How can a degree program, general education program, or other course of study make substantial, widely appreciated improvements in who learns, what they learn, and how well they learn it? Under the right circumstances, such improvements are possible. What follows are suggestions, some counter-intuitive, that increase the chances of their being successful and sustained.

• Don't implement a change strategy by delegating each part of it to a different stakeholder—this recommendation for faculty, that one for the information technology unit, a third for administrators, a fourth for the assessment staff. Instead, work with a team composed of people from all those groups and more.
• Simultaneously upgrade content, deepen learning, and improve the program's ability to attract and retain a variety of students.
• But in doing so, take your time.
• Use technology as a lever for change, but slow down. Don't leap from one hot technology to the next.
• Find ways for faculty and students to save time.

Before elaborating on these suggestions, I'll explain why they allude to time so frequently.

"Their weapons include personal insults, threats and intimidation, hostile e-mails, public ridicule, and scornful interruptions. They hurt organizational performance as well as the people they target. In the environments that they poison, enthusiasm for work gives way to anxiety, resentment, and a longing to get out."

"The reluctance to adopt a code of conduct for faculty members stems in part from a belief also expressed in corporate workplaces: that geniuses must be jerks and that some belligerence, indifference to others, and rudeness are inseparable from the achievements of a Steve Jobs or Bobby Knight. Sutton counters this view by observing that not all successful people are jerks and that jerks succeed despite their cruelty to others, not because of it. I would add that the odds are slim that the professor yelling at the departmental secretary spends the rest of his day bringing about a Copernican revolution in his discipline. Much more frequently, no paradigm-shifting accomplishments offset his poor behavior."