The closing plenary session for the 2002 Institute for Chief Academic Officers featured three cheif academic officers in different stages of their careers: (second from left) Margaret Malmberg (middle years), Kim Luckes (early years), and Stephen Good (later years). Neil George (far left), executive vice president and vice president for academic affairs at Webster University, moderated the session.

Article Contents:
Introduction • Rodriguez Address • Future of the Liberal Arts • Accreditation's Impact on Small Campuses • Instructional Costs and Productivity—The Delaware Study • Internationalizing the Campus • Transforming the Library • Religion on Campus • Best Practices for CAOs and Trustees • Stages in the Life of a CAO

Record-breaking attendance, a new post-Institute workshop on prioritizing academic programs and reallocating resources, an expanded program, and well-received speakers and sessions marked a successful 30th annual Institute for Chief Academic Officers. The CIC meeting was held November 2-5 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
    During the conference, panelists explored the new roles of chief academic officers today in the context of changes in finances, governance, learning, and the future faculty—key issues that emerged from CIC’s strategic planning conducted in 2001. Sessions on finances focused on academic restructuring, faculty productivity, benchmarking, tuition discounting, and pricing and enrollment planning. A first-ever post-Institute workshop to help CAOs prioritize academic programs and reallocate resources was well received, with 50 participants. Sessions addressed a range of issues, from assessing learning outcomes, religious trends on campus, the use of accreditation in building a high-quality program, to current legal issues for private colleges. Discussions on governance issues included building leadership among department/division chairs, exploring effective administrative structures, conflict resolution, and working with the academic affairs committee of the board of trustees. And sessions on the future faculty focused on recruiting new faculty members who can carry out the institutional mission, working with faculty members at the end of their careers, and building effective faculty development programs.
    Martha Craven Nussbaum’s keynote address, “Education for Global Citizenship,” discussed the complex challenge of educating young people for participation in constructive global dialogue about urgent problems, using examples from higher education both in the U.S. and abroad. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago.
    During the conference, Nussbaum was presented with the Council’s Academic Leadership Award for her scholarly research and for her advocacy of the liberal arts. Carl H. Caldwell, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Anderson University (IN), received the 2002 Chief Academic Officer Award for advancing academic excellence at private colleges and universities.

“Browning” of America is Focus of Rodriguez’s Keynote Address
Richard Rodriguez delivered a powerful keynote address at this year’s 2002 Institute for Chief Academic Officers. In it, he spoke about his book, Brown: The Last Discovery of America, which discusses how American society is constantly blending aspects of cultures and races from around the world—what he refers to as “browning.” Reflecting upon the new demographic profile of our country, Rodriguez observes that America is “browning,” and that “Hispanics are becoming Americanized at the same rate that the United States is becoming Latinized. Hispanics are coloring an American identity that traditionally has chosen to describe itself as black and white.”

Following his keynote address, Richard Rodriquez signs copies of his book, Brown: The Last Discovery of America, for Everette Freeman, University of Indianapolis (center) and Mary Katherine Grant, Conference for Mercy Higher Education.

    In discussing how this browning of America relates to education and the way educators teach, Rodriguez said, “as we become browner, we will become more skeptical of each other, we will find new ways to separate, unless we figure out a way to teach students that they are brown together, that our entire history is brown, that our entire tongue is brown, that there is no one in this room who does not celebrate or participate in brownness.” He noted that “there are extraordinary mixed signals in American education”—that, although education is highly valued, society does not reward teaching as a profession. In addition, “students are looking for ways to connect to each other, yet we, as teachers, have very little to say to them…. We need to teach students that they belong to each other, that they belong to a community. We need to teach students that they belong within a narrative, yet we are increasingly transferring the applications of teaching and learning to a computer…. I think the real struggle is between information—which is what we now teach our children education is about—and the story, the narrative,” he said.
    We can no longer think in the simple racial terms of “black,” “white,” and “brown” for understanding the future and past of America, Rodriguez said. “We are moving from the realm of race and blood to the realm of culture,” which has implications for the nation as a whole and for education. His closing remarks focused on the complexity of this change with a personal example. “I celebrate my cousin, a 14-year old daughter of parents from India and Mexico (native). Sitting with her on the patio of her house one day, we laughed because we knew that there was no name in America for her. So, we decided that she was a stutter—that she was an Indian-Indian. And then, 15 years later she marries an American-Indian, and what was a stutter gave birth to a pathology. Their son was an Indian-Indian-Indian, and he works now at a yuppie restaurant in San Francisco at lunchtime… and he serves the women their goat cheese salads, and everyone tells him he looks Italian.”



