Organizational Culture among Master\u27s Colleges and Universities in the Upper Midwest

Shrinking budgets and growing mission creep currently threaten the American higher education landscape. This situation is exacerbated by an increased push within academe to differentiate colleges and universities (Clark, 1989; Crow, 2007; Henderson, 2009) toward greater specialization and the use of branding as an attempt to achieve higher status (Morphew, 2002). Yet, such trends are being promulgated with little empirical sup-port for their potential to benefit American higher education. An identification of how organizational culture manifests among master’s colleges and universities could provide campus leadership with the relevant in-formation to facilitate positive institutional change and growth among a section of higher education that educates a large proportion of the nation-al population of students. By better understanding organizational culture among their campuses, administrators and faculty may better advocate for more relevant changes that ultimately benefit their students

Origins of the Asymmetric Society: Freedom of Incorporation in the Early United States and Canada

This article explores the origins of a phenomenon of lasting and profound impact on American society: the private business corporation. Business is only part of our concern here, however. Seen in comparative-historical terms, the modern private corporation was born in colonial (i.e. pre-Revolutionary) America. Surprisingly, this occurred not only because of the business needs of colonial Americans but also as a result of their own struggles for political autonomy. More specifically, the post-Revolutionary doctrine of freedom of incorporation first emerged in states that were originally chartered as private corporations. These “corporate colonies’” experienced repeated conflict with the Crown over their rights and privileges as corporations. Once re-chartered as independent states, their respective legislatures transformed constituents’ relationship to the means of incorporation in such a way that would lead to lasting changes in American social, civil, and economic life. Quantitative data on the history of post-Revolutionary incorporation rates in the American states, as well as the early banking industries in the United States and Canada, are offered as illustration of this phenomenon. Concluding remarks are made about the interdependent development of states and markets, particularly in post-colonial nations, as well as the nature of institutional-legal transformation more generally

An Analysis of the Patterns of Crime and Socioeconomic Status Visualized Through Self-Organized Maps

This work is research to explore the association of spatial patterns between crime and socioeconomic status (SES) through the use of self-organized maps (SOM). It had been found that the spatial patterns of crime could be associated with those of socioeconomic, and this work sought to further these analyses in order to better understand how crime patterns and SES were related. To explore this association, patterns of crime and SES were examined in three cities: Nashville, TN; Portland, OR; and Tucson, AZ. Three SOMs were used in each city: one to analyze the patterns of crime, a second to analyze the patterns of SES, and a third to analyze the patterns of crime and SES. Nodes from each of these SOMs were also mapped to analyze the geographic distribution of their associated tracts. The results found an association between the patterns of crime and SES. In the Nashville Case Study, the patterns of high crime and low SES were not clearly associated in the combined Crime-SES SOM, but a stronger association was found in the geographic analysis. In the Portland Case Study, high crime and low SES patterns were found to be associated in the SOM. In the Tucson Case Study, high crime was found to be associated with low SES, but low SES was not always found to be associated with high crime. In each case study, the spatial patterns of low crime and high SES were found to be strongly associated. The spatial patterns of high crime were found to be associated with those of low SES, but the spatial patterns of low SES were not always found to be the same as those of high crime

Stress and Coping Among Public School Principals in a Midwest Metropolitan Sample

The present study sought to investigate perceptions of stress and coping among public school principals. School principals are daily called upon to make decisions regarding a range of unscripted events. The position can be stressful, and stress is known to interfere with sound decision making. It was predicted that present samples of school principals would report a mean level of elevated stress. Contrary to expectations, school principals did not report an elevated level of stress. They instead reported an ostensibly effective reliance on problem-focused and emotion-focused coping skills. It remains unclear how the school principals developed such adaptive means for coping with the stress of leading schools. It is recommended that future research explore this question so that such skills may be transmitted to principals-in-training

Organizational Culture as a Function of Institutional Type in Higher Education

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether organizational culture varies as a function of institutional type in higher education, and to identify whether there exists congruence between organizational culture type and leader behavior. Utilizing the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) developed by Cameron and Quinn (2011), data were collected from a sample of academic deans (n = 84) representing the colleges and universities across five states of the Upper Midwest. The results indicated a general trend toward clan cultures and congruent leader behavior for all institutional types (i.e., associate\u27s colleges, baccalaureate colleges, master\u27s colleges and universities, and doctorate-granting universities). Responses from academic deans at baccalaureate colleges singularly achieved statistical significance. Conversely, the results of the present study revealed a notable discontinuity between perceptions of current campus culture and desires for its future. Specifically, academic deans across all four institutional types indicated major preferences for a clan culture to predominate on their campuses. Perhaps most importantly, the results suggested the discovery of institutional size as a possible moderator of organizational culture among American colleges and universities

Telepresence: Democratizing the Higher Education Classroom

This session will present current research on how a dynamic university is using telepresence to effectively educate undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. Participants will explore the potential of this cutting-edge technology to facilitate face-to-face distributed learning. Special attention will be afforded to the finding that sense of community continues to be a challenge to telepresence in the classroom and how departments are seeking to address it. Recommendations will be offered to guide departments regarding potential opportunities and roadblocks toward incorporating telepresence into the classroom

Community in the Telepresence Classroom

We have been conducting surveys of our telepresence students at MSU since the spring of 2014. Initially (with our colleague Candace Raskin), we focused on students in our Educational Leadership Department; we subsequently extended our study to students in telepresence courses across campus. Our goal throughout has been to better understand how students experience telepresence courses and how we might improve the way in which we teach them. Here, we describe our findings thus far and offer a few recommendations for improving the student experience in telepresence courses