Two Videocasts from AAC&U on Global Education

Each of these two video programs can be viewed (free) on the AAC&U podcast pages:

AAC&U's LEAP Initiative: College Learning for the New Global Economy
A recent survey shows employers want students with broad knowledge, cross-disciplinary skills, and experience applying what they are learning in real-world settings. AAC&U TV talks to college leaders and employers about the challenges of educating students for this new global ecenomy, and to students who are using their liberal educations to navigate the global economy successfully.
(Posted on Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:15:00 EST)

Babson College: Educating Globally Responsible Business Leaders
Educating Globally Responsible Business Leaders: AAC&U TV pays a visit to Babson College, a private college committed to developing global business leaders who rely on ethical and values-based principles that result in sustainable economic and societal progress.
(Posted on Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:15:00 EST)

Campus Violence Prevention and Response: Best Practices for Massachusetts Higher Education

From our friends at the National Clearinghouse for educational facilities comes this useful resource, Campus Violence Prevention and Response: Best Practices for Massachusetts Higher Education (PDF):

Reports on current practice for violence prevention on Massachusetts higher education campuses. In four sections, the report defines the nature and scope of campus violence, reviews previous reports of study groups and task forces and discusses established best practices for enhancing campus safety and violence prevention, examines the current state of security and violence prevention at institutions of higher education throughout Massachusetts, and makes 27 recommendations for how Massachusetts schools can best improve their security and violence prevention efforts. The report also cites numerous safety deficiencies across the state system and urged the 29 public colleges to take immediate steps to rectify them. 127p.

Three Articles About Student Mental Health

University Business magazine has something of a theme issue this month, with three related articles sharing top billing:

• Students in Need, Schools at the Ready Substance abuse, depression, and eating disorders are ever-present problems on college and university campuses. But higher ed leaders are on the case.
• Alleviating SILENT Suffering Higher ed responds to higher numbers of students facing depression and other mental health issues with a holistic approach.
• Finding Order in Disorder College and university leaders are creating a campus culture that encourages students with eating disorders to self-identify and seek treatment.

Risk Management as Numerology?

Doug Gale examines quantitative risk analysis in this article titled The Myth and Reality of Risk, which focuses on IT but obviously has broader connotations:

When we get to the final cost-benefit ratio everything may seem logical, but does it make sense, or is it just numerology?

The traditional view of risk management plots the probability of an event from very low to very high on one axis, say the vertical, and the impact of that event from very low to very high on the horizontal axis. The first priority is to deal with risks in the upper right of the graph, the ones with a combination of high impact and high probability. The ones in the lower left, low impact and low probability, get the lowest priority.

It's all so logical. What can go wrong? As I see it there are three places we can go astray.

Cleanliness & Learning in Higher Education

This article by Jeffrey L. Campbell and Alan S. Bigger in Facilities Manager (PDF) is an important one, summarizing the results of research conducted by APPA (Leadership in Educational Facilities) and ISSA (Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association):

The findings of this research study indicate that the levels of cleanliness do impact the ability of students to learn. There is a correlation, maybe stated in simple terms, that the cleaner the learning space the greater the probability that students perceive they will learn. What a powerful duo oftools. Facilities managers can now clearly indicate that decreased staffing leads to decreased levels of cleanliness, and that there is a direct connection between the cleanliness of a facility and students’ ability to learn. If educational institutions are to provide the best environment in which students can learn, they would be well advised to staff at a level that will provide an acceptable level of cleanliness that will contribute to student learning and health and not detract and distract from that critical goal.

Flex or Fail: Five Important Trends for Higher Education to Manage

From Business Officer, this article by Paul Jansen and Debby Bielak reports on research conducted to identify opportunities and trends affecting higher education and then shares brief vignetes about how each of several institutions is addressing the one or more of the trends. The trends are "Growth of Digital and Other Nontraditional Students," "Price-Productivity Squeeze," "New Paradigm Competitors," "Globalization," and "Answering to Accountability." The vignettes ceom from the state of Montana (Centralized Support for Distance Learning), the State University of New York-Geneseo (Meeting Demands Despite the Cost), Calvin College (Building on an International Base), and King's College (Answering to Accountability).

