Community Colleges: Special Supplement to The 2008 Condition of Education

This must-read report was released recently by the US Department of Education and can be downloaded here. It is self-described as: "This Special Supplement to The Condition of Education 2008 provides a descriptive profile of community colleges in the United States, examines the characteristics of students who entered community college directly from high school, and looks at rates of postsecondary persistence and attainment among community college students in general. It also compares the characteristics of these institutions and of the students who enroll in them with those of public and private 4-year colleges and universities." In a related article (may be password protected) in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Peter Schmidt notes:

Many students do not follow a carefully charted path through higher education but instead seem to feel their way—and, sometimes, lose it, a new federal report on community colleges suggests.

Many community-college students previously thought they would be going through four-year colleges, while others initially planned on earning two-year degrees but have since revised their plans to progress much further, the report says.

A Clear Case of 'Laxative Enforcement Policies'

Times Higher Education (UK) recently revived its annual "exam howlers" competition, where educators are asked to share student literary gems which sparkle with humor. In addition to the one in our title, some other funny ones include "Control of infectious diseases is very important in case an academic breaks out." We wonder if we couldn't hold a "Board of Trustees Meetings Howlers Competition"?

Natural Disasters and School Construction

This is a UNICEF Radio podcast discussion on natural disasters and school construction, with a focus on the recent earthquake in China and the experience of the 2004 Asian tsunami:

With an estimated 10,000 child fatalities from school collapses in the Sichuan earthquake in China, safe school construction has become a central issue for parents, governments and the international development community. Are such catastrophes easily preventable? Why do some schools collapse and not others? Is it simply a matter of better construction?

Earthquake experts, architects and humanitarian aid workers have been working to set higher building standards – especially where children are concerned. What more can they do to ensure communities that their children will be safe at school?

Can't Manage What You Don't Measure?

The Global Health and Safety Initiative (GHSI) and others is working on a very complicated system to accurately measure all pertinent inputs and outputs to the ecological footprint of an entire healthcare system:

“There are many different models and calculators out there, but they tend to only look at pieces of what a full footprint would be, like energy or CO2 carbon emissions,” says GHSI Executive Director Bob Eisenman, PhD. “What we are ultimately interested in is tracking most of the ways that hospitals and healthcare impact the environment. So eventually we are trying to pull together energy, carbon, toxic gas emissions, waste stream issues, water, transportation, and more. But we haven’t seen a tool like that yet, particularly with toxic and hazardous materials, which healthcare uses often.”

Growing the Next Generation of Campus Leaders

Much of what is important in terms of developing leadership skills and emerging leaders in information technology on campus applies to developing leadership in other parts of the campus as well. Further, it is important for planners to understand what senior IT staff consider important for their developing reports and mentees. That makes this article from EDUCAUSE Quarterly a useful quick read that will also cause some moments of reflection:

Read the literature for the IT field, including peer-reviewed and popular articles. Discover the issues of the day and the future. Make sure to read the literature of higher education, too. A daily skimming of the headlines in The Chronicle of Higher Education or the various other news organizations is critical to staying on top of what is happening in higher education. Read outside the IT discipline, too, and consider the resources listed in the sidebar.

School Superintendents and Community College Presidents a Great Marria

Stephen Jones writes about the synergies that are possible, but rarely effected, if community colleges can work more closely with the leadership of area high schools in ways that go beyond traditional dual enrollment initiatives:

Community college admission staff and faculty need to spend more time connecting with high schools. These professionals can play a role in changing student expectations. Some high school students say they never have received a visit from an admissions officer from any college. When community colleges reach out to schools it sends a message that students are welcomed to apply. And it might benefit parents to learn that the cost of a community college education is often half the cost of that from a four-year institution.

But . . . Where Are the Books?

Subtitled "As academic libraries evolve beyond information storage, institutions turn to space-saving automated retrieval systems" and written by Melissa Ezarik, this University Business report addresses the current evolutionary path of college libraries. It includes case studies from Santa Clara University (CA) and the University of Louisville (KY).

The evolution of libraries to meet a range of needs leaves librarians in a quandary. If space must go toward so many things besides books, where is the ever-expanding print collection supposed to fit?

“A knee-jerk reaction of putting everything on single shelves seems indefensible,” says Ron Danielson, vice provost for information services at Santa Clara University (Calif.). No one has the space for that.

