Welcome to our Book Club exclusively for University Governance Professionals
University governance professionals repeatedly say how important their community is and how much they like to get together to share stories and connect. We facilitate a Canada-wide governance professionals university book club designed to help you maintain connections and build your knowledge and skills.
How Does it Work
Read a Relevant Book
We are aiming to read two books per year. You will have at least three months to read the book. We welcome suggestions for books.
What we are Reading:
“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” Resistance to Change in Higher Education by Brian Rosenberg.
See details below.
Meet Your Colleagues
You will be assigned to small groups to meet virtually once or twice to discuss the book. The groups will be assigned based on several considerations, but we will aim to ensure you are connecting with colleagues from other universities. In other words, we will mix it up for each book. We will look to you for help in setting up your meetings.
What’s the cost?
There is no cost to participate in the Book Club, although you will order and pay for the book yourself.
If you choose (and subject to space limitations), you can participate in the meet the author event to be scheduled several months down the road, facilitated by Cheryl Foy of Strategic Governance Consulting Services. This webinar will be offered for a nominal cost depending on the anticipated costs for the webinar.
Please see below for more details about the first book and event and how to get involved. Looking forward to having you involved!
Sincerely,
Cheryl
What We Are Reading
An invigorating work that identifies obstructions to transformative change in higher education and offers paths to break through.
In “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It,” president emeritus of Macalester College Brian Rosenberg draws on decades of higher education experience to expose the entrenched structures, practices, and cultures that inhibit meaningful postsecondary reform, even as institutions face serious challenges to their financial and educational models. A lively insider’s account, the book pinpoints factors that hinder the ability of U.S. colleges and universities to be creative and entrepreneurial amid calls to improve affordability, access, and equity for students.
Through pithy personal stories of divisive town hall meetings, multiyear college governance battles, and attempts at curricular reform, Rosenberg illustrates internal and external dynamics that impede institutional evolution. Pressures such as declining enrollment, escalating costs, and an oversupply of PhDs in academia have long signaled a grave need for reform within a profession that, as Rosenberg ruefully acknowledges, lacks organizational flexibility, depends greatly on reputation and ranking, and retains traditions, from the academic calendar to grading systems, that have remained essentially the same for decades.
Rosenberg looks outside the U.S. system to find possible antidotes in innovative higher education models such as student-centered and experiential learning approaches. This thought-provoking work offers ample evidence for presidents, chancellors, deans, provosts, and faculty to consider as they plan their missions to achieve institutional transformation.
The book is available here from Amazon.
Past Reading
First Book: ‘EQ’ for the Governance Professional – How to make a stellar impact whilst keeping your sanity by Paul Dubal.
If you have questions, please send an email to events@universitygovernance.ca. We look forward to reading with you.