The Future of the Liberal Arts
Two especially well-attended sessions were those in which John Churchill, secretary of Phi Beta Kappa, and Maury Ditzler, dean of the faculty of Wabash College (IN), discussed “What is the future of the liberal arts?” It became clear during the exchange that CAOs define the “liberal arts” in widely varying ways. The proposals of ways to restore the liberal arts to a central place in the curriculum were as diverse as the explanations of how colleges had moved away from the liberal arts. It was generally agreed that this topic deserves further consideration at future CAO meetings.

Accreditation’s Impact on Small Campuses
Several sessions focused on issues involving accrediting organizations. Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), and Claudia Jones, Paine College’s (GA) academic vice president, presided over two lively dialogues. From conversations with Congressional staffers, Eaton reported that a number of lawmakers hope to increase the pressure for college and university accountability in the next Higher Education Act reauthorization. Jones and the other chief academic officers also helped Eaton to understand some of the special concerns that smaller institutions face. As an example, many individuals wondered whether there are ways in which existing regional agencies or perhaps a new entity can counter the push for more courses in professional majors by promoting the proper balance of general education in the curriculum.

Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, urged chief academic officers to take a leadership role in the accreditation process.

    Participants also discussed whether the missions of small, private colleges and universities are being warped by the accreditation process in trying to produce similarities in educational outcomes. CAOs said it depends on the accrediting agency—some agreed that regional accreditors do impose standards that go against the mission of the institution, and that standards can be “prescriptive,” “capricious,” and “nit-picky,” while others argued that “mission warping is too strong a phrase,” and that the accrediting process is fair and necessary.
    Eaton acknowledged the problems and cited some solutions to render the agencies and standards more effective and efficient, including:

• enlarge the consultative role of accreditors—having them engage in more collegial dialogue;
• do a better job in training the teams; and
• narrow the pool of those who serve on teams to include more experts, and exclude those who are inexperienced.

    To ensure that the smaller institution perspective—on these and other topics—is heard on accreditation matters, Eaton encouraged CIC institutions to play active roles in the accreditation processes by serving on teams and commissions. She also proposed holding a special workshop on accreditation in conjunction with a CIC event.
    In another session, Wayne Markert, Hollins University (VA) and John Masterson, Texas Lutheran University, both from colleges that have gone through the accrediting process of the new Teacher Education Accreditation Council, discussed specialized accreditation.

Instructional Costs and Productivity—The Delaware Study
A session on the Delaware Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity was also very well attended and generated significant interest among CAOs. The Delaware study is a data-sharing consortium of over 300 four-year colleges and universities that receive national benchmark data on faculty teaching loads, instructional costs, and funded research activity, all at academic discipline level of analysis. Panelists included Michael Middaugh, who directs the study and is author of Understanding Faculty Productivity: Standards and Benchmarks for Colleges and Universities, and Paul R. Douillard, vice president and dean for academic affairs at Caldwell College (NJ).
    The CAOs who attended the session were interested in having more CIC institutions participate in the study so they could use it for benchmarking of academic programs. When a CAO is told that an academic program, such as the mathematics department, needs a larger budget, the CAO finds it difficult to determine if that really is true.
    Attendees made the case that if enough institutions participated in the Delaware study, CAOs would be able to compare what their institutions are spending on math to what comparable institutions are spending.



Internationalizing the Campus
The key to creating an international culture on independent college campuses is administrative support for making student life and educational programs more globally centered, said panelists Lloyd Michaels, dean of the college at Allegheny College (PA) and Jane Spalding, director of the U.S. University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific program.
    A successful international education program requires an institutional commitment and international goals that inform the institutional mission statement, they said. The first step in internationalizing the campus is to conduct an “international education institutional audit” that includes an inventory of international programs and an analysis of their educational value and cost effectiveness, and the creation of a body on campus dedicated to fostering international education, setting goals, and assessing progress, Michaels said. “CAOs can foster the success of the program by listening to faculty members, knowing where the expertise is, planning for five to ten years out, and establishing partnerships between departments to integrate international education so that students are exposed to it in a variety of courses throughout the curriculum,” he said.
    Spalding stressed that faculty development is also key. CAOs should “provide incentives and rewards for faculty members who develop courses with intercultural perspective; support travel and research abroad and language study; and develop mentoring programs that support faculty members to accompany a study group abroad with the expectation that the experience will lead to course development,” she said. Other suggestions included: conducting faculty seminars abroad and employing the international experience of current faculty to promote curricular change and faculty re-tooling.