The President’s Role in the Learning College: Lessons Learned

This is a brief and pragmatic reference with lists of "Challenges Encountered" and "Advice from the Field."

From 2000 through 2004, the League for Innovation’s Learning College Project worked to assist community colleges in the United States and Canada to become more learning centered by creating a network of 12 Vanguard Learning Colleges strongly committed to the learning college concept, whose efforts would serve as a basis for model programs and best practices. Julie Wechsler interviewed three long-standing Vanguard Learning College presidents to learn more about the president’s role in leading an institution’s journey toward becoming more learning centered, and she reports her findings in this month’s issue of Leadership Abstracts.

Reality Mining

Good designers and campus planner already do some version of this, but this Wired magazine article discusses how those who study organizations track face to face interactions:

Waber, a PhD student in MIT's Human Dynamics Group, studies the way groups interact socially — based on who's talking to whom. But unlike most social scientists, who simply ask people about their behavior, Waber and his colleagues measure it. They outfit employees with special badges that work with base stations to log all conversations between employees, including location and duration. With this data, Waber's team can plot exactly how information flows inside a firm.
Almost every time he analyzes a group, Waber discovers that the super-connector — the crucial person who routes news among team members — isn't the manager. "The manager is almost always peripheral," Waber says. "It's some random guy."

International Partnerships: Guidelines For Colleges And Universities

This is another in the American Council on Education's series of practical booklets on internationalization/globalization.

This publication describes the fundamentals of planning, developing, and implementing international partnerships. It stresses the institutional context for partnerships and provides practical advice on implementing each step in the process.

Ten Rules for Naming Buildings and Places

From the "Reality Check" blog on Inside Higher Ed, a useful checklist—1. Only name buildings for dead people, 2. Only use the names of admirable people, . . . 10. Be prepared for controversy over naming choices—and some thoughtful narrative, such as:

Often interesting old buildings already have a name, and frequently the name dates from a period when donations were not relevant to naming choices. When we receive a gift to renovate an old building or otherwise support an important activity in that building, and the donor expresses an interest in renaming the building, we run into our fifth rule. Renaming buildings is always problem. While we make today’s donor happy by doing it, we may well send a signal to future donors that our assertions about the permanence of building names are suspect. If the old name did not acknowledge a gift, the conversation is easier than if the old name recognized a previous gift. Sometimes we finesse this by hyphenating the building name: The Sam George—Susan Peters building. These conversations can sometimes produce volatile responses from alumni with emotional attachments to old buildings, or friends and relatives of the original honoree. Still, we need the gift, and most universities know that if the gift is substantial and the institutional need great, careful consultation and preparation will help smooth over any potential issues, and the next generation of students who will become alumni will have no vested interest in the old name.

Wanted: Higher Education Leaders Who Produce

Larry A. Isaak, president of the Midwestern Higher Education Compact and chancellor emeritus of the North Dakota University System identifies the need for higher education to ramp up to massively larger levels of productivity:

The force of the need to educate many more millions is on a collision course with other forces confronting today’s campuses. The federal budget and many state budgets are constrained by present economic conditions and rocketing spending for defense, public safety, health care, human services and transportation. There likely won’t be a pot of gold at the end of the government budget rainbow for most colleges and universities to garner significantly more operating funds to accomplish what they are being asked to do. Plus, now — even more than earlier this decade — policy makers appear to be more opposed to continuous and significant increases in tuition and fees as a means to redress budget shortfalls.

As a result, productivity and affordability in higher education will take center stage just as accountability took center stage this past decade.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

Subtitled, "Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers," this article from The American Scholar by William Deresiewicz says it took him a long time to "discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy."

