Last week, I was at Providence’s Trinity Rep covering BIF2015, the Business Innovation Factory's summit of innovators.
It was BIF’s 11th summit, my fifth as a guest. I was attending under a quasi-media category called RCUS, standing for the BIF mantra of “Random Collisions of Unusual Suspects.”
BIF founder and "chief catalyst" Saul Kaplan opened the talks by noting that earlier in th...
What if schools in the U.S. treated their innovation and emerging technologies with as much glamour as they give to athletics? At the New England Board of Higher Education’s recent Advanced Manufacturing Problem Based Learning (AM PBL) Showcase, industry representatives addressed this question and discussed ways to improve the branding and appeal for STEM (science, technology, engineering and ma...
An increasing number of institutions are freeing up shelf space in their libraries and moving in student services as well as a coffee shop and other lures such as flexible seating arrangements. Librarians are taking down the silence signs in all but the quiet study room and urging members of the academic community to meet, talk, research and incubate new ideas collaboratively as well as to engage ...
After nearly 60 years of helping students afford college, Scholarship America unveiled its first public policy agenda offering a refreshing focus on “advancing equity in postsecondary education and strengthening support for low-to-moderate income students.”
The priorities:
Expand public-private partnerships
Look to the private sector for experimentation, innovation and best practice...
Not too many years ago, a school’s brand just was. Few people used the “b” word. A college or university went about its business, became known for particular strengths and weaknesses, accrued what we would now call brand attributes over time (party school, really hard to get in to, innovative curriculum), and, through word of mouth and its alumni, earned its reputation in the higher ed lands...
Deans of Women and the Feminist Movement: Emily Taylor’s Activism; Kelly C. Sartorius; Palgrave MacMillan Press (Historical Studies in Education) St. Martin’s Press; 2014.
Remember when every coeducational college or university had a “Dean of Women”? It was a powerful and influential position, at least for the “coeds” under her charge (and it was always “her”). The dean of women...
Whether dean, provost, or vice president for academic affairs, the role of the campus chief academic officer (CAO) has changed steadily from the on many current faculty and administrators remember when they began their careers. Along with traditional pressures related to governance, budgets and faculty professional development, CAOs also face new calls to raise their institutional ranking or to ad...
The last few months have brought changes in the leadership of public education in Massachusetts. The new secretary of education and chair of the Board of Higher Education both have deep expertise in education reform and accountability, and broad experiences in business. This new leadership could bring momentum for a "systems approach" to reduce the achievement gap and increase rates of high school...
It’s an especially bruising time for New England colleges and universities, which we now call higher education institutions (HEIs)—to cover all the new varieties and hybrids.
NEBHE has noted that the HEIs face threats based on shifts in academic content and delivery (increasingly online), student demography (diversifying but shrinking) and institutional finances (challenged). Plus, consid...
In a historic unanimous vote on May 20, 2015, the Rhode Island Council on Postsecondary Education welcomed College Unbound as a degree-granting postsecondary option in the state, designed to serve the more than 110,000 Rhode Island adults who began but did not complete bachelor’s degrees.
The college is the adult-learning initiative of Big Picture Learning, a nonprofit organization dedicated ...
Last week, I was at Providence’s Trinity Rep covering BIF2015, the Business Innovation Factory's summit of innovators.
It was BIF’s 11th summit, my fifth as a guest. I was attending under a quasi-media category called RCUS, standing for the BIF mantra of “Random Collisions of Unusual Suspects.”
BIF founder and "chief catalyst" Saul Kaplan opened the talks by noting that earlier in th... 
What if schools in the U.S. treated their innovation and emerging technologies with as much glamour as they give to athletics? At the New England Board of Higher Education’s recent Advanced Manufacturing Problem Based Learning (AM PBL) Showcase, industry representatives addressed this question and discussed ways to improve the branding and appeal for STEM (science, technology, engineering and ma... 
An increasing number of institutions are freeing up shelf space in their libraries and moving in student services as well as a coffee shop and other lures such as flexible seating arrangements. Librarians are taking down the silence signs in all but the quiet study room and urging members of the academic community to meet, talk, research and incubate new ideas collaboratively as well as to engage ... 
After nearly 60 years of helping students afford college, Scholarship America unveiled its first public policy agenda offering a refreshing focus on “advancing equity in postsecondary education and strengthening support for low-to-moderate income students.”
The priorities:
Expand public-private partnerships
Look to the private sector for experimentation, innovation and best practice... 
Not too many years ago, a school’s brand just was. Few people used the “b” word. A college or university went about its business, became known for particular strengths and weaknesses, accrued what we would now call brand attributes over time (party school, really hard to get in to, innovative curriculum), and, through word of mouth and its alumni, earned its reputation in the higher ed lands... 
Deans of Women and the Feminist Movement: Emily Taylor’s Activism; Kelly C. Sartorius; Palgrave MacMillan Press (Historical Studies in Education) St. Martin’s Press; 2014.
Remember when every coeducational college or university had a “Dean of Women”? It was a powerful and influential position, at least for the “coeds” under her charge (and it was always “her”). The dean of women... 
Whether dean, provost, or vice president for academic affairs, the role of the campus chief academic officer (CAO) has changed steadily from the on many current faculty and administrators remember when they began their careers. Along with traditional pressures related to governance, budgets and faculty professional development, CAOs also face new calls to raise their institutional ranking or to ad... 
The last few months have brought changes in the leadership of public education in Massachusetts. The new secretary of education and chair of the Board of Higher Education both have deep expertise in education reform and accountability, and broad experiences in business. This new leadership could bring momentum for a "systems approach" to reduce the achievement gap and increase rates of high school... 
It’s an especially bruising time for New England colleges and universities, which we now call higher education institutions (HEIs)—to cover all the new varieties and hybrids.
NEBHE has noted that the HEIs face threats based on shifts in academic content and delivery (increasingly online), student demography (diversifying but shrinking) and institutional finances (challenged). Plus, consid... 
In a historic unanimous vote on May 20, 2015, the Rhode Island Council on Postsecondary Education welcomed College Unbound as a degree-granting postsecondary option in the state, designed to serve the more than 110,000 Rhode Island adults who began but did not complete bachelor’s degrees.
The college is the adult-learning initiative of Big Picture Learning, a nonprofit organization dedicated ...