“Shelving no longer drives planning,” explained consultant Scott Bennett, principal of Urbana, Ill.,-based Library Space Planning, during a session at a SCUP regional conference held at Yale in March. Bennett is also seeing libraries become less transactional and more instructional.

Making It as a Multinational University: Be Prepared for a Bumpy Ride

"If your destination is to go international in a big way, business officers who are taking the trip have some news for you: Be prepared for a bumpy ride." The authors of this article, Hal Irvin and Robert Thompson, have been deeply involved with the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta's major overseas initiatives and provide some thoughtful lessons learned, shared as lists of bulleted "Key questions"—each followed by a narrative "Key thought." For example:

LEADERSHIP. You will have to think carefully about the characteristics that will be most important for leadership success in a start-up operation.

Key questions

• Is the champion leading the charge on campus the right person to take the leadership role in your new location?
• If you have no one on your campus to assume a leadership role and have to hire someone from outside permanently for your new effort, how will you ensure that the new person translates your organizational culture to the new setting?
• How long do you expect the leader to serve overseas?
• Will you need to provide the leader a better incentive package than the rest of the team at the new location?
• Key thought

The ability to connect to local business and government leaders is paramount. The ideal candidate would combine excellent people skills, a strong drive to excel, the adaptability to look for a solution from multiple angles, some experience in leading a team, and a thorough understanding of the culture where he or she will work (including fluency in the local language). Because we are a research institution, we prefer a leader with a strong research portfolio. If the individual is not from the country where we wish to locate, he or she must be well connected in some way—preferably through collaborative research efforts in the proposed location. The candidate's chances for success, as well as yours, increase to the extent that the individual already possesses strong relationships in your new locale.

Seeking a Smaller Footprint: Help from New Technologies & Behaviors

Karla Hignite writes in Business Officer about a number of ways some campuses are effectively reducing their carbon footprint:

The good news is that a new generation of technologies and products is providing significant opportunities for energy and financial savings and for reducing harmful emissions. Some have a quick return on investment. Ultimately, however, it can be argued that real strides in conservation will come only when the promise of technology is coupled with adjustments to human attitudes and behaviors. This article highlights how several institutions are employing these strategies to gain control of their energy consumption.

Pressure Points: Emerging Forces That Require Action Now

In this Business Officer article, representatives from Datatel, TIAA-CREF, Higher One, and PricewaterhouseCoopers share some important trends they think are external forces higher education planners need to pay attention to. According to the author, Sandra R. Sabo, people you can expect to:

Rethink financial models. "Financial forecasts and scenarios will need to be refined because of the broad impact of current economic conditions as well as the rising cost of financial aid and how it will be funded," says Mattie. "Tuition-dependent institutions, in particular, may not have the financial flexibility to increase payouts from their endowments, yet will need to address how to fund increasing levels of financial aid going forward."

Expand matriculation agreements. Undergraduates, especially those with fewer financial resources, don't always stay at the same institution to complete a four-year degree. Bert Scott speculates that this dynamic will increase among families of first-generation college students. "Based on student mobility patterns," he notes, "institutions will need to determine the requirements that would allow students to complete their educations, but not necessarily in one place."

Respond to calls for increased accountability. The public's demand for financial transparency and good fiduciary conduct may intensify over the next 12 to 24 months, predicts Mattie. "In addition, government officials, federal agencies, and donors all want to know that institutions are operating responsibly, both fiscally and operationally. They will continue to hold business officers and others to a higher standard of reporting and compliance responsibility."

Mattie stops short of predicting that educational institutions will need to meet the rigid control regulations that now apply to public companies. Still, he foresees that standard setters and regulators will continue to focus on financial-reporting transparency and control and compliance accountability.

Reassess strategic approaches. What has worked in the past may no longer apply in an environment of increased costs and competition coupled with decreased financial aid and staffing.

