional Leadership

• Does the barrier between the 12th and 13th grades work anymore?

• What does “learning centered” leadership mean?

• Do academics lead student services?

• What about curriculum?• Civic engagement: why

now• Research for all?• What about the 21stC

faculty

Point of Contact #1Rethinking 10th to 14th Grades

• Seventh Grade: Gateway to College

• Individualized and customized learning

• Alignment

• Community colleges

• The first year of college

Point of Contact #2Being Learning Centered

• Faculty aren’t the focus anymore• Assessing learning• Implications of technology

a. Course transformationb. Electronic portfolio

• Meaning of the baccalaureate: Greater Expectations

Point of Contact #3Student Services

• Integration across functions

• Self-service

• Access to information anytime, anywhere

• Co-ownership of the learning record

• Managing diversity

Point of Contact #4Curriculum

• General education for the future• Productivity: Doing more with less

a. Technology and productivityb. More focusc. New degreesd. Interdisciplinary work

• Customized learning• Life long learning

Point of Contact #5Civic Engagement

• Why now?a. democratic societyb. economic developmentc. public good v/ private benefit

• Pedagogy of engagement/scholarship of engagement• Adding to the faculty and institutional “load”

a. faculty and staff time (conflicts of commitment)b. costsc. assessment and accountability

Point of Contact #6Research

• Rush to prestige

• Long term national interests

• Mission

Point of Contact #7The Faculty

• Remaking of the faculty

The 19th C Model No Longer Holds

• In the next decade, 40-60% of the current faculty will retire

• Women are 41% of the academic workforce now, and 45% of doctoral degree recipients are women

• 56% of PhD in engineering and computer science are earned by foreign-born nationals

• 28% of the full-time academic workforce is non-tenure track

• Since 1997, over half of all new full-time hires are non-tenure track

• 43% of the academic workforce is part-time

• People of color are 28% of enrollment but 14% of the faculty are non-white

• 32% of all enrollments are in proprietary schools whose faculty do not hold long-term appointments

• In 1999, 35% of doctoral students said they were becoming less interested in academic work

Point of Contact#7

• Remaking of the faculty

• Role differentiation

• Collaboration and teams

• Governance

• Preparing new faculty

Six Strategies for Results

• Clear vision

• Focus on students and learning

• Increasing productivity

• Long-term strategies

• Engaging the whole

• Adapt, reverse, regroup: change

Clear Vision

• Institutional vision and mission

a. Must drive goals and results

b. Should differentiate your campus: differentiating distinction

• Personal vision

• Alignment and Leadership

Students and Learning

• Creating new roles and rewards for faculty that depend on student success—the tenure trap and teams

• Scheduling courses for students and for student learning instead of faculty convenience

• Accommodating transfers: prior learning, portability and learning outcomes

• Owning student services

Productivity: More with less

• Teaching and learninga. How many courses for what purpose

and with what relationship with each other

b. Technology and time and costc. The real goals of learning: Grades?

Courses? Degrees? Competence?• Administration• Institutional focus—mission driven

Being Strategic

• Appointment cycle for chairs and deans

• Cumulative results

• Administrators’ Creed:

There are no crises

Keep your own score

Never tire of doing good

Plan your succession

Seeing the Whole

• Holding on to Proteus: The challenges and the points of transformational contact are so big and so diverse that no one person can shape or even manage them all, but only those leaders who understand the whole complex can hope to have meaningful tin results

• Strategic, cumulative incrementalism

Change is good (It’s OK to flip-flop with a purpose)

• Innovation, risk-taking, and leadership

• Assess and revise: the Culture of Evidence and the power of data

• Leading from behind

Convergence: The First Year

• Impact and consequences

• Focus: resources, time, energy

• When the first year is no longer a year: A new paradigm for the 21st C

IUPUI

• The Conceptual Framework: Seeing the whole picture

• Connections and Coordination: Seeking cumulative impact

• Coherence: Tools for meaning

Our Vision

The vision of IUPUI is to transform Indianapolis into one of the world’s best places to live, to work, and to learn through the discovery and use of knowledge (and in so doing, become one of the world’s best urban research universities)

Resources and References

• William Plater, “Toward an Inclusive Vision: Liberal Education and the New Century,”

• Mark Langseth and William Plater, Public Work and the Academy, Anker

• Alan Guskin and Mary Marcy,

More to come