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

Education Life (New York Times) from July 27, 2008

This issue of the New York Times updates its Education Life section on the Web. It contains substantial higher education-related information, including the following items:

Green, Greener, Greenest by Kate Zernike
With students demanding environmentally friendly campuses, colleges and universities are racing to be the greenest of them all.

The Sustainable Hampton by Anthony DePalma
The State University of New York is rebuilding a campus and curriculum around sustainability.

Catalysts for Change
Seven grass-roots efforts from a generation of environmental caretakers.

Is There a Better Half? by Sara Mosle
When it comes to applying to selective colleges, twins and triplets face special problems.
Audio: Ivy League Triplets

Towns They Don’t Want to Leave by Rachel Aviv
Come commencement, many students linger for months or become townies for life.
Slide Show: Out of College and Going Nowhere?

The Endless School Year by Laura Pappano
Summer school isn’t for laggards anymore. Colleges now grab May to August for serious academics.

Middlebury College Master Plan Focuses on Sustainability

Middlebury College is leading edge in this realm. This following is quoted in its entirety from the January 24 , 2008 AASHE Bulletin:

1. Middlebury College Master Plan Focuses on Sustainability
The Middlebury College (VT) Board of Trustees has approved the campus' 50 year master plan, a document that was built on a foundation of sustainability principles. The plan contains many recommendations that support the college’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2016, ranging from dramatically increasing renewable energy for heating and cooling to making the campus more bike-friendly. Goals of the new master plan include promoting sustainability in all college operations and planning, enhancing Middlebury’s relationship to the ecological landscape, promoting an accessible pedestrian-friendly campus, and improving the relationship between town and college.
See also: Middlebury Master Plan
See also: List of Master Plans that Incorporate Sustainability (AASHE Members Only)

Green Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University

Of interest:

1. Green Design Institute [pdf]
http://gdi.ce.cmu.edu/

The Green Design Institute is a "major interdisciplinary education and
research effort to make an impact on environmental quality through green
design." The primary goal of the Institute is to form partnerships with
industry, government, and other foundations in order to develop processes
that "can improve environmental quality and product quality while enhancing
economic development." Located at Carnegie Mellon, the Institute involves
faculty, students, and other partners in their efforts to develop practical
pollution prevention technologies and lower costs by recycling scarce
resources, using fewer raw materials, and creating better products. Visitors
to the site may wish to begin by reading the "About Us" section to learn a
bit more about the Institute. After getting acquainted with the goals of the
Institute, visitors to should visit the "Research" section to learn a bit
about on-going projects on sustainable infrastructure, energy and
environment, life cycle assessment, and environment. Perhaps the most useful
section of the site can be found by clicking on "Education". Here, a link to
eiolca.net can be found, which is economic input-output life cycle
assessment software. The model allows users to estimate the overall
environmental impacts of producing commodities or services in the United
States. In addition, courses and course materials on environmental issues
are available here. [KMG]

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2008.
http://scout.wisc.edu/

Community College Showdown: "Undocumented" Students

This case study from the League for Innovation is abstracted from its forthcoming publication, Student Services Dialogues: Community College Case Studies to Consider by R. Thomas Flynn and Gerardo E. de los Santos.

During recent years, the issues surrounding the presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States have had daily political and media coverage. They generate very disparate responses, depending on the political persuasion of the observers. One group of undocumented immigrants has special issues with respect to community college student services: young people whose undocumented parents brought them to the United States as children and who have received some or all of their formal education in American public schools. Many of them aspire to continue their education at a community college. A critical question arises regarding their residential status for purposes of tuition determination. They may have lived in the community for a dozen years and graduated from a local high school. Many states would require that they register as nonresident out-of-state students since they are not documented immigrants. Many of these potential students cannot afford that level of tuition, and they are ineligible for federal financial aid. Much of their economic and career future may depend on their ability to access the community college.