DCCCD’s Core 2009 Curriculum Initiative: An Inclusive Approach

This Learning Abstract from the League for Innovation is a case study of the Dallas County Community College District's (DCCCD) inclusive approach to planning for shaping a core curriculum:

During the 2007-2008 academic year, another faculty committee was formed to ask the question yet again, “What must students know and be able to do in order to be successful in their academic, career, and personal pursuits?” The committee named this most recent initiative Core 2009, reflecting the anticipated date of implementation. The initiative has involved hard work from a dedicated group of fourteen faculty, two college administrators, and two district administrators engaged in Core 2009 committee service. The DCCCD Vice Presidents Council convened the committee and charged it with making a number of recommendations. Two key charges to the Core 2009 committee were (1) to solicit widespread input and (2) to remain nonpartisan with respect to individual academic disciplines. The committee’s first actions were to design a web presence on the DCCCD website for progress reports and to post a suggestion form for anyone to share thoughts with the committee.

Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of the Human Mind

Something that we have learned over the years is that a wide variety of SCUP constituents have a keen interest in how humans think and perceive the world, and how brains work. Former Planning for Higher Education editor, George Keller, would occasionally publish related book reviews. We thought that you might enjoy this new, fairly comprehensive piece from Scientific American.

The human brain lacks conspicuous characteristics—such as relative or absolute size—that might account for humans’ superior intellect.

Researchers have found some clues to humanity’s aptitude on a smaller scale, such as more neurons in our brain’s outermost layer.

Human intelligence may be best likened to an upgrade of the cognitive capacities of nonhuman primates rather than an exceptionally advanced form of cognition.

Campus Environment 2008: A National Report Card on Sustainability in Higher Education - Trends and New Developments in Leadership, Academics and Opera

SCUP was a sponsor of the survey research behind this new report, which examines sustainability attitudes and practices in a way that compares to the first, related research performed seven years ago:

The NWF Report Card is the Gold Standard for charting the sustainability movement in higher education. Coverage of both operational and academic programs is particularly important. Strongly recommended reading for administrators, faculty and students," said David W. Orr, professor of Environmental Studies and senior advisor to the president, Oberlin College. He is also the author of Earth in Mind, Ecological Literacy, The Last Refuge, and Design on the Edge.

This comprehensive study by National Wildlife Federation and Princeton Survey Research Associates International reviews trends and new developments in environmental performance and sustainability at 1,068 institutions. It recognizes colleges and universities for exemplary efforts and awards academic letter grades (A through D) for collective, national performance on environmental literacy, energy, water, transportation, landscaping, waste reduction and more. The report analyzes collective trends in the areas of management, operations, and academics.

With 27 percent (more than one quarter) of U.S. colleges (presidents, administrators, and facilities managers) responding, the 2008 survey is the nation's largest study to date created to gauge trends and new developments in campus sustainability. It was also the first study of its kind when conducted in 2001.

Do Emergency Text Messaging Systems Put Students in More Danger?

Authors John Bambenek and Agnieszka Klus, writing in EDUCAUSE Quarterly, say that "The rush to use text messaging as an emergency notification system fails to consider the weaknesses and potential hazards of this solution." They examine the circumstances around a number of real-life emergency situations and conclude: "The question remains, can text messaging systems protect a campus population? Or do they put people at more risk? Any emergency communication system must be reliable, with controlled access and fast delivery. Not only does text messaging fall short in all three areas, recent campus shooting incidents demonstrate that these systems would not have helped during the emergencies, only supporting supplemental crowd control afterwards. . . . We can only conclude that the use of text messaging tools is woefully insufficient and dangerous for use in emergencies.

Higher Ed Journalism: New Realities

This week's must-read is subtitled "How media coverage has evolved--and how campus administrators should respond" and written by Council of Independent Colleges President Richard Ekman. It very thoroughly covers the last decade of changes in how pertinent news - within and about higher education - gets generated and reported: "Growing public skepticism about higher education, reported widely in the media, has changed the journalistic styles of The Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, University Business, USA Today, and other mainstream media. When legislators or federal officials know they can score easy points with constituents by issuing broadsides on matters of higher education policy, these politicians do half of the journalists' work for them. The education press has been criticized for not being very interested in publicizing serious and significant achievements of individual institutions, consortia, or whole sectors of higher education unless these achievements reverberate in larger policy circles."

