PKAL LI Works
- A conversation on a "willingness to trust"
- Two members of the PKAL National Steering Committee reflect on the Characteristics of the Ideal Leader inventory. President Daniel Sullivan and Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs Grant Cornwell have a conversation about the willingness to trust and to admit mistakes (two characteristics listed in the inventory).
- A perspective: Linking insights about how people learn to curricular reform
- After participating in the PKAL 2003 Assembly, Linking Insights About How People Learn to Curricular Reform, I offer some characteristics of an institution (college or university) that is having demonstrable success in linking insights about how people learn into the work of curricular transformation.
- A reflection on Personal characteristics of leaders
- Reflecting on her first PKAL F21 Leadership Institute in 1996, this F21 member discusses her experiences as a departmental leader. She comments on Mel George’s essay Personal Characteristics of Leaders and emphasizes the importance of "relational" leadership.
- Bringing community college faculty to the table to improve science education for all
- Connections between Mathematics and Biology
- Working within their disciplines, biologists and mathematicians can answer many interesting questions, but collaboratively they have the potential to solve more complex problems. Rather than talking about blending math and biology, this session will model the desired outcome. Participants will work in small, interdisciplinary groups to investigate real-world biological problems that require mathematical analysis. Moreover, participants can partner with individuals from other institutions to gain new perspectives. Groups will be asked to develop useful modules or strategies to bring biology into their math courses, or math into their biology courses.
- Hiring new faculty
Logistics, Landmines and Life-preservers for the Department Chair - One of the most significant challenges a department chair faces involves the leadership of the process by which a new member of the department is recruited, hired and integrated into the local academic community.
- How to Talk To Your Department Chair
- Talking with your department chair (and dean) is necessary for many reasons: to obtain resources needed for your teaching and research, to determine whether you're making satisfactory progress toward promotion, and to negotiate the various aspects of faculty life.
- Imagining the College/University of the Future
- Linking what we know about How People Learn (HPL) to the process of:
- building, nurturing and sustaining a strong faculty
- creating, implementing and assessing effective pedagogies
- determining institutional policies and budgets
- imagining & designing accommodating spaces.
- Investing in Facilities - The People and the Process: The Role of the Dean
- Leading by example: The role of chairs and deans
- Successful reform in undergraduate STEM education, indeed in all disciplines, depends on individuals with academic vision, commitment, interpersonal skills and political acumen. In this session, three respected leaders will present their individual perspectives on the process of leadership development with specific recommendations for STEM faculty at all career stages.
- Mission and vision for the sciences at Brooklyn College
- Transforming the undergraduate STEM learning begins with a clear vision grounded firmly in the institutional mission. This statement of mission and vision from Brooklyn College illustrates the power of a driving vision to mobilize a community to dream big about its future, in the context of planning new spaces for science. Brooklyn College is a PKAL Leadership Institution.
- Negotiating budgets and faculty lines in difficult times
- Green College faces challenges with obtaining resources for its science departments. Based on an external review of the college, administrators and faculty must decide on how to handle the "bad review" of the environmental science program.
- Roles and responsibilities of senior administrators in nurturing strong ERE programs
- Presented are three short, role-playing case studies that could be used in a curriculum planning retreat to understand the barriers and opportunities that faculty and administrators must face in developing interdisciplinary programs. These were prepared for the PKAL assembly in Portland, Oregon last year by James Howard of Humboldt State University, Marlene Moore of the University of Portland, and C. Gary Reiness of Lewis and Clark College. Although the specific theme is environmental science/studies programs, the issues raised in these case studies are generic to efforts to build and sustain all kinds of programs that cut across disciplines.
- Sharing your results
- An organized communication plan, particularly sharing results from work on a program or pedagogy, provides a means for a leader to expose his and his colleagues' work to the campus.
- The "real" definition of the ideal leader
- Gary Reiness argues with some of the implications about leadership suggested by the Characteristics of the Ideal Leader in his reflective essay.
- The department chair as linchpin of institutional transformation
- This set of essays from Southwest Minnesota State University reflects ideas and insights from one of PKAL's Leadership Initiative teams about the crucial role of a chairperson within the department and the institution as a whole.
- Vision and Organizational Change
- Where do academic leaders look to find insights, information, connections, and data that will affect their institution’s capacity to achieve and sustain distinction? How can you imagine (and imagineer) the future of undergraduate STEM, locally, nationally, globally? How can leaders best respond in ambiguous, challenging circumstances? Where do visions come from? Why is a vision necessary? What makes a vision statement compelling?