Reach Higher, America: Overcoming Crisis in the U.S. Workforce

This report, from the Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL) will resonate strongest with our community college SCUPers. It calls for a "domestic Marshall plan" dramatically revamp the US:

service system with the capacity to effectively serve 20 million adults annually by the year 2020. It also calls for resetting the educational mission of this new system to demonstrated readiness for postsecondary education and job training. The report recommends specific actions to accomplish this with emphasis on groups most in need of service and on system accountability and results. State and federal government, business and labor, philanthropic groups, nonprofit organizations, and the general public all have a vital role in meeting the Commission’s vision for America’s 21st Century workforce.

Scanning the Future of Campus Security

University Business shares this interview by Michele Herrman with five campus leaders in campus security and law enforcement, from the University of South Carolina, The University of Maine, Butler Community College, College of Saint Benedict, and George Washington University. It's clear that the issues they address and plan for touch - like many other areas of planning that are best done in an integrated fashion - all parts of the campus and its surrounding community. Their most significant future concerns include: funding need, the increasing numbers of student with mental health issues, and the growing increase in the level of campus-based service expectations by incoming students.

Stifling Initiative: 10 Simple Rules to Crush Innovation and Maintain a Culture of Inertia

An amusing and insightful article. We especially like the description of how one can use a requirement for a "formal written proposal" following specific administrative guidelines to quash a new idea:

[P]eople hate change. It causes the status quo to become unsettled and the familiar starts to go away, replaced with uncertainty. Our comfort zone is demolished and we have to try to resettle into uncharted territory.

If we've learned a routine and it seems to work, there is absolutely no reason to have to do it differently. After all, the experts will agree that there is nothing new under the sun. So-called innovations are only the status quo in a rehashed, repackaged format that looks new. Honestly, who believes that just because a proposal will generate a slick exterior that the same functional beast doesn't lurk within?

Unfortunately, there are always those who just don't get it. You know-those who think organizations need to adapt to remain competitive, that change is good and results in greater efficiencies, that failure to adapt to "modernalities" is evil and counterproductive. Since they usually mean well and truly believe they are trying to improve our situation, we don't want to cull them from the herd (besides, who wants the hassle of trying to break in the newbie?). It usually suffices to discourage these people to the point that they fall in line and stop agitating. How do we get them to stop? How do we encourage the status quo without driving them to leave?

Online Archive of Public Policy Research Launched

Descriptive article here, about: A new resource of interest especially to strategic planners in higher education:Scholars and researchers interested in gaining a wide audience, including mayors, state legislators, and other policymakers, for their public policy scholarship can turn to the PolicyArchive (www.PolicyArchive.org), a free comprehensive, online archive of public policy research. PolicyArchive was launched this month by the nonprofit Center for Governmental Studies (CGS) in association with the Indianapolis University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) University Library.

The archive itself can be found here. Tip of the hat to SCUP Director of Education and Planning, Phyllis Grummon, for this link.

Land-Rich Universities Weigh New Options for Real-Estate Development

A new report from Moody's Investment is described in this article by Paul Fain. May require subscription or day pass for access. The report describes a number of ways in which campuses with substantive real estate can maintain control and ownership of the real estate which engaging in partnerships that can create revenue streams from the use of the land. The report is titled "Public-Private Partnerships in U.S. Higher Education: Real-Estate Rich Organizations May Benefit, but Credit Impact Always Assessed on Case-by-Case Basis," and can be obtained by request at higher.education@moodys.com.

Colleges Should Plan—and Teach—for an Oil-Scarce World

A nice piece from Scott Carlson of The Chronicle of Higher Education. (He'll also be at SCUP-43 in Montreal next week!) Yes, it's not just the current high price, it's the likelihood that the price will stay high, or if it does go down, will go high again: And then there's the likelihood of growing scarcity of oil at any price. Maybe not a concern for personal use of an automobile, but something colleges and universities need to address in their planning for as short a time frame as 10-25 years:

College leaders, with help from facilities managers, sustainability directors, faculty members, and even students, should think hard about how systems on their campus would operate in an energy-scarce world. That thinking should range beyond running part of the campus fleet on a cafeteria's fryer oil, a seemingly-popular response at the moment. Look at food supply chains, for example, and how far food travels from field to dining hall (1,500 diesel-powered miles, on average). How do you heat and cool buildings, and is that new building in the campus master plan really necessary? (It's regrettable that this energy crisis comes at the end of a campus building boom.) Is your campus an integrated part of the community around it—friendly to pedestrians and affordable to students and staff members? Or is it a destination at the end of a long freeway drive?