Beyond the Bond Campaign

Subtitle: "Public relations efforts should continue after a bond passes. Once the votes are counted the real work begins." Read it here. It's all too easy to assume that since you know what's getting done and what's not, and why, that everyone else does, too, including the voters. Not so! "Communication is key, according to Jennifer Aries, district director of public information and marketing for the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District in California's East Bay. "The work really begins the day after the bond passes. Both internal and external communications are critical, so it's important to have a communication plan in place that will serve both audiences." She points out that faculty, staff, and students are emotionally invested in an institution and the future results of the bond measure, making it important to keep them informed of all that is happening around them."

Connecting at the Library

Maybe it doesn't so much, any more, mean connecting with printed books, but the library is still a key learning space. This article from Business Officer is thoughtfully organized into a number of useful categories—The Changing Landscape, Library as Place, Student Usage Patterns, Indicators of Effectiveness, Organizing the Library, Predicting and Managing Collection Growth, What It All Means—each of which could, in itself, be a larger essay: "What is the future of the book, given ubiquitous electronic resources? Why maintain a library when students appear to do all their research from their laptops? And, for business officers and facilities planners, what is the relationship between library facility features and increased student interest that can influence recruitment and retention? Here we explore the many questions that arise regarding academic libraries in an age of electronic media; illustrate those qualities and attributes students perceive as most valuable in a collegiate library building; and describe the planning process, final design, and some before-and-after analysis for The College of New Jersey’s successful new library building."

Evaluating Quality in Educational Facilities

The Programme on Educational Building (PEB) of the OECD has had a number of conferences and pursued research on quality in educational building. Many of its reports and findings can be found on this website: “All individuals have a right to a quality educational facility, a physical space that supports multiple and diverse teaching and learning programmes and pedagogies, including current technologies; one that demonstrates optimal, cost-effective building performance and operation over time; one that respects and is in harmony with the environment; and one that encourages social participation, providing a healthy, comfortable, safe, secure and stimulating setting for its occupants.”

The Critics Need a Reboot. The Internet Hasn't Led Us Into a New Dark Age.

Human nature hasn't changed much, yet, and another predictable wave of stories about how new things are making us stupid is hitting the media. But some of us are more in tuen with this author's take: "The explosion of knowledge represented by the Internet and abetted by all sorts of digital technologies makes us more productive and gives us the opportunity to become smarter, not dumber. . . . [however] It's naive to think that the digital age will magically remedy stupidity. We need better schools as well as a renewed commitment to reason and scientific rigor so that people can distinguish knowledge from garbage. The Web is not an obstacle in this project. It's an unparalleled tool for generating, finding, and sharing sound information. What's moronic is to assume that it hurts us more than it helps."

Retired Professors: Nuisances or Important Resources?

As Boomer professors begin to wind down their full time participation in academic departments, keeping an ear out for the best ways to manage them in retirement is not a bad idea, so we're sharing this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education with you:

Certainly, the dean who asked for advice on "handling" her retired faculty members had a point: Some professors do interfere in departmental business long after they retire, attempting to exercise control over policies and practices in which they no longer have a stake. As a dean, you need to deal with those folks on an individual basis.

But in my experience, the vast majority of emeritus professors genuinely wish to remain involved in appropriate and productive ways. I, for one, intend to keep them close.

Four Day Work Weeks: This Summer's Lessons-Learned

Quite a few colleges went to some version of s shortened work or class week this summer, generally as an experiment in saving energy costs. Writing in Inside Higher Ed, David Moltz shares what he learned from talking with some of the folks on campuses which tried this out in 2008. One campus actually created more service hours for students:

Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La., adopted a shortened schedule that actually might have given its students more access to services. Typically, under the five-day workweek, university offices would be open from 8 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., said President Randall Webb. Under the four-day workweek, Webb said the offices are open from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. As individual employees must have their shortened workweek approved by their supervisors and all are not eligible for or choose the same day off, the university now has its administrative doors open for a longer period during the business week and can serve it students even more. Even though some are working a shorter week, Webb said others at the university are working more than ever.

IBM Has Never Made Typewriters

Yep, it's that time of the year again, when Beloit College releases its annual "mindset" list to help older academicians understand just what it is that the incoming freshman class does and does not know. Among some of the items which resonated with us:

• Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles;
• 98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear; and
• There have always been charter schools.

And, thanks to Inside Higher Ed, we've also got a 'down under' list of this sort for you, from the Kiwis at Massey University:

• The Irain/Iraq War has always been over;
• Soviet troops have never been in Afghanistan; and
• New Zealanders have never been able to smoke on planes.

