Leadership in Continuing Education in Higher Education

By Cynthia C. J. Shoemaker

The author has organized 33 years of expertise in Continuing Education into a comprehensive and practical guide to the leadership skills, behaviors and knowledge needed to guide any Continuing Education enterprise past the pitfalls and toward the opportunities available. To meet the needs of adults ages 22 to 85 who are flocking back to school, nearly every college and university has been establishing, and growing their Continuing Education entity. Yet until now there has been very little education for leadership in this rapidly growing field. From management and marketing knowledge to an understanding of the academic culture and creating a work environment that encourages creativity, current theory is intertwined with its implications for the specific task of leading a successful Continuing Education effort.

The book begins with the process of developing a vision for the Continuing Education enterprise and conveying that vision to the staff, faculty and the rest of the institution, then moves on to setting the direction and goals of the organization, staff development, understanding and influencing the political environment, and developing the skills of participative management that lead to program strength and creativity.

Readers will find insightful discussions of the challenges Continuing Education enterprises face in the years ahead and difference between administration and leadership. Also included is an in-depth presentation of management theory and techniques and marketing concepts as they apply to higher education.

The books extraordinary contribution is a wealth of detailed information on the specifics of creating a thriving Continuing Education program. Topics includes ways to motivate staff members, develop crucial liaisons and build resources and budgets; guidelines for strategic planning, managing change, and creating dynamic work groups; specific techniques for creative and analytical problem solving; and an extensive collection of useful tools, including questionnaires, models, diagrams, charts, summaries and direct interactive marketing tips.

Features include:

Specifically targets leadership skills needed in Continuing Education.
Discusses internal and external challenges and processes.
Applies important research in leadership behaviors to the specific environment of Continuing Education enterprises within higher education institutions.
Offers dozens of tools: models, questionnaires, diagrams, charts, summaries and samples.
Includes how-to information on strategic planning, budgeting, proposal writing, and direct marketing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 27, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469124377

Cynthia C. J. Shoemaker

Over a number of years Cynthia C. Jones Shoemaker has been reviewing text books and current management books in the fields of human and organizational learning with great interest. Currently the Information Age with its accompanying “too much information” (TMI) has been affecting more than just business enterprises and government, but also transition stages in human development. After raising four children and working in higher education both as a professor and as an administrator for many years, it seemed useful to combine these background fields into some practical applications for others in transition and in the workplace. Graduate teaching, along with her doctorate in human development with a minor in management, informed her needs for vision, guidance, sensemaking and purpose. The model Sensemaking Flow Chart here with its clarity, has been helpful to many people in a number of walks of life, ages and stages.

Book preview

Leadership in

Continuing Education

in

Higher Education

38319-SHOE-layout.pdf

Cynthia C. J. Shoemaker

Copyright © 2008 by Cynthia C. J. Shoemaker.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2007904599

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4257-6512-5

                 Softcover       978-1-4257-6501-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

Introduction: Challenges in Continuing Education in Higher Education

Chapter 1 Looking to the Future, Institutional Renewal,and Implications for Future Study

Chapter 2 Challenges, Issues and Trends inContinuing Education in Higher Education

Chapter 3 Leadership and Administration in Continuing Education

Chapter 4 Planning for Continuing Education in Higher Education

Chapter 5 Making Decisions in Continuing Education

Chapter 6 Team Work, Team Building and Small Groups

Chapter 7 Motivating and Empowering Staff, Faculty, and Students

Chapter 8 Problem Solving in Continuing Education:Creative and Analytical

Chapter 9 Marketing in Higher Education Continuing Education

Chapter 10 Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating Non-Credit Programs

Bibiliography Bibliography for all Chapters

Appendix A: Alternative Sample Off-Campus Programs Mission Statement

Appendix B Code of Ethics of the Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE)

Appendix C Papers from the 22nd World Wide Conference of theInternational Council for Open and Distance Education 2007 (ICDE)

Introduction: Challenges in Continuing Education in Higher Education

There are many new challenges in education in the 21st century and continuing adult education and life long learning are on the leading edge. People are living longer; they can expect to have a number of jobs and careers; and continual learning is a must for a long, productive and fulfilled life. Institutions of higher education are re-thinking who they are and what they are about as it becomes more and more evident that there are more adults than young people ages 18 to 22, and that ever larger numbers of them want to learn, and need to. Does the institution provide education services of many kinds or just the traditional in-class instruction education service for one age group? This is a question many institutions are addressing.

