Our University – Truth Telling
One of the greatest challenges for leadership is to get people, in all parts of the organization, to tell the truth about how things are. It is not that they actively lie, but that they never want to be bearers…
Category Faculty
Our University – The Three R’s
If B.F. Skinner was a university leader who wanted to foster excellence in teaching, research, and service, as do all intelligent university leaders, he would have come up with a dynamic suggestion, one that many inside and outside of the…
Our University – College of Education
There are hundreds of institutions in the United States recognized today as universities that were called “teachers colleges” a half century ago. As these institutions grew and developed diverse areas of study the title “university” was deemed more appropriate. No…
Our University – 51/49 Percent
Faculty members should spend 51 percent of their time serving the state and students, and 49 percent of their time serving themselves in personal intellectual development. Faculty work is unique. Imagine any employment setting where leadership says split your time…
Our University – Work and Job
Warning – There is a three-letter word below that might be offensive – a slang word used to describe a persons rear end – but sometimes you just have to call it what it is. I reflected recently on the…
Our University – Allegiance
In political organizations, the first allegiance for all employees is to the elected official for whom they work. For better or worse the elected official’s allegiance may be to party, to country, to ideology, or unfortunately in many cases, to…
Our University – The Fourth and Tenure
Independence of thought for a collected group of people and independence of thought for an individual are so tightly wound together that you cannot have one without the other. First, the case of our nation. The coercion exercised upon the…
Our University – The Power of the Hire
I recently had the opportunity to attend a reception in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Arts. It was an alumni event to celebrate the life and work of R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was a remarkable man by any…
Our University – Teaching and Research
Job prospects for graduating students are as challenging as anyone has seen in decades. There is scarcely a bright light to be found. In a rush to address this complex socioeconomic and political issue some universities might be led to…
Our University – Struggle
The struggles of a university are not the subject of these thoughts. That would be too easy. The struggles are many, not unique, frequently self-inflicted, and reflective of the environment. Universities are members of a family of similar institutions. The…
Our University- Reach
Reach is the ability of an institution; a family, a university, a seat of commerce, a government to generate impact beyond its home or geographic boundaries. Reach comes from quality. Quality comes from knowledge and insight. Knowledge and insight are…
Our University – Stimulus
The most powerful stimulus ever invented, used for good and evil since the beginning of time, and producing both astoundingly positive results and the greatest tragedies in human history, creating vast wealth and pervasive poverty, leading to fulfillment or failure,…
Our University – Ideologues and Pragmatists
In the tension between ideology and pragmatism, that delicate balance, lives the genius of leadership. Ideologues are often associated with narrow-mindedness and a small view of the world. People who hold strong views related to their faith are…
Faculty at Work
Our university has an excellent architecture program. Architecture students have ACT scores that are over two points higher than the university average. We are oversubscribed and turn away applicants. Bringing in more students than can be properly…
Our University – Entitlement
Entitlement is the state of being owed that which you have not earned. We see workers of all kinds, at every level, from classroom teachers to state and national political leaders who suffer from the notion that they are…
Our University – New Insights
In this season of thanksgiving and refreshment, of looking ahead and looking back, little is more central to our university than new ideas and new knowledge that build on the past and shape the future. Looking back and looking…
Greed – Our University
Barbara Bush acknowledged a number of years ago, possibly when First Lady, what she believed was the most pressing problem in America. “Greed.” We have heard a great deal about greed on Wall Street. Bankers who want to make…
Our University – Merit
When Mary and I go out to eat we always decide where we are going before we leave. Sometimes we even talk about it on the phone before I get to the house. In other words, this is not a…
Our University – The Mathematics of Jack Graham
Organizations are frequently in debt to quiet people. Servants who lead. Jack Graham was such a person and his death last week reminds of our responsibility to remember. There was an era at SIU in which a forceful, visionary,…
Our University – Tenure
Tenure has changed markedly since its inception as an academic concept. It is often confused with the idea of sinecure. Tenure protects a faculty member from a board of trustees or, in public universities, an elected official who might not…
Our University and Significant Debt
My mother worked as a riveter sewing sheet metal to plane wings in a defense plant on Long Island during the big war. Countless others did too. My in-laws worked at Grumman on Long Island for a combined total of…
Our University – The Core Curriculum
Visiting with parents and prospective students always reinforces what is most important. The Core Curriculum at our university is a very good one, and provides many options for students to experience a range of intellectual exposure to ideas and subjects…
The Importance of Excellent Teaching
Over the past few months research, economic development, our library, intercollegiate athletics, graduate study, quality, leadership and resources have been addressed, among a number of other topics. The center of our University, its sole purpose for being though is about…
Our University: Stock Certificates
Stock certificates are used to prove partial ownership of a corporation. A bearer’s stock certificate entitles the holder to exercise all legal rights associated with the stock. Holders of stock certificates want the value of the stock to increase thereby…
Building Understanding – Studying Abroad
Our world is simultaneously growing and shrinking. We must change our views of ourselves and our increasingly intertwined neighbors, near and far. Change powers Our University. Quality is judged by the change that occurs in students during their time at…
Faculty – Foundation for Excellence
Many important characteristics of a research university contribute quality at Southern, but none compete with faculty for first place. To be sure, without students there is no university. Our raison d’etre is students. But after that we must concede the…
Protected: Our Library, Our Heart of Hearts
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