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Woodrow
Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Provides National Leadership
on Three Critical Initiatives
Over the past year The Woodrow Wilson National
Fellowship Foundation has assumed a leading national role on three
initiatives that will increasingly shape not only the higher education
agenda, but foster closer ties with K-12 education and encourage
more effective teaching and learning at all levels. These three
initiatives and a summary of each are:
- Re-Envisioning the Ph.D. – Woodrow Wilson co-sponsored
the April 13-15 national conference by this name at the University
of Washington, as the culmination of a year-long inventory of
doctoral programs funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Major hiring
institutions, e.g., colleges and universities of all types, industry,
and government, found common ground in calling for reforms that
would cause new Ph.Ds to be better prepared to fulfill their hiring
organization job description (e.g., teaching, institutional citizenship,
collaboration and team roles). Doctoral students spoke forcefully
of the need for a greater range of career preparation skills,
more flexible programs, more effective mentorship, better intern
and apprentice opportunities, and better graduate program accountability
for timely and effective doctoral training. Hiring institutions
are considering ways of assisting in doctoral education. ANAC
is considering a pre-doc program, for example, where doctoral
candidates might have a one course per semester/term teaching
position on an ANAC campus being mentored by an experienced ANAC
faculty member while completing the dissertation.
- Schools and Scholars – With a grant from the William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Woodrow Wilson held a series of
regional meetings across the nation to assess ways that research
universities and high schools might work together, particularly
ways that scholars might create linkages with high school teachers.
The regional meetings culminated in a national conference at the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, May 15-17. A variety
of partnerships were considered to bring schools and colleges
closer together, not only to strengthen learning for higher order
thinking at the high school level, but to provide high school
teachers with intellectually stimulating professional development
experiences in the company of scholars, and to make available
at the college level the knowledge about students, learning, and
pedagogies that high school teachers often possess that would
improve teaching and learning at universities.
- National Center for Education in the Disciplines – Also
funded by Pew, this project, headed by Robert Orrill, is intended
to overcome the divide between high school and college by bringing
the academic aims and curricular structures of grades 11-14 into
more seamless relationships. This will be done through the development
of four literacies that should form the core of learning through
these four years: humanities, writing, sciences, and quantitative
reasoning. The project will assemble a group of respected national
specialists who will evaluate model programs for best practices
regarding each of the four literacies. Not only might this project
infuse intellectual excitement into the high school curriculum,
but in tandem with the Schools and Scholars project, it should
allow students much greater opportunity to proceed through high
school and college at a pace commensurate with their abilities
and eliminate the disconnects that now exist between the high
school and college experiences.
Participation
Invited for National Academy for Academic Leadership Workshops:
for New Deans and Institutional Academic Teams, July 28-August 2;
for Chief Academic and Finance Officers, November 19-22, 2000
Blue Mountain Lake, in New York's scenic
Adirondack Mountains, is the site for the National Academy's Workshop:
"Effective Leadership in a Time of Unrelenting Change,"
July 28-August 2, at the Minnowbrook Conference Center. The Workshop
will offer core and elective sessions in two tracks, one with particular
reference to the challenges facing new deans; the other designed
to facilitate the work of institutional teams. The Workshop will
provide briefings and small group work on vexing issues that new
deans must respond to quickly and with which institutions across
the higher education spectrum are grappling in sorting out priorities
for strategic planning. A staff of "seasoned practitioners" will
be available to work with new deans and to assist teams to prepare
action plans to be implemented upon return to campus. For more information,
costs, and registration details, go to http://www.thenationalacademy.org/Programs/newdeans00.html.
The National Academy is offering a second workshop in cooperation
with NACUBO and AGB from November 19-22, "Academic Change
and Strategic Resource Allocation," at the Don CeSar Beach
Resort and Spa at St. Pete Beach in Florida. This event will focus
on team-building involving chief academic and financial officers,
and, as appropriate, the president and one or more board members.
Working with experienced practitioners and scholars, participants
will pursue these workshop goals:
- Relate resource allocation issues to academic initiatives,
- Analyze real costs,
- Develop the knowledge and skills necessary to work together
in the design and implementation of significant institutional
change, and
- Develop within each team a shared language and common values.
In preparing for the workshop, participants and selected colleagues
will complete a survey questionnaire on budget and resource allocation
on their campus as a resource for team discussion and planning during
the workshop.
For more information, costs, and registration details, go to http://www.thenationalacademy.org/Programs/caocfo00.html.
L to
R: Ed Biglin has the full attention of Bob Diamond, Jon Wergin,
and Ellen Wert of The Pew Charitable Trusts at the Summer Institute.
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