With the society, both global and national, moving into the Information or Knowledge Age, there is a major trend for adults ages 22 to 75, and older, to go back to school and learn. They are either enhancing their new or their old careers, or attempting to understand the rapid changes of this age better. To adjust to social, technological, political and economic changes, lifelong learning is seen as more and more of a need. By 1980 72% of the institutions of higher education had non-credit programs for adults. By 2007, over 75% of those enrolled in institutions of higher education were 25 and over and were ‘non-traditional’ students, which includes those married, with dependent children, over 22, or working full time. However, there is very little education for the management of this field which brings a peculiar need for the understanding of academic culture and mores, together with a need for excellent modern management which encourages creativity, and marketing knowledge and skills. The three together create a framework from which to pursue these challenges, and are needed in order to keep pace with a fast changing market, and the programs for it.

There are two major changes occurring in society today that impact continuing education, and, indeed, all formal education. These changes are also evident in the workplace. The first is the on-going transition into the information age as mentioned, which has resulted in technology not only being used to address problems but also being reviewed as an approach to enhancing the entire mission of an organization or enterprise. One example of this transition can be seen in federal agencies and corporations installing Chief Information Officers (CIOs) who sit at the highest levels and help to re-think the implementation of the organization’s mission and goals as well as ‘e-government’ (Fose-Affirm Panel, 1996; AFFIRM Challenges Survey, 2003, 2006).

A subset of the information age or knowledge trend, as the 2,000 U.S. Census shows, is the fast growth of cities that attract creative, braindriven, energetic college graduates. This group likes the new-ideas-welcome environment of certain cities and are leaving other cities that have ‘an inferiority complex’ or are stuck in the industrial age (Harden, Washington Post, 2003). The emergence of these cities is usually linked to the presence of a large research university. Seattle is one of these cities, with Washington University, which has doubled its research budget in the last ten years. In Seattle 80.6% of the households have access to the Internet and 47% of the population have bachelor’s degrees. Austin, Texas and San Francisco, California are also on this list of brains-attracting cities. In the question of talent luring technology to these cities, a well educated population and environment appears to draw the corporations, rather than the reverse. The success of U.S. cities, many demographers agree, is related to education levels and ambition, rather than to skin color or country of birth (Harden, 2003). These cities even have a significant population of college-educated people that have moved there and left other cities.

The second challenge is the rapidly expanding multicultural demographics on a national level (U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1989 to present). While cultural diversity in the classroom is not new and is robust in technology corporations, it may be newer among the ranks of senior faculty and administrations in institutions of higher education. Yet, even though it may not be new, this change in demographics is a challenge and a trend. Awareness and insight into cultural expectations, helps to ensure that each student’s needs will be met in a way that is meaningful and understandable for the student, regardless of cultural background. This includes having appropriate same-culture models among the faculty and administration. Some senior higher education administrators will even say that a challenge is the many strong, vocal, multicultural constituencies that are telling them how to conduct their mission: by calling them, writing them, and even suing them (Trachtenberg, 1996).

A challenge in higher education is the management of a new division or enterprise for continuing education, and the framework for such management. Definitions, a mission statement, faculty expectations and attitudes towards non-standard scheduling, central university administration support and expectations, and budget objectives, will all need discussing along with the general goals, objectives and learning opportunities planned for programs.

Distance learning is a challenge and often a subset of continuing higher education. The planning for technology in support of the entire institution to enhance the general mission and its components, is usually a needed first step. Surprisingly, this planning is often not connected to actual distance education classes, although implications for administration and distance classes impact upon each other. Models for classes, library support, administrative use and other higher education support services using technological enhancement are more abundant. Legal issues and evaluative research lag behind but as more best practices become available, especially via the Internet, and through Associations for Distance Learning, some of the mystery about how to implement and manage distance education, has subsided. In Fall 2005 nearly 3.2 million students were enrolled in at least one online course an increase over the 2.3 million reported in Fall 2004. More than 800,000 enrollments were added, twice the number added in Fall 2004, a substantial number of which were at the community college level (Allen and Seaman, 2006). Blended learning and many mixed or hybrid models have now appeared which alternate live and online classes, or offer a choice of live or online sections, to serve classes or individuals at a distance.

The opportunities open to institutions of higher education as the global society moves into the Information Age are numerous. The educational problems and needs of adults in the workplace, for the leaders of the workplace, and for traditional college age students, bring the opportunity and challenge for institutions of higher education to rethink who they are and what they do. Providing education services for students with longer lifetimes and who are changing careers and jobs, in a high quality, accredited framework, will continue to be an endeavor worthy of the highest commitment. Intelligence is not static and the excitement of providing opportunities for the growth and intellectual development of all students will remain a leading goal of foresighted educators in higher education. Education does not only change the individual student’s life, it changes all the lives this person touches and perhaps transforms (Hrabowski, 2003). It is indeed a privilege to make a difference in the lives of these students.

