Summer 2005
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Summer 2005 |
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How can CAOs balance the sometimes competing goals of stimulating change, innovation, and improved educational quality while keeping an eye on improving the bottom line? Building Institutional Strength: Programs, Procedures, and the Professoriate is the theme of CIC’s 2005 Institute for Chief Academic Officers. The meeting will be held on November 5-8 in San Antonio, TX. Conference participants will address such issues as: How do CAOs actually make change happen? How can they: Balance enrollment goals with informed strategic planning? Analyze financial data in support of institutional effectiveness? Use data effectively in the decision-making process? And work effectively with the new generation of faculty members? “The chief academic officer’s role continues to expand, encompassing not only the traditional academic areas, but also increasingly broad concerns,” said CIC President Richard Ekman. “The CAO frequently has responsibilities for campus-wide operations, serving to assist a president who is preoccupied with external audiences, the community, and fundraising. And as the CAO strives to build a high-quality curriculum, challenges emerge in balancing the liberal arts and professional programs, determining which new programs will best meet the needs of today’s students, and developing new initiatives with limited resources. This conference will help CAOs contend with these competing responsibilities,” he added. Plenary session speakers include Richard Chait, professor of higher education and director of the Study of New Scholars in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who will deliver the keynote address on “When the Next Generation of Faculty Members Meets the Current Generation of Chief Academic Officers”; Richard Hersh, senior fellow at the Council for Aid to Education and co-director of the Collegiate Learning Assessment project, who will discuss the gulf between the promise of undergraduate education and the reality, encouraging institutions to measure student learning so they can document their success and inform change; Stanley N. Katz, director of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies of the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, and president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies, who will discuss “Doesn’t the Curriculum Really Matter?”; and Mary Patterson McPherson, vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 1998 and president emeritus of Bryn Mawr College, who will address “How Do Chief Academic Officers Actually Make Change Happen?”
In the “professoriate” sessions of the Institute, CAOs will have opportunities to look at: building a diverse faculty, faculty compensation and development, concerns of faculty members in the later stages of their careers, and working with the newest generation of faculty members. Curricular issues to be addressed in the program track will include: engaging students in big ideas through the liberal arts, setting academic program priorities, recognizing effective educational practices, fostering international education, and managing the library and information technology budgets. And in addition to sessions on building institutional strength, the Institute, as is its tradition, will provide numerous opportunities for CAOs to share ideas and discuss problems with colleagues in formal and informal settings. The Institute program will also feature several two- and three-hour workshops that will offer hands-on work and tools that can be used when participants return to their campuses. Two workshops will focus on budget issues. The first, “The CAO and the Budget,” will help participants gain greater understanding of the budget process as well as financial statements and reports. The second, “Advanced Topics in Budgeting for the CAO,” targeted at CAOs who are already comfortable with creating and monitoring budgets at the institutional and departmental level, will help participants explore ways to analyze and present financial data in support of their strategic goals. Two other workshops will include “Leadership in Place and Vocation” and a case study on “Faculty Compensation and the
Comprehensive information about the conference, including registration forms, can be found on CIC’s website at http://www.cic.edu/conferences_ events/caos/2005.asp. The deadline for receiving the reduced rate for hotel accommodations at the Hyatt Regency San Antonio Hotel is October 3 (any reservations made after that will be accommodated at the group rate on a space-available basis). Independent |
Featured
plenary speakers include (l-r) Richard Chait, Harvard
Graduate School of Education; Richard Hersh, Council
for Aid to Education; Stanley N. Katz, Woodrow Wilson
School, Princeton University; and Mary Patterson McPherson,
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 
Judith
Conrad Wimmer, vice president for academic
affairs at Edgewood College (WI) from
1986 to 2005, has been selected to receive the 2005
CIC Chief Academic Officer Award for contributions to
her colleagues at private colleges and universities.