Learning Resources

Abstract: The path to a healthy, just, and sustainable future for all current and future generations of humans and other biological species will require a transformative change in thinking values and action by all individuals and institutions in the next two decades. The institutions within higher education bear a moral responsibility to increase the awareness, knowledge, skills, and values needed to change the collective mind-set. Because it prepares most of society’s professionals and leaders, higher education plays a critical but often-overlooked role in making this vision a reality. This article explores how higher education would model sustainability as a fully integrated community intricately connecting learning, research, operations, purchasing investments, and work with local and regional communities. The envisioned framework for higher education will result in the interdisciplinary, systemic learning and practice needed to provide the educational experience for graduates to lead society on a sustainable path. It provides several examples of colleges and universities that have made some of these changes with an emphasis on curriculum connected to other college and university functions. It also suggests a new role for college and university planners in this transformation and provides other sources of information on the changes that are happening in higher education.

Abstract: Four distinct waves can be discerned in the history of American higher education. The 85 years before the Civil War were characterized by the founding of hundreds of liberal arts colleges. The post–Civil War era saw the majority of these small colleges disappear, replaced by public land-grant schools. Around the turn of the last century, the giants of American industry led the founding of the great private research universities. The term "megaversity" entered the American lexicon after World War II, when thousands of returning GIs swelled the ranks of higher education; the second half of the 20th century also witnessed the proliferation of community colleges. The fifth great wave is now breaking, with for-profit competition and revolutionary teaching technologies among its main characteristics.

Abstract: One of the major issues in strategic planning is moving the academic strategic plan from planning to implementation. This article suggests that there are several effective implementation methods: using the budget, using participation, using force, establishing goals and key performance indicators, working within the human resource management system, using the reward system, using faculty and staff development, working with institutional culture, working with or around tradition, developing and using change champions, and building on systems that are ready for or are easily adaptable to strategic change.

Abstract: Leveling or even declining enrollment and the current economic recession in higher education have forced many colleges to suspend or cut back plans for new construction and to consider the re-use and recycling of existing buildings. One candidate for rehabilitation: the campus chapel. The possibilities were examined at a two-day conference at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio February 26-27, which provided the basis for this article.