The Emerging New GI Bill

As more of us realize that it is headed our way, more of us spend time reflecting and planning on what the new GI Bill may mean for our campuses (PDF), as in this article, written before the new bill was passed. One prediction:

The new GI Bill will come with growing pains. The Veterans Administration, no paragon of management in the best of times, will be faced with more complicated benefits to administer. More requirements for colleges to communicate with the VA will surely evolve, as will the need for strengthened veteran services on campus.

Challenges, Opportunities and Traditions: A Snapshot Look at Today’s HBCUs

Think you need to know more about HBCUs than you do? You're probably right:

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) add a rich texture to the fabric of higher education in the United States. Their legacy is one of access and opportunity.

Like every institution of higher learning, HBCUs must work continually to sustain quality. Always a test, that’s even more difficult in today’s economic climate. While in many ways the issues that HBCUs face mirror those of all universities, the unique HBCU mission adds an overlay of additional factors that must be considered. At times, presidents of HBCUs must feel like they’re walking a tight rope in a typhoon.

In a series of recent interviews, the leaders of several HBCUs in the AASCU membership shared their perspectives on some of the key challenges they face today. Their observations provide a snapshot look at the current state of public HBCUs.

Making the Familiar Campus Strange: Fresh Eyes

Some good summertime musing-reading:

The fact of the matter is that we often don’t know our own universities as well as we should. We busy ourselves with the customary multitude of tasks, or we consciously choose not to commit to a place because we’re convinced that the stay will be temporary, or we consider ourselves more “cosmopolitan” (citizens of the world) than “local” (stewards of region), as the popular distinction goes. Some of us have drawn the old invidious comparisons to other places and found our home institutions lacking in certain respects, and instead of appreciating them on their own terms, we decide that their shortcomings give us permission to check out. We travel the same well-worn path from the car to the office, literally and figuratively, so that we miss a good deal of the rest of the campus. These are among the same explanations we all use, assuming we even give much thought to it. More likely, we treat the campus as a vast backdrop that we rarely even regard as we play out our individual parts. At some point, it’s worth asking what we might be missing when we do this.

Rise in Fancy Academic Centers for Athletes Raises Questions of Fairness

Does it really matter where the dollars come from? Is it fair? The Chronicle of Higher Education dives deep into the "facilities arms race in college sports" which is says "has a new frontier: academic-services buildings." You will need access to the online Chronicle via suscription of day pass to access this item.

Over the past decade, a dozen major college programs have built stand-alone academic centers, most of them for the exclusive use of athletes. At least seven more colleges are planning new buildings or major renovations in coming years. Some facilities are as big as 50,000 square feet — the size of some student unions — and many are as swank and well appointed as any buildings on campus.

The facilities growth, paid for largely by private donations, is at the center of a spending boom in academic support for athletes, a Chronicle survey has found. Since 1997, the budgets for academic services for athletes at more than half of the 73 biggest athletics programs in the country have more than doubled, on average, to over $1-million a year. One program spent almost $3-million in 2007 — an average of over $6,000 per athlete.

Spending has surged for several reasons: Competition for players has eased admissions standards in recent years, while the National Collegiate Athletic Association's academic-progress requirements have stiffened. That means it's easier for an athlete to get into college but harder to stay eligible for sports.

Teams that fail to meet minimum academic cutoffs lose scholarships. The pressure has led to academic improprieties in several high-profile programs, raising the stakes everywhere.

Athletics officials and some faculty members say the extra spending and attention have sharpened players' classroom focus and kept more athletes on track to graduate. But others complain that the lavish buildings give athletes an unfair advantage over other students.

"The big question I have is, Are these buildings in any way taking away from resources for other students? And I think they are," says Gwendolyn J. Dungy, executive director of Naspa — Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. "Instead of raising money for these special facilities for athletes, universities could be out raising money for buildings that serve all students."

Book: 'The Transition Handbook' is Creating Transition Towns

Are we going to reach peak oil soon? Will there be energy crises severe enough to make what we have look like child's play? Should campuses and communities work together to develop the resilience" necessary to cope with such crises? The Transition Handbook sounds intriguing. Perhaps we'll get it reviewed for Planning for Higher Education. Anyone want to volunteer to review it?

