Turning on the Thrive Channel to Accelerate Change in Higher Education
Susan Elrod, Indiana University-South Bend; Lorne Whitehead, University of British Columbia
Conversations about "institutional change" in higher education have become pervasive. This is probably because colleges and universities are under tremendous pressure - to graduate more students, to improve success of underrepresented minority students, to reduce costs, and to expand the benefits they provide to our society. Many state systems are engaged in developing performance-based funding metrics that are intended to promote achievement of specified goals. Others are engaged in major reorganizations that are merging or possibly eliminating campuses in service of larger goals that are important to the state, such as enhanced transfer, graduation or fiscal efficiency. This seems scary, but at the heart of all of this is a sound idea - since our society has a long history of improvement and undoubtedly there are still more improvements to make. And to do that, organizations must be adaptable; they must make changes for the better. Why then, is this so concerning for so many? A key challenge is that achieving change in any organization is hard. It is complicated. It involves many levels of the organization. It is motivated by a variety of purposes. It is challenged by competing agendas. It is frequently stalled by a variety of obstacles. Further, positive change requires a vision, strategy, and tactics. But most importantly, it requires effective change leadership. What does that actually entail?

How Do We Convince Administrators that Program Assessment is Worth the Effort?
Archie Holmes, University of Virginia-Main Campus
In November ASCN Working Group 4: Demonstrating Impact leaders selected a question submitted by the registrants for the ASCN Webinar titled "Launching and Leading Change in STEM Education" - Effective program assessment is hard. How do we convince administrators that it is worth the effort? We thought this question would be of interest to the larger higher education community and asked members of working group 4 to respond to this question. Share below in the comment section how you are addressing this question at your institution, or to engage in a discussion. In addition, if there are any questions you would like us to address in the coming months, please share them here or email them to Inese, the ASCN Project Manager. Effective program assessment is hard. How do we convince administrators that it is worth the effort?

TIDES Program at University of Texas
× TIDES Program at University of Texas The Texas Institute for Discovery Education in Science (TIDES) in the College of Natural Sciences aims to catalyze, support, and showcase innovative, evidence-based ...

Strategic Toolkit: Strategies for Effecting Gender Equity and Institutional Change
Strategic Toolkit: Strategies for Effecting Gender Equity and Institutional Change The Toolkit includes 13 Strategic Intervention Briefs that each explain a specific intervention to foster change for greater ...

Learning from Evaluation of Effective Teaching Event: Perspectives on Aligning Incentives
Christine Broussard, University of La Verne; Rachel Renbarger, Western Michigan University
At the end of August, three ASCN working groups came together to put on an event called, "Evaluation of effective and inclusive teaching: How can teaching and learning center professionals be involved in change for social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion?" (We will refer to social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as JEDI for ease throughout this post.) We heard from working group leaders Christine Broussard, Kadian Callahan, and Holly Cho, and a special guest, Susan Elrod. We were fortunate to have 100 participants join us for the session as well, who represented 77 different institutions. The purpose of this blog post is to give brief highlights regarding what we learned from this event. We recommend that if the topic and event interests you, please watch the recording and access the resources on the event page.

Leadership on the line, with a new preface: Staying alive through the dangers of change.
× Leadership on the line, with a new preface: Staying alive through the dangers of change. This book describes leadership skills needed to thrive in positions that require disrupting the status quo to ...

Theory and practice of multicultural organization development
× Theory and practice of multicultural organization development This article presents a framework to identify the level of inclusivity in an organization. Change makers can use the information to create ...

Change theory and theory of change: what's the difference anyway?
Daniel L. Reinholz; and Tessa C. Andrews
This essay describes the connections between a theory of change and change theory and provides examples of how change theory can inform a project's theory of change.

Instructional quality, student outcomes, and institutional finances
Jessie Brown; Martin Kurzweil
A report from the American Council on Education exploring the question of whether improving instructional quality can increase an institution's revenue. Principal Conclusions (p.22): As the cost of college grows and sources of funding of decline, college and university leaders face mounting pressure to find effective and efficient ways to improve their core business: educating and graduating students. Numerous studies show that research-based pedagogical practices and participation in faculty development can help institutions achieve these goals by increasing student learning, engagement, persistence, and degree completion. There is also evidence that improvements in retention increase revenue and have a positive return on investment. Other interventions—including remedial course redesign, increased course-taking in the first year, and more comprehensive first-year curricular and co-curricular reforms—have been shown to improve cost per degree.

Whether and How Money Matters in K-12 Education
Margaret L. Plecki; Tino A. Castańeda
The authors review the research on the allocation of resources to support improvement of student learning in public K-12 education, including policies, methodological issues, and availability of data.