Brett Pasinella, a program coordinator at the University of New Hampshire's sustainability office in Durham, is thinking about some of these very issues with his colleagues. "You quickly run into problems and questions that go far beyond the standard internal university thinking and more into how the university fits into its region and its community," he says. "You run into the same problems that a town planner would run into."

The most important question colleges should ask themselves: If students are getting squeezed by high energy prices, what will compel them to pay your tuition?

$62B Over 10 Years from New GI Bill - This Could be Interesting

Our attention was caught by this last week when Ohio decided to offer in-state tuition to veterans from out of state enrolling at Ohio institutions using the new GI Bill. Elizabeth Redden - who, by the way, will be attending SCUP-43 in Montreal next week representing Inside Higher Ed, has put together this comprehensive piece about what some people and institutions are doing in anticipation of those GI Bill dollars:

Yet, the progress and now passage of the new GI Bill does seem to be generating an uptick of interest in, for instance, setting up one-stop student services shops for veterans, or establishing veterans centers or lounges. A bill introduced in January by Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Tex.) and Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.) — which, according to Hinojosa’s staff, is included in compromise legislation to renew the Higher Ed Act – would authorize a federal grant program for colleges that set up “model programs to support veteran student success.” Under the terms of the legislation, qualifying colleges would establish a Center of Excellence for Veteran Student Success, develop a veterans support team involving representatives from admissions, registration, financial aid, veterans benefits, academic advising, health, career advising, disabilities and other relevant areas, hire a full- or part-time coordinator, and monitor veteran student enrollment, persistence and completion.

Antioch: Report From Ground Zero

This lengthy op-ed from Inside Higher Ed by Paula Treichler protrays her perspective of the past year in the history of Antioch University, as someone deeply involved in activism on behalf of students, faculty, staff, and alumn - but no longer an official member of the institution's management or governance. (Official views and news can be found on Antioch's Story of the College, and on other portions of its website. The op-ed piece is introduced in this way:

Antioch University was given an advance copy of the following op-ed, with the permission of the author, and offered the chance to respond with its own statement that would have appeared simultaneously with the publication of this piece, so that the university could offer its views and analysis of the issues discussed. After initially indicating that it would do so, and confirming as late as Wednesday afternoon that it would do so, the university stopped returning calls or responding to e-mails about theop-ed piece and indicated through an outside public relations official that it would not respond at this time. At the same time, the university’s lawyers sent a letter objecting to any use of the phrase “NonStop Antioch,” the former name of an effort mentioned in this op-ed.

Online 'Textbooks' See College Doors Opening

We've been watching this trend for quite some time. It's now clearly in an exponential growth curve and could well be mainstream in less that a decade:

As textbook prices skyrocket, college students and faculty seeking more affordable options increasingly are turning to "open textbooks" as an alternative.
Open textbooks are free textbooks available online that are licensed to allow users to download, customize and print any part of the text. Professors can change content to fit their teaching styles. Some authors offer a print-on-demand service that produces professionally bound copies for $10 to $20.

Textbook prices have outpaced inflation 2-to-1 in the past two decades, says a 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office. They account for 26% of tuition and fees at four-year public universities and nearly three-quarters of costs at community colleges, the GAO says.

The Economic Upside Of Historic Preservation

Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, Michigan are neighboring college towns, well, "university towns." This article isn't specifically about the universities, but is a nice exposition on the value, economically, of heritage preservation.