Transforming the Library
Changes happening in college and university libraries today are of fundamental importance to teaching and learning on campus, said presenters Michael Bell, vice president for academic affairs at Elmhurst College (IL) and Rita Gulstad, dean of extended studies and learning resources at Central Methodist College (MO), who is also a senior advisor on CIC’s library project.
    These changes “present a wonderful opportunity to reassert a new way of thinking about the intellectual life on campus, and about how students learn,” Bell said. Gulstad maintained that “libraries now have to reach the user and figure out new ways to support faculty and students. The new librarian must be an expert in records and knowledge management; establish a collaborative relationship with the faculty, technology staff, and learning center staff, among others; be flexible and able to multi-task; work independently and in teams; and possess intellectual curiosity as well as analytical and complex problem-solving skills.”
    As the librarian’s role shifts, so does that of the traditional library, Gulstad said. “Students coming to the library want to be comfortable—they want different types of spaces, including a coffee bar, lounge, and collaborative spaces, as well as quiet places. A key factor in the success of today’s students is “information literacy”—a set of abilities required of an individual to recognize when information is needed and the ability to locate it, she noted. Through collaboration among CAOs, library administrators, faculty members, and information technology officers, campuses can foster information literacy among student bodies, Gulstad said, adding that this was the focus of a recent CIC workshop.
    To improve campus libraries, Gulstad and Bell said “CAOs should talk with the librarians and encourage them to collaborate with others on campus, review their governance models, provide a climate for change, identify stakeholders who can assist with the process, and learn more about information literacy.”



Religion on Campus
Two speakers, Amanda Porterfield, professor of religious studies at the University of Wyoming and author of Religion on Campus, and Victor Kazanjian, dean of religious and spiritual life at Wellesley College (MA), argued that colleges and universities must educate students for a world of religious diversity, since these religious differences frequently become contentious. They proposed that the current climate of tolerance inhibits this education. Porterfield labeled tolerance “condescending rather than investigative,” and Kazanjian found that tolerance “freezes us in suspended ignorance.” What is needed, they said, are ways to expose students to other faiths and traditions.
    “Colleges need to foster hard inquiry about religion today…and should not sign off the religious and spiritual life of students to churches and off-campus groups,” Kazanjian said. “There is an epidemic of ignorance about the world’s religions, and the task falls to liberal arts institutions to engage in a new dialogue with the religious community on how to incorporate religion in the classroom using critical methods of analysis.”

Best Practices for CAOs and Trustees
The Association of Governing Boards (AGB) recently completed a study of governing boards and academic affairs that suggests principles and best practices for CAOs in working with boards of trustees. Jonnie Guerra, vice president for academic affairs at Cabrini College (PA) and Susan Whealler Johnston, director of independent sector programs for the AGB said that good CAO practices when working with the academic affairs committee of the board include: collaborative agenda setting; education of trustees for stewardship; inviting board members into the classroom to gain first-hand experience of faculty, students, and academic programs; contextualization of issues and decisions made by the institution; and a strategic, not operational, focus.
    Guerra and Johnston further suggested that CAOs should keep the chair of the academic affairs committee informed between meetings; invite other vice presidents to attend the meetings; and share program outcome data with committee members.

A group of experienced chief academic officers—(l-r), Duane Wood, Cedarville University (OH); Lon Fendall, George Fox University (OR); Johanna Glazewski, College of Saint Elizabeth (NJ); Gary Weedman, Palm Beach Atlantic University (FL); and Carol Hinds, Mount St. Mary's College and Seminary (MD)—discuss strategies for succeeding as CAOs.

Stages in the Life of a CAO
In the final plenary session of the Institute, three chief academic officers reflected on key issues for CAOs at three stages in their careers: the beginning years, represented by Kim Luckes, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Saint Augustine’s College (NC); the established years, Margaret Malmberg, provost and dean of the
faculty at the University of Charleston (WV); and the later years, Stephen Good, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college, Drury University (MO).
    Luckes said she went through a lot of changes in her first years, but didn’t ask all the right questions. She has since learned to “live by certain principles to be effective and efficient: vision, innovation, team building, results oriented, fiscally conservative, effective management, academic excellence, good work ethic, courage, and fairness.”
    Malmberg said that once she entered the middle years, she “had fewer sleepless nights and less anxiety than before, and is taking better care of herself.” She suggests to new CAOs that they “choose the president” they want to work with. “Decide whether you want to work for a particular president before you team up with that individual. Think through what you need to know about the person and how to find that information.” She also stressed that “as new CAOs grow in the institution, they need to learn to delegate, and should bring others along and work to enrich their potential.”
    Good stressed that CAOs who are in their later years at an institution “need to stay at the top of their game—have vision; know where the institution is going academically and be able to articulate academic values; have a big agenda that engages the whole faculty; stay close to students and the faculty; maintain balance; keep a sense of humor; and defend academic freedom and the importance of tenure.” He also suggested that CAOs should learn how to leave gracefully. “Manage your transition so the institution maintains its confidence in you, but retain your ability to lead by setting the agenda and presenting a vision for the institution.”
    A group of CAOs in their later years characterized CAOs who survive longer than five years (five years is the average tenure of a CAO, according to one participant) as “ones who stopped thinking like a faculty member, but maintained a connection to the issues of importance to the faculty.”