Colleges are often like little towns of their own, and many colleges are increasingly involved and intertwined with their surrounding communities. So why not form a “transition college”? Colleges are going to have to get serious preparing for future energy crises, and they should start thinking about how they might deal with them now. Most colleges are thinking mainly about cutting carbon emissions, which Mr. Hopkins believes is important but secondary to dealing with the energy crisis. Climate change is an end-of-tailpipe problem, while peak oil is an into-fuel-tank problem, to paraphrase peak-oil proponent Richard Heinberg.

Guide to Climate Action Planning on Campus

SCUP and the National Wildlife Federation's Campus Ecology Project collaborate on a new guide for campus climate action planning:

The guide says that even though more than 550 colleges and universities are working toward emission-reduction targets, “actual greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise on most campuses.” Why? “Gains from energy efficiency and conservation have been outpaced by growth in student populations and new construction,” the guide says.

A comprehensive planning process that looks behind campus borders can help, says the guide, which looks not only at campus-infrastructure challenges but also at behavior changes, green-power purchases, and carbon offsets.

Prefab Construction and the Carbon Conundrum

An interesting take on the triple bottom line. Tom Robinson of The Greentree Gazette writes about some lessons learned at Rice University about how hard it is to understand the impact of various building styles:

The economic impact is improved by avoiding the likelihood of collision among several different tradesmen. The pods arrive completely assembled with fixtures and lighting – everything including the toilet paper holder. Local plumbers hook up the drains and water supply and electricians make one electrical connection. Voila. . . . The lifetime cost of prefab is even more attractive. Instead of drywall and studs, the pods are molded from glass reinforced plastic (GRP), similar to a fiberglass boat, and mounted on a steel base. So they don’t need constant patching and repainting and they won’t leak. With wall mounted fixtures, they can be cleaned easily.

The social impact test is whether students like their new digs. Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson explains that Rice showed photographs and a sample pod to students, who felt that the pods were indeed attractive and functional. And if they were less expensive and environmentally friendly, all the better. The student government president endorsed the decision at a groundbreaking ceremony. Designers are happy, too, because GRP accommodates design flexibility like radius corners and lots of finish options.

The environmental impact is a mixed bag. Use of prefab at the construction site provides benefits: less construction material waste; less decayed building materials leeching into the soil; less waste water runoff. The bathroom pods have dual flush toilets, low flow shower heads and energy-efficient lighting and ventilation. The materials are non-toxic.

What We Don't - But Should - Know About Higher Ed?

Are small classes better for student learning than large classes. This opinion writer says we should know, but we don't know - and that's just one example of many things we should know but do not know, about higher education:

You see it all the time, in the brochures and advertisements from liberal arts colleges and other non-gargantuan institutions. “Small class sizes,” they promise, and for good reason, because everyone knows that small classes are better than large. No cavernous lecture halls where the professor is little more than a distant stick figure, they say — raise your hand here, and someone will stop and listen. Plus, he or she will be a real professor, the genuine tenure-track article, not a part-timer or grad student but someone who really knows his or her stuff. Because everyone knows that real professors are better than the other kind.

Except, they don’t.

Welcoming a New Provost, in 3 Months or Less

The new president wants a new provost, and fast: Some lessons learned.

Changing academic leadership is risky business, to be sure, and the resulting transitions are not easy – for anyone.

At our own institution, we just made one such change – replacing an academic dean with a provost. After the departure of the academic dean mid-year and the appointment of an interim provost (well-known to the relatively new president), we set about searching for a permanent provost.

The process resulted in both the new provost and the president learning a good deal about how working together from the onset can make these transitions a positive experience – for the existing leadership team, for faculty, for students, for the larger college and local community, and for each other. Of course, we have made our share of mistakes and we are sure we will make more. But, we hope that some of the lessons we learned may be useful to the many other institutions making similar changes.

Dorms of Distinction" Winners and Runners-Up

University Business magazine received 76 nominations for its Dorms of Distinction competition. This lengthy article provides vignettes of many of the selected winners as well as a summary of trends from all of the nominations. The trends included: getting more student input at all phases of the design and planning process, more and more home-like atmosphere touches, and more sophisticated and intentional common and gathering areas. This is a must-read for anyone in the planning or design stages of a new residence hall or major residence hall renovation.