"I cannot identify a single example of a sustained success story in downtown revitalization where historic preservation wasn’t a key component of that strategy. Not a one," Rypkema says. "Conversely the examples of very expensive failures in downtown revitalization have nearly all had the destruction of historic buildings as a major element."

Planning to Plan to Plan . . . for Sustainability

Alright, it looks like Inside Higher Ed's "G. Rendell" (anonymous sustainability blogger) is coming to SCUP–43. He wants "to learn about planning from a sustainability perspective more than about sustainability from a planning perspective." I hope we accommodate him. Writing about his own institution and "planning" in his July 8 post, he says:

Planning, at Greenback, is a patchwork at best.

Oh, we have five-year plans, and academic plans, and campus master plans, and an enrollment management plan, and project plans, and development plans, and a large number of purpose-built plans of various flavors, but each of them is drawn up by a small cadre of people, referenced only by pretty much the same group, generally unknown to the remainder of campus, and in no way integrated (or coordinated, or obviously in contact) with the other plans in the mix. As a result, planning at Greenback can only deliver more of what we already are, it can’t help us become something else. And since we don’t measure the outcomes of our plans (development campaigns aside), being more of what we already are is just fine.

Politically Ignorant Americans: Whose Fault Is It?

Do we really need one more book telling us how ill-educated Americans are? Maybe. This essay, poorly titled "Citizen Stupid" is by the author of Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter. Only 20 percent of Americans know how many Senators there are? Only 40 percent can name the three branches of government? (That's an improvement.) Fewer than half of Americans know who dropped the first nuclear weapon in war.

Five defining characteristics of stupidity, it seems to me, are readily apparent. First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who's in charge. Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events. Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter—

Collection of Links to Stories About "Diploma Mills" Issue

From our favorite email newsletter, The Scout Report, is this set of links on the recently heating up topic of "diploma mills":

Diploma Mills Continue To Be An Area of Concern for the Federal

Government

• Diploma Mill Concerns Extend Beyond Fraud [Free registration may be
  
• required]
  
• Bill to crack down on diploma mills stalls
  
• Brainstorm: Diploma Mills
  
• Psst. Wanna Buy a Ph.D.?
  
• Institution Accreditation
  
• Avoid Fake-Degree Burns By Researching Academic Credentials
  

The unsavory world of diploma mills is a complex one, and a number of

government agencies have attempted to regulate their activities with varying

degrees of success. The Internet has aided operators of these educational

"institutions" who frequently offer advanced degrees for little, or more

often, no coursework. This past Sunday the New York Times reported on the

case of Dixie and Steven K. Randock Sr. from the town of Colbert,

Washington. The Randocks have been accused of operating more than 120

fictitious universities, and the federal government's concern goes beyond

the mere matter of a phony degree. Law-enforcement officials fear that the

growth of such diploma mills offers terrorists the potential to obtain bogus

degrees in order to obtain visas in the United States. At the state level,

about 20 states have passed laws to prohibit the trade in phony diplomas,

but the U.S. Congress seems to be moving a bit more slowly on the issue.

[KMG]

The first link will take visitors to a New York Times article from this

Sunday about the world of diploma mills. The second link leads to a piece

from Dan Walters of The Modesto Bee which talks about a bill in California

that would effectively crack down on diploma mills. Moving on, the third

link leads to a timely piece of commentary from former university president

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg on diploma mills, which appeared in the Chronicle

of Higher Education this week. The fourth link leads to another special

report from the Chronicle of Higher Education by Thomas Bartlett and Scott

Smallwood, which investigates the profusion of dubious doctorates in the

education sector. The fifth link will lead visitors to the U.S. Department

of Education's Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and

Programs, which can help those wondering about the authenticity of an

institution.  Lastly, a link to the Federal Trade Commission's page on how

to avoid "fake-degree burns" is offered for additional information and

assistance. [KMG]

Copyright Internet Scout, 1994-2008.

Where to Get Your Canadian News!

