Chief academic officers will explore “Leading Change in Learning, Faculty, and Programs” at the 36th annual Institute for Chief Academic Officers to be held November 1–4 in Seattle, Washington.

Student learning, the faculty, and the curriculum remain at the heart of the CAO’s work, but in today’s changing world, these arenas are expanding and evolving. The conference will provide numerous opportunities for CAOs to learn about effective and innovative approaches.

Student Learning—Sessions will explore topics such as addressing classroom incivilities to facilitate student success, options in assessment of student learning, assessment of information literacy in libraries, and helicopter parents and the chief academic officer.

Faculty—To enhance CAOs’ work with the faculty, sessions will focus on the new generation of faculty members, motivating faculty members to engage in the scholarship of teaching, developing leadership skills of department chairs, and governance of programs and the curriculum.

Programs—Several sessions will explore the programs and activities for which the CAO is responsible or is engaged in beyond the traditional curriculum, including campus work on sustainability, athletics, the future of nursing education, graduate education, academic freedom, and the collegial campus.

The keynote address will be delivered by Vincent Tinto, Distinguished University Professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University and senior scholar of the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. This spring he completed work as visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. A frequent conference speaker, he is the author of Student Retention and Graduation: Facing the Truth, Living with the Consequences (2004) and numerous books and articles about access, retention, persistence, student success, and learning communities. In his address at the CAO Institute, titled “Access Without Support Is Not Opportunity,” Tinto will share the results of his recent national study of learning communities for academically underprepared students in two- and four-year institutions. His research amply demonstrates how academic and social support connected to the classroom can enhance student success.

Other plenary speakers include:

Ann E. Austin, Dr. Mildred B. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education (HALE) at Michigan State University. She is coauthor of Rethinking Faculty Work: Higher Education’s Strategic Imperative (2007). She was a Fulbright Fellow in South Africa and she is currently co-principal investigator of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning, a five-year National Science Foundation-funded center focused on improving postsecondary teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In her CAO Institute presentation, “Rethinking Faculty Work,” Austin will discuss her research on the faculty, helping CAOs to understand the significant changes occurring in characteristics of faculty members, types of faculty appointments, and the nature of faculty work.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He formerly was Charles H. Carswell Professor of Afro-American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University. Appiah has published widely in African and African-American literary and cultural studies including Experiments in Ethics (2008) and Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006), which received the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations. Appiah’s address to chief academic officers on “Cosmopolitan Education” will explore the question: Is it our economic or ecological or cultural or political interdependence that raises the most challenges for higher education? Appiah will argue that each of these forms of interdependence requires us to prepare students in new ways for an ever-changing world and that old traditions of thought about global citizenship provide the right starting point.

Sharon Daloz Parks, director of Leadership for the New Commons, an initiative of the Whidbey Institute in Clinton, Washington. She is the author of Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World (2005) and Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith (2000), among other works. Earlier in her career she served for more than 16 years in faculty and research positions in leadership and ethics at Harvard University in the Schools of Divinity, Business, and the Kennedy School of Government. Parks currently teaches in the Executive Leadership Program of Seattle University. She is a past recipient of the CIC Academic Leadership Award. In her closing plenary address, Parks will explore the role of CAOs in leading their institutions in a complex world. What does the art of adaptive leadership require in this time of peril and promise—for emerging adults, our colleges and universities, and our society and world?

A workshop on “Implementing a Strategic Plan and Budget” will be led by Kent John Chabotar, president of Guilford College (NC) and faculty member with the Harvard Institutes of Higher Education and the Getty Leadership Institute as well as author of Strategic Finance: Planning and Budgeting for Board, Chief Executives, and Finance Officers (2007). The workshop builds on the highly rated strategic budgeting workshop that he presented at the 2007 CAO Institute.

New chief academic officers are encouraged to register for the day-long New CAO Workshop led by experienced colleagues on Saturday, November 1. A mentor program, the Budget Fundamentals Workshop, and a session on preventive law are conference elements designed to assist new CAOs.

More information and registration materials are available here.