Higher Education Collaboratives for Community Engagement and Improvement

Our society is in a period of dramatic change with the transition from an industrial-based to a knowledge-based economy, as well as technological advances, fiscal challenges of higher education, and cultural shifts in society as a whole. Increasing collaborations between communities and universities in order to influence the public good becomes paramount during this time of dramatic change. As frustratingly slow as the movement to strengthen the relationship between higher education and society sometimes seems to be, few social institutions are better situated than colleges and universities to stimulate significant community improvement. Individually and collectively, institutions of higher education possess considerable resources—human, fiscal, organizational, and intellectual— which are critical to addressing significant social issues. Additionally, these institutions are physically rooted in their communities. Therefore, investing in the betterment of their immediate environments is good for both the community and the institution. However, it is recognized that higher education institutions often fall short of making a real impact in their home communities. Therefore, a conference was convened to examine the current and evolving role of higher education institutions, particularly those operating within the context of coalitions, consortia and state systems, to catalyze change on issues affecting communities and society as a whole. Specifically, the focus of the conference was to develop and strengthen an understanding of how higher education might work more effectively with communities and we believe that consortia or collaboratives of higher education institutions, along with community partners, can learn from one another. Cooperation between efforts is important. The papers offered in this monograph are the result of the Wingspread Conference on Higher Education Collaboratives for Community Engagement and Improvement, conducted on October 27-29, 2004, in Racine, Wisconsin. The conference, the second of a three-part series, was sponsored by the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good at the University of Michigan School of Education, the Johnson Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The first conference in the series held in October 2003 and titled Public Understanding, Public Support and Public Policy focused on higher education’s role in society and the concluding conference will be held in the fall of 2005

Sensemaking and Sensegiving: Leadership Processes of New College Presidents.

This dissertation is a study of how new college presidents simultaneously learn about the organization while being in charge. Eighteen semi-structured interviews were completed with new presidents who were organizational outsiders and first-time presidents. An equal third were at baccalaureate colleges, master’s college and universities, and research universities. Motivations for this study include: 1) understanding why such a large percentage of presidents are hired as outsiders, estimated at around 80 percent in higher education compared to 40 percent in business; 2) why the tenure of college presidents seems relatively short (around 6-7 years) and if this is a problem or a reasonable pace for organizational renewal and leadership transition; 3) understanding the experience of being in charge of an organization while being a newcomer, and 4) to contribute to the theoretical perspective of sensemaking and sensegiving—which, put simply, is how people think (sensemaking), and how people attempt to influence how others think (sensegiving). Utilizing grounded theory methods, some significant findings include how presidents use strategic ambiguity through “safe harbors,” cautiously know and doubt their knowledge when they begin, and find trusted individuals to help them interpret situations. Presidents were also quickly relied upon for new meaning and direction (sensegiving) which came in several forms, such as priority-setting, framing, setting forth an inspiring future image, constructing crisis as a means to initiate change, and re-labeling and re-organizing. As newcomers, I also found presidents acting as “lay ethnographers,” unknowingly using many of the methods of ethnography to understand the tacit, contextualized knowledge of the culture. Several barriers to sensemaking also emerged, including the isolation of being in a formal position of authority where people are unlikely to tell you the truth, and constituents expecting presidents to be highly deliberate, meaning presidents had little affordance to “think out loud.” Finally, I found a large disconnect between the certainty and clarity with which presidents spoke and the ambiguity and complexity described in the organization theory literature. This disconnect was evident in descriptions of strategic planning and the use of the language and rhetoric from management bestsellers.Ph.D.EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62355/1/rsmerek_1.pd