Beyond the campus (and, of course, covering campus as well), the following links will take you to places where you can soak up the current national Canadian perspective on news, events, and more:

• The Globe and Mail - daily news; 
  
• MacLeans - monthly news; 
  
• Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) - various media, including radio, television, and Web; 
  
• A collection of Canadian newspapers; 
  
• Tourism Montreal; and
  
• Wikipedia on Montreal.
  

Canadian Institutional Research and Planning Association (CIRPA)

Another Canadian organization with similar interests to those of many SCUPers is CIRPA. It doesn't publish a great many useful resources on its website, but its monthly newsletter are available as PDF documents on line. The latest, June 2008, has some interesting content, including: "Strategic Planning is a Long Term Project," a story about strategic planning centralization at Red Deer College; a review of an article in Tertiary Education and Management (original article by SCUPers James Taylor (recently deceased) and Maria Machado) titled "Article Review and Editorial on 'Higher Education Leadership and Management: From Conflict to Interdependence Through Strategic Planning"; and an interview with a new institutional analyst born in Shanghai, Jie Xiong. "CIRPA News" is a really nice newsletter.

Canadian University and College Quality and Productivity Awards From CAUBO

Another way to get current with what's going on in Canada might be to review the 2008 Quality and Productivity Awards of the Canadian Association of University Business Officers (CAUBO). This 16-page PDF is part of the current issue of CAUBO's University Manager magazine. At its 2008 conference, CAUBO went "greener" and published many of its session's paper on line instead of as printed handouts on site. We have a link to those, as well!

The Year in Sustainability - AASHE's Latest Digest' Available

The AASHE Bulletin is a weekly email newsletter that documents accomplishments and shares resources related to advancing sustainability in higher education. If you don't subscribe, you should. AASHE has just released the 230-page "digest" of all of its newsletter content from 2007 (PDF, free).

The Digest offers ample evidence of a broadening and deepening of campus sustainability efforts, with more institutions of all types getting involved and campuses undertaking more significant measures than ever before to improve their sustainability performance. Of particular note is the fact that over the course of 2007, 452 presidents and chancellors committed to climate neutrality by signing the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment and at least 35 other colleges and universities announced their own climate commitments and energy conservation plans

Digest stories also document the emergence of ranking and rating systems that compare campuses on sustainability criteria. There were at least 6 separate attempts to evaluate campus sustainability performance in 2007, ranging from the Sustainable Endowments Institute's College Sustainability Report Card to Grist magazine's "15 Green Colleges and Universities." AASHE entered the field as well with the release of the first draft of its Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS). 

Big City, Big Plans, Angry Mayor - Boston & Boston College

Mayor Menino is an accomplished speaker, we heard him at the Campus Heritage Preservation conference in Boston last fall. It's got to be tough having him in opposition to campus expansion planning:

Escalating a simmering town-gown feud, Mayor Thomas M. Menino today denounced Boston College's expansion plan as an intrusion into the Brighton neighborhood, and accused university leaders of "arrogance" in pursuing development goals with little regard to residents' concerns.

In a wide-ranging and sharply worded criticism of the plan, Menino said that he squarely opposes the college's recent proposal to convert a high-rise apartment building about one-third of a mile from the Jesuit university's main Chestnut Hill campus into a dormitory.

Menino also faulted BC's plans to build new dorms on property it purchased from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and disputed the college's contention that it cannot fit more students on its traditional campus.

"I want them to build on the campus they have right now, not buy up property and turn it into a dormitory," he said in an interview. "I think they can find the room and come up with a plan that will have the least impact on the neighborhood."

The Changing of the Professoriate Begins . . . Baby Boomers Retiring

This interesting article examines the potential impact of a professoriate that is "less liberal," but doesn't fully take into account changing mores - especially with regard to cultural changes that used to be considered liberal but are now mainstream. For example, is "work-life balance" liberal or conservative?