Enforced Summertime: One Person's Hardworking Joy Can be Another's Excessive Stress

A former community college president muses on"enforced summertime" and how it is in fact possible to overwork your administrative staff:

Within the aggressive achievement environment, leaders can push folks beyond their limit. While a leader may thrive on achievement, he or she must ask the question, “At what cost to this organization and these valued people?” When the leader and the college become driven rather than planful and purposeful in selecting appropriate priorities and actions at the college, the stress can overwhelm the college. Leadership is required sometimes to say, stop! This is enough work for one year.

Facilities Physical Security Measures Guidelines - Draft Open for Comments

Verbatim:

The ASIS Commission on Standards and Guidelines has released a draft of the Facilities Physical Security Measures Guideline. The purpose of the new guideline is to describe the main types of physical security measures that can be applied to minimize the security risks at a facility. ASIS International is the preeminent organization for security management professionals worldwide.

The guideline is available for a 45-day public review and comment period (through Sept. 15). Comments will be reviewed and considered before publication of this guideline.

The Facilities Physical Security Measures Guideline assists in the identification of physical security measures that can be applied at facilities to safeguard or protect an organization’s assets—people, property, and information. It is not aimed at a specific occupancy, but facilities and buildings in general.

ASIS uses a voluntary, nonproprietary, and consensus-based process to write its guidelines, and relies not only upon the knowledge, experience, and expertise of ASIS members, but also upon those nonmembers who volunteer their time to the guideline creation process.

Assessing Learning and Scholarly Technologies: Lessons from an Institutional Survey

Writing in EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Cara Lane and Greg Yamashiro describe the methodology, results, and lessons-learned of a large-scale survey of a variety of constituents on the University of Washington campus regarding technology needs, attitudes, and adoption:

The UW survey findings represent just one component of what we learned, however. We also discovered the opportunities and challenges inherent in conducting large-scale, committee-based research. We believe the circumstances we encountered during the survey process resemble those other institutions have faced or will face in similar endeavors, and in this article we share the lessons learned. While some of these lessons include research findings, the majority involve the implications of the methodologies selected and the decisions made.

We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches we used to determine the focus of our survey, to define technology within the survey, and to select a sample of the UW population. We conclude with a description of how we applied what we learned to the development of our 2008 Faculty, Teaching Assistant, and Student Surveys on Learning and Scholarly Technologies, which, at the time of this writing, are being distributed to the UW community.

Budget Crises Create Opportunity

Subtitled, Embracing a chance for change during difficult times," this University Business article by Rocky Young, retired chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, comes in three sections: "Increasing Revenue," "Surgical Cuts," and "Other Considerations."

One of the most valuable opportunities created by budget problems is the chance to put in motion some long-awaited changes for your college or university. These types of changes-even positive ones-can be difficult at any time, but they are often easier to accomplish in times of financial crisis because everyone recognizes that sacrifices must be made.

Still, it's important to be focused and selective, by first increasing revenue, then making the unavoidable cuts.

'Money for Nothing, Textbooks for Free'

Everyone thinks that textbooks cost too much money. In this interview in Campus Technology, Diane Schaffhauser interviews the CEO of a new company which is offering students free textbooks:

The founders of Flat World Knowledge, which launches with its first run of college textbooks this fall, consider that too high--so high, in fact, that they'll be offering textbooks for free, at least in versions that can be read online.

If the student wants to buy a printed copy of the textbook, it will be printed on demand by the company and provided in color for one price or black and white for a lesser price. For the student who prefers to listen to the book on an MP3 player, audio versions will be available too. Each format will have its own cost structure, but on average, it'll tally up to about $30.

Why Professor Johnny Can't Read: Understanding the Net Generation's Texts

From Mark Mabrito and Tebecca Medley, in innovate: journal of online education, comes this more academic and thoughtful version of the cyclic news item about how differently some of the youngsters are communicating:

One way of better understanding Net-Generation learners is to examine the texts they create on online social networking, blogging, and image sites as well as in virtual worlds. Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley explore the nature of Net-Generation texts as a reflection of the cognitive differences between this generation's students and their older instructors, discuss the unique challenges this group of learners may present for instructors who do not share their technological immersion, and suggest the means by which such challenges may be overcome. To accommodate the needs of the Net Generation, Mabrito and Medley suggest that faculty must reconsider traditional pedagogy and integrate more innovative ways of instruction for this significantly different population of students.

