Category: Transformation

Program discontinuation is supposed to be the third rail of a presidency. When Fairleigh Dickinson University compiled a significant list of programs to discontinue or consolidate, President Michael Avaltroni took the list to a faculty referendum. Roughly 88 percent of the faculty endorsed it. He credits the result to faculty who understood the evidence, had been brought along on the journey, and could see the decisions inside FDU’s larger redefinition of the university: a shift away from the four-year, time-dependent degree toward an ecosystem of lifelong learning.  In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Michael Avaltroni, the first FDU graduate to hold the presidency, walk through the framework driving that redefinition, a university-of-the-future model built on four Ps: programs, people, partnerships, and place. Together,

Higher education’s track record with technology change is uneven for a reason, and the reason is rarely the technology. It is the placement of change management in the project lifecycle. When change management is treated as a rollout activity, handled near the end after vendor selection, contract execution, and configuration, it cannot do the work that determines adoption. By that point, the decisions that govern trust, governance, agility, and stakeholder ownership have already been made, often without the people who will be expected to live with the consequences. The result is a familiar pattern: ambitious initiatives that launch on schedule, generate friction within a semester, and quietly settle into legacy mode without ever delivering the outcomes that justified them. The case for treating change management as a planning discipline rather

AI has pushed higher education past the point where policy alone is enough. If students can generate summaries, draft papers, and produce plausible answers in seconds, colleges now have to answer a harder question: what are they teaching that still matters? France Hoang, founder and CEO of BoodleBox, pushes the AI conversation toward the issue that matters most for presidents, provosts, boards, and academic leaders. The central challenge is no longer access to the tool. The challenge is whether colleges and universities will redesign learning, advising, and implementation in ways that strengthen judgment, expertise, and human decision-making rather than weaken them. That is what makes AI a strategic issue for institutional leadership. A campus can publish guidelines, approve a platform, and hold a few workshops without addressing the deeper problem.

Higher education is facing a convergence of change unlike anything in its history. Within the past six years alone, institutions have navigated three major transitions: political shifts under the first Trump administration, the COVID-19 pandemic, and now a second Trump administration coupled with the rapid emergence of AI. Demographic decline, funding uncertainty, and shifting student expectations compound these pressures. Change is no longer optional, yet many institutions continue to operate as though incremental adjustments will be sufficient. They will not be. The case for transformational change management draws on the combined perspectives of Dr. Christine Janssen, founder and CEO of Edstutia, an immersive learning platform leveraging virtual reality and AI, and Dr. Drumm McNaughton, a higher education consultant specializing in institutional transformation. Dr. Janssen brings entrepreneurial expertise and a background

  According to recent ACE presidential survey data, women now constitute 33% of university presidencies, yet a troubling pattern has emerged: these leaders are often appointed during times of institutional crisis, creating what researchers call “the glass cliff” phenomenon.  In this episode of Changing Higher Ed®, Dr. Lori Varlotta, former president of Hiram College and California Lutheran University and current Distinguished Professor of Higher Education Leadership at Cal Lutheran, shares insights from her research on the glass cliff phenomenon in higher education. Drawing from her first research sabbatical in 40 years, she explores how women presidents are often hired during periods of institutional vulnerability and what can be done to ensure their success. Understanding the Glass Cliff in Higher Education The glass cliff differs significantly from the well-known glass ceiling