At a conference titled “Generational Shockwaves,” sponsored in November by the TIAA-CREF Institute, Joan Girgus, a special assistant to the dean of faculty at Princeton, underscored how these sorts of concerns were increasingly on the minds of younger faculty members. Universities need to focus more on the “life” side of the work-life balance “because faculties historically were almost entirely male and the wives took care of the family side,” Ms. Girgus said. “I don’t think we can do that anymore.” Ask Ms. Goldrick-Rab if she believes there is a gap between her generation and the boomers, and she immediately answers yes.

Time to Get a Sense of Canadian Higher Education!

With higher education's premier planning conference beginning in just a couple of weeks, in Montreal, it's time to get conversant with Canadian higher education issues. That means it's time to browse through the website of University Affairs—also known as Affaires universitaires. Recent articles include "The University as an Economic Engine" (sounds familiar), "Won't You Stay Just a Little Bit Longer" (keeping commuting students on urban campuses longer than just for classes), and "Indebted to Higher Education" (mishmash of student aid programs)—sounds quite familiar, actually! 

Canadian 4-Year Institutions' Revenues Down Compared to US Counterparts

According to a new report from the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Canadian (PDF) 4-year institutions have fallen behind their US counterparts in gross revenue-per-student terms.

In spite of welcome government investments in postsecondary education in recent years, revenues per student in the general operating budgets at Canadian universities are much lower than at American public universities.

The latest volume of Trends in higher education, released today by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada shows overall revenues to support teaching and research per student at Canadian universities have fallen significantly since the 1980s and have remained virtually unchanged since 2000. Canadian universities had $2,000 per student more than their U.S. public peers in 1980-81 and now have $8,000 less per student to fund teaching and research. Canadian universities also have less per student than U.K universities.

The Atlas Building at Wageningen University (Netherlands)

This article by Michael J. Crosbie describes (nice pics) the new Atlas Building (environmental sciences laboratories and offices) at Wageningen University in the Netherlands:The Atlas Building sits on an important spot—right next to the main entry to campus—so it had to perform the role of a landmark, according to project architect Mariana Kolova . . . . The site was chosen by the university planners for its prominence, and the client wanted a building that would be an icon.The university was particularly insistent that this important piece of architecture have no front or back—that it be a pristine object in the landscape, worthy of views from all sides. So [Rafael] Vinoly created a virtual cube that suggests a jewel box. It has a certain iconic resemblance to Yale University's Beinecke Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft in 1963. Inside its concrete cubical grille is a six-story glass-and-aluminum box. 

A First Look at Engaging Entering Students in Community Colleges

From the folks that brought you NSSE and CCSSE, comes SENSE—A Survey of Entering Student Engagement, and aimed directly at understanding first-year students in community colleges. This report is a summary of findings from surveys and qualitative analyses at 22 community colleges, because typically a community colleges loses about half of its first year students before they complete that first year. Unsurprisingly:

[W]ho is staying? CCSSE data consistently show that Current research indicates that helping students succeed through the equivalent of the first semester (12–15 credit hours) can dramatically improve subsequent success rates. Specifically, research shows that successfully completing the first semester improves students’ chances of returning for subsequent semesters, reaching key milestones, and ultimately earning certificates and degrees.

Club Ed: This University Is at Your Service

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education may require a subscription or a day pass for access. High Point University takes "customer service" to the utmost, it almost sounds like higher education provided by Disney. At first look it can see overdone, and one certainly wonders if High Point is going to concern itself with carbon emissions from the ice cream cart, but  . . .

The list of frills goes on. Snack kiosks are located strategically around the campus offering free bananas, pretzels, and drinks. Gifts await students in their dorms when they return from breaks. That's on top of the gifts they receive for no reason. The university keeps track of each student's preferences (movies, candy bars, sodas, etc.) so all of them get exactly what they want.

If it sounds like too much, well, maybe it is. But it's in keeping with the president's philosophy, as summed up in the university's slogan: "At High Point, every student receives an extraordinary education in a fun environment with caring people."