Participation, Persistence, and Attainment Rates: The US Standing

Writing in International Higher Education, Arthur M. Haputman compares metrics from other OECD countries and the US regarding persistence and attainment, describing some of the ways in which the apples and oranges differ:

Attainment in the United States really consists of two stories—one that relates to bachelor's degrees and the other to subbachelor's degrees such as associate's degrees awarded by community colleges. In terms of bachelor's degrees, the United States has ranked at the top of OECD countries for several decades. This continues to be the case; the United States is tied with Norway as having the highest rate among all adult workers (30 percent). But when attainment rates for bachelor's degrees among the youngest workers are compared, several OECD countries now have higher rates as their systems are growing rapidly while the United States has matured and reached an equilibrium point. . . . One key conclusion from this analysis is that a key challenge for the United States is to figure out how to improve the degree completion rate of its community college students.

Benchmarking Happiness

Performance benchmarks and customer satisfaction, this article from Business Officer by Catherine Lilly describes how the University of Michigan business and finance division achieved "$23 million in budget cuts over the past five years while at the same time maintaining (and in many cases improving) our existing levels of customer and employee satisfaction."

Most of us are anxious about being measured. Benchmarks, while meant to motivate, can prove detrimental if they are unrealistic. Following our first employee and customer satisfaction surveys, we set an overall target for improvement of 5 percent for the second surveys. This was not achieved for either survey. We’ve learned that when establishing baseline metrics, a number is only a number until you have something meaningful and consistent with which to compare it. This is why trend data is so important. For example, if you’re already scoring an 85 on a 100-point scale, it might be overly ambitious to think you can improve your score by 5 percentage points between measurement cycles. However, a valid goal should be to maintain the positive situation you’ve created.

Too Few Low-Income College Students?

A thoughtful article by Stacy Teicher Khadaroo in The Christian Science Monitor about recent analyses of statistics indicating even more underrepresentation of poor students on campus, especially at elite institutions:

"Higher education used to be one of the ways to get to the American middle class.... [Now] it's the only way," because of the loss of low-skill, high-wage jobs, says Thomas Mortenson, an Iowa-based senior scholar with the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington. "That places a very different set of responsibilities on higher education. If in fact they're going to play a socially constructive, economically constructive ... role, they have to diversify their enrollments."

He and other advocates for low-income students take many of the top-ranked public and private universities to task for the small percentages of low-income students they enroll. At the University of Virginia, for instance, about 7 percent of students in 2006 received federal Pell Grants, a common proxy that researchers use for low-income status. At Yale, it was about 8 percent.

Moving More Cars Off Campus

This brief USA Today article by Gwen Purdom uses few words to summarize and share a number of ways campuses are planning to get students on foot or onto two wheels, for health and energy reasons:

This fall, Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., is offering freshmen free mountain bikes, helmets and locks in exchange for a promise not to bring a car to campus. The $300-per-student cost is funded by private donations.

The college's president, David Joyce, says the project was meant to avoid building a parking garage, but its side effects are beneficial: less pollution, more exercise and savings on gas.

The timing was right, Joyce says: "We were either extremely brilliant or extremely lucky."

California Community College GIS Collaborative

What a great example of a systemwide collaborative effort in support of planning and information sharing! This gets great information out in the hands of whoever needs it, in the spirit of providing information for analysis and planning: "Starting with working with district leaders to find written legal descriptions to knitting together the final 72 maps from a composite set of 1.5 million polygons, a lot of time and effort has gone into completing this first version of the final map. Thanks to this collaborative endeavor, we have gained an important resource for better understanding and serving the California Community Colleges."

I am excited to announce that a statewide map of all 72 CCC district boundaries has been completed and is available for download here. Select the map on the left to view an enlarged image.

This set of GIS maps is a critical data analysis tool being used to integrate many different CCC data sets to answer questions important to the mission of the California Community Colleges. These maps can be used for research about regional demographics and population growth, election histories and bond election planning, enrollment forecasting, enrollment patterns of neighboring districts, traffic and public transit impacts to students and colleges, workforce development, and facilities planning and maintenance. They also can provide tools for the classroom; a GIS course at Rio Hondo College is already putting them to good use.