Chapter 1

Looking to the Future, Institutional

Renewal and Implications for Future Study

Challenges and trends in continuing education in higher education are growing and expanding together at an amazing rate. More adults of more ages are going ‘back to school’ for more reasons, as human beings live longer, healthier lives and outside environments change. The kinds of continuing education needed, both credit and non-credit, plus the advent of distance learning and ‘blended learning’ approaches, require environmental scanning and a regular cycle of planning for the leader of a continuing education entity. The marketing sequence and cycle, and the finance and proposal writing and renewing cycle take time, but can be planned for on a time line. The opportunities for increased learning provided by a continuing education division of an institution of higher education are unbounded. The opportunity to share resources and expertise with students of all ages, including research and faculty expertise, plus multiple information resources, challenges educational administrators to present an appropriate and broad array of programs to serve their many constituencies. The chart in Figure 1.1 shows a brief overview of issues at many levels that should be considered. A good staff development exercise is to fill in such a chart at a brainstorming session for the home institution and even with regional applications. The futures discussion, reflected in Figure 1.1, draws from some of the main chapters in this book: Leadership, planning, decision-making, motivation, teambuilding and problem solving to help educational administrators to see applications for their own program futures.

Figure 1.1

Looking to the Future

Leadership

The U.S. is predicted to continue to be a world leader and is known to be a leader in the number of institutions of higher education world wide. Furthermore institutions of higher education help their regions to grow, develop economically, and lead in their own areas. What should the institutions of higher education be teaching students? How? What new technologies, and styles of mentor-ships and internships should be used? These are some of the kinds of questions a new President of a large Ivy League university was asking all its stakeholders and alumni, to plan for the year 2015. Should there be new goals accomplished with old processes? Old goals enhanced with new processes? or new goals achieved with new processes (the most difficult to attain)? Continuing education organizations will need to be very clear in their leadership as to what, where, when and to whom programs should be offered – reflecting the why of their mission statement. This statement needs an annual review to keep it current.

Planning and Decision-Making

There are many causes for the need for planning and decision-making based on national trends. In all fields the previous state of the art is being replaced by new technologies at an ever-faster rate. Computers have fast become a part of the environment, rather than just tools. Wireless connectivity, faster, more powerful computers and newly emerging technologies give access to networked data wherever one goes.

Wireless links including satellite and Internet connections, simplify relocation of personnel and minimize delays in completing new installations and new projects. Within a few years, artificial intelligence, data mining, and virtual reality have helped most companies and most government agencies to assimilate data and solve problems faster than commercial applications could do in the past.

New technologies often require a higher level of education and training to use them effectively and efficiently. They also provide numerous opportunities for creating new businesses and jobs regionally, within the institution of higher education, and in their continuing education entities. Decision-making and planning will be needed to choose and prioritize which new degrees, programs and training programs will be provided first and then next.

Research and development spending is growing quickly in fields of information technology, electronics, biotechnology, aerospace, pharmaceuticals and chemistry. In the last decade research and development rose steadily representing 2.4% to 2.7% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in different years, and the future increases will keep up the same percentage of an increasing GDP, it is predicted. The implications of this steady increase in research and development were predicted to be a national demand for scientists, engineers and technicians, especially in fields with an immediate business return on investment (AFFIRM 4/11/07).

The length of the design and marketing cycle: idea, invention, innovation and imitation, is shrinking steadily. This has implications for institutions of higher education and continuing education entities, as well as regional and national business and economic development. In the late 1940’s this product cycle took 30 to 40 years, but by the year 2003 it often didn’t even last 30 to 40 weeks, and today it is ever shrinking. Scientists, engineers and doctors today are exchanging ideas on the Internet. Furthermore these groups represent eighty percent of those practitioners who ever lived, which means more have studied in these fields, but now more will need to study in these fields. Some futurists predicted that all the technical knowledge being worked with in 2003 would represent 1% of the knowledge that will be available in forty-five years (Cetron and Davies).

Institutions of higher education including continuing education units or divisions, will need to continue to make provision for their faculty to keep attuned to the fast increasing body of knowledge. Those who adopt state-of-the-art technologies first will prosper – and those who do not will struggle, both in business and in higher education. Planning and decision-making will be required to move these adoptions forward at every level: business; institutions of higher education; and continuing education. Educators must ask questions such as: Where does the U.S. want to be by 2015 with its college graduates of all ages? What subjects do they need?

It is known that medical knowledge is doubling every eight years, and some say every five years. Today’s young people will live much longer on the average, and in better health than anyone now expects. Eighty-five percent of the information in the National Institutes of Health computers is upgraded over five years (Cetron and Davies, 2003). This will have major implications for life-long learning, both for professional coursework and life enhancing courses for all higher education institutions, including continuing education and training divisions.

Internet based operations business to business (known as B2B), grew ten times between the years 2000 and 2003, to almost $4 trillion. These internet operations require more sophisticated, knowledgeable workers. People with the right technical background and training will find a ready market for their services for the next 15 years it is predicted. Rapid changes in work-related technologies require training upgrades for literally every worker. An impressive percent of the labor force will need to