Sponsored and written by Steve Taylor, Research Director Liaison
Recently, I saw a post on social media that caught my attention. The post was lamenting the exclusion of the voice of faculty in university innovation, pointing to the avarice and ignorance of "admin" as the primary barrier to innovation. The very next post in my feed was the opposite: someone fretting over the difficulty of working with intransigent, obstructionist faculty that aren’t directly involved in the operations of the grad unit.
The author of the first post goes on to suggest faculty as the primary source of innovation. And, as you might guess, the second post laid out the many ways in which the curriculum, the program offerings, and the pedagogy must change to meet the demands of the current era. I don’t think faculty wants non-faculty administrators developing curriculum any more than administrators want faculty to determine the best ways to recruit students or structure their teams.
The real challenge for higher education is that administrators and faculty seem to be talking past each other when what institutions need is more collaboration. One group that can help bring faculty and administrators together just might be leadership from university registrars.
University registrars are detail-oriented and understand administrative goals while having a strong track record of working with members of the faculty. Registrars can help eliminate the dysfunctional tribal psychology of us-versus-them, and instead find ways to work in concert, to bring together faculty, staff, administration, alumni, organizations that hire graduates, and other stakeholders to create the higher ed innovation profession. Defending and expanding our separate domains and criticizing "them" for ignorance and/or ineffectiveness doesn't seem very likely to help solve any current problems, prepare us for inevitable demographic changes, or recenter the value of higher ed in the minds of the general public.
I regularly find myself in group conversations about how institutions desperately need to rethink curriculum, format, and overall program/degree purpose for the future, but we often do so with no faculty in the room. I suspect similar conversations happen across the spectrum of stakeholders without their counterparts in the room. Registrars may be that perfect blend, mixing an administrative focus with a student-centric mission and faculty/academic support, to help spur conversations on finding ways to work together rather than blame each other.
So, what are the best ways registrars can help institutional leaders create positive momentum and innovate the next chapter of the field? Here are three ways registrars may want to begin challenging traditional models:
Create Trading Zones
Using this proven framework derived from anthropology scholars, schools need regular, low-risk opportunities for groups to meet and build trust, develop shared language and understanding of the respective domains, and to create the rules for discourse collaboratively. Is this at the Keurig outside the registrar’s office? There are many ways to build more casual spaces for groups to come together and find common ground.
Comprehensive Annual Strategy Meeting
Consider organizing a joint meeting of faculty leadership and administration leadership to review challenges, report on current status, and plan for the future. These conversations allow each group to develop a deeper understanding of each other’s challenges and may also net some outstanding strategic insights – collaboration, after all, produces better results. And maybe it’s not an annual strategy meeting, but an annual program review, a quarterly update from the Dean, but something focused on building and sustaining competitive positioning.
Seek Input and Collaboration
Encourage/require leaders from all stakeholder groups to seek input/advice/counsel from someone in another group. This kind of outreach opens the door for cross-profession collaboration and demonstrates a willingness to listen, to consider, to work together. The cornerstone of this approach is modeling a collaborative culture that situates faculty and administration as integral members of the same team.
Whatever your role, the need to build community is essential to achieving innovation and sustainable practices on campus. This most likely will require changes in long-established institutional perceptions and changes in historic practices, but for innovation to be successful, everyone has to be involved in the evolution.