Best Practices from Best Books

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Best Practices from Best Books

• Dr. Rick Ostrander, Provost, Cornerstone
  University
• Dr. Carla Sanderson, Executive Vice President and
  Provost, Union University
• Dr. Ed Ericson, Vice President for Academic
  Affairs, John Brown University

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Introduction

• Background context
• Overview of the session
• Three Paradigms for Academic Leadership
• Visionary
• Community Builder
• Systems Creator

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Getting out of the administrative trenches
Readings on the purposeof Christian education

• Rick Ostrander
• Provost, Cornerstone University

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Beyond worldview analysis
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Beyond changing the world
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• p. 234 If there are benevolent consequences of
  our engagement with the world, it is precisely
  because it is not rooted in a desire to change
  the world for the better but rather because it is
  an expression of a desire to honor the creator of
  all goodness, beauty, and truth, a manifestation
  of our loving obedience to God, and a fulfillment
  of Gods command to love our neighbor.

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Educating students desires
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• p. 34 The task of a Christian college is not
  just to provide a safe place for the
  dissemination of information. Nor is it merely
  to provide a Christian perspective on what the
  world thinks counts as knowledge.Rather, the
  Christian colleges mission is more radical than
  that in some significant way, involves the
  formation of disciples.

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Educating for vocation
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• p. 196 Fixing bikes is more meaningful because
  not only the fixing but also the riding of
  motorcycles answers to certain intuitions I have
  about human excellence. People who ride
  motorcycles have gotten something right, and I
  want to put myself in the service of it.

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Educating for intentionality
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Some best practices that result

• Clarifying our product
• 1. Spiritual maturity
• 2. Intellectual depth
• 3. Creative excellence
• 4. Professional competence
• 5. Cross-cultural agility
• 6. Relational skill

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Our educational mission

• Cornerstone University seeks to produce graduates
  who have the passion and ability to effectively
  engage the cultures of our world for Christ and
  His Kingdom. Our graduates are not culture
  warriors who seek to dominate culture nor do
  they isolate themselves from it. Rather,
  Cornerstone students are educated to exercise a
  faithful presence in the cultural settings in
  which God places them. They seek to be a
  blessing to both believers and unbelievers, to
  promote human flourishing in the communities to
  which they are called, and to communicate the
  gospel to a fallen world with winsomeness and
  intelligence.

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Some best practices that result

• Clarifying our product.
• The Capstone Seminar from resume-writing to
  Christian vocation.
• Educating for intentionality the technology
  sabbath.

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Leading OthersReadings to Lead By

• Carla D. Sanderson
• Provost and Executive Vice President
• Union University

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• We are not called to be successful,
• we are called to be faithful.
• Harold Heie

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Four Basic Qualities for Leaders

• Adaptive capacity
• The ability to engage others through shared
  meaning
• A distinctive voice
• Unshakeable integrity
• Bennis and Thomas, Leading for a Lifetime

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Adaptive Capacity

• Adaptive capacity is prioritized as the essential
  competence of leaders and is defined as having
  the critical skills and abilities to understand
  context and to recognize and seize
  opportunities.

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Adaptive Capacity Resiliency

• Resiliency, the ability to improvise in the face
  of challenge. Resilient people have a
  steadfastness in them that accepts reality and a
  firm conviction, often buttressed by strongly
  held values, that life is meaningful and worth
  compensating for.
• Avolio and Luthrans, The High Impact Leader

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Resilient leaders

• take responsibility
• own the organizations challenges as their own
• get other people to do the same
• are realistic and accept they may not always
  accomplish what is fully required
• are willing to give it their best effort
• are determined to improve next time around.

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Traps to becoming a resilient leader

• Jumping to conclusions
• Magnifying the negatives, minimizing the
  positives
• Personalizing, obsessing, blowing things out of
  proportion
• Reivich and Shatte, The Resilience Factor

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Communio sanctorum,The Apostles Creed

• The Communion of the Saints in Wendell Berrys
  essays and novels
• The Membership
• A gift given (not earned) for sharing good work
  and mutual satisfaction
• The common ground members share foundation on
  which membership rests (place, work, love for
  Jesus)
• Common ground does not automatically create
  community but you cannot have community without
  it.
• Because we belong to one place, we belong to one
  another

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• Jesus is speaking to men who have become
  individuals for his sake, who have left all at
  his call. They receive the promise of a new
  fellowshipthey will receive in this time a
  hundredfold of what they have left. Though we
  all have to enter upon discipleship alone, we do
  not remain alone. If we take him at this word
  and dare to become individuals, our reward is the
  fellowship of the Church. they will be members
  of the community of the cross, the People of the
  Mediator, the People under the cross. Dietrich
  Bonhoeffer

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Leading in a Grace-Filled Way

• That you are standing firm in one spirit, with
  one mind, working side by side for the faith of
  the gospel.
• Philippians 127

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Creating Administrative Systems for the 21st
Century The Impact of Social Science Research on
Higher Education

• Ed Ericson
• VPAA, John Brown University

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Recent Articles

• Follow the Leader (ArsTechnica.com)
• It turns out that only a few individuals in a
  group need to know where they are going in order
  to lead the group, even if they don't do anything
  to communicate their leadership role other than
  move. Also, the larger a group gets, the smaller
  the percentage of "knowledgeable" or "leader"
  individuals that are needed. The limit seems to
  be about five percent the remaining 95 percent
  simply followed the herd.

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Recent Articles

• The Key to Effective Management? (NYTimes.com)
• Technical expertise the ability, say, to write
  computer code in your sleep ranked dead last
  among Googles big eight. What employees valued
  most were even-keeled bosses who made time for
  one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle
  through problems by asking questions, not
  dictating answers, and who took an interest in
  employees lives and careers.

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Recent Articles

• Good Teachers Matter (TheAtlantic.com)
• The most stunning finding to come out of
  education research in the past decade more than
  any other variable in educationmore than schools
  or curriculumteachers matter.
• Great teachers tended to set big goals for their
  students. They were also perpetually looking for
  ways to improve their effectiveness.

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Recent Books
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Recent Books

• Predictably Irrational
• We are really far less rational than standard
  economic theory assumes. Moreover, these
  irrational behaviors of our are neither random
  nor senseless. They are systematic, and since we
  repeat them again and again, predictable.
• We make decisions not as rational analyses but
  always in comparison to something else and with
  somewhat arbitrary anchors about what were
  comparing. Those anchors are either social or
  monetary, and we need to be careful not to mix
  the two types of interactions.

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Recent Books
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Recent Books

• Nudge
• By knowing how people think, we can design
  choice environments that make it easier for
  people to choose what is best for themselves,
  their families, and their society.
• Setting default options in complicated
  decision-making environments and creating more
  transparency on the effects of choices are two of
  the main ways to get better long-term results.

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Recent Books
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Recent Books

• Wisdom of the Crowds
• Large groups of people are smarter than an elite
  few, no matter how brilliantbetter at solving
  problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise
  decisions, even predicting the future.
• Four criteria diversity of opinion, independence
  of thought, sufficient knowledge, and a reliable
  means of aggregating the data.

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Resulting Best Practices

• Account for Your Own Biases
• Focus on Personnel
• Monetize Your Options
• Delegate Responsibility for Routine Matters
• Make Key Decisions via Structured Group Input

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Audience Participation

• Questions?
• Other suggested books best practices?