Author name: Rick

Burning Down the House? Accreditation and California Community Colleges

Leave a Comment / accreditation, Consulting, Leadership /

Several days ago the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) published a report excoriating its regional accreditor, the Accreditation Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). To my knowledge a state higher education agency has never banded together with disaffected voices within its state to take on an accreditation agency. Until now. The ACCJC accredits […]

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CEOs, Consultants, and Strategic Planning: The Case for Pre-Assessment

Leave a Comment / accreditation, Capacity, Consulting, Innovation, Leadership, Strategic Planning /

[dropcap] I’ve facilitated strategic planning processes that happily turn institutions around. I’ve also been party to lukewarm processes that don’t produce anything strategic. Hard-hitting and meaningful plans are always more desirable than plans filled with platitudes and unmeasurable promises. The difference is always in leadership.[/dropcap] The most skilled of facilitators can take a college only

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Getting to The Dance: Innovation and Strategic Planning

Leave a Comment / Consulting, Evaluation, Innovation, Strategic Planning /

[dropcap]Colleges from time to time tell me that they’d like to develop a new strategic plan, but that instead of an old fashioned “traditional” plan, they need an “innovative” plan. What advice would I have about how strategic planning and innovation could dance together? My enthusiasm always ticks up when I hear colleges aspire to

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A Consultant’s Guide to Spotting Toxic Organizations

Leave a Comment / Consulting, Evaluation, Leadership /

[dropcap]Maybe it was what I learned from co-teaching a doctoral course on organizational performance this summer. Or, it could be the alignment of certain celestial bodies. Either way I’ve been thinking about toxic organizations and the damage they cause themselves. The survival skill set for consultants should include the ability to quickly spot toxic organizations.[/dropcap]

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Spinning Out of Control with Randomized Controls

Leave a Comment / Evaluation, Randomized Controls, Research /

[dropcap]In my work, I hear the occasional drum beat for more “scientific evaluation techniques” especially the need for randomized controls. You might have heard the sound of the drill from Stanley and Campbell who set the stage for treatment and control groups to determine the worth of experiments. This beat has gotten louder over the

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Rick’s Rubrics for Strategic Planning

Leave a Comment / Consulting, South Africa, Strategic Planning /

[dropcap]In a professional life dedicated to making higher education a better place, interesting events come my way with increased frequency. I spent most of last week at Stellenbosch University in South Africa after having spent the week before near the Kruger National Park looking at the Big 5 (Africa’s lions, leopards, rhinos, hippos, and cape

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Eating Our Young: Financing Higher Education

Leave a Comment / Higher Education Finance /

[dropcap]It’s no secret that higher education is in big trouble. Today, the State Higher Education Executive Officers released its report tracing state financing of higher education. Not light reading, it’s one of many long, dreary line of indictments of what’s not happening underneath the state houses and capitol domes across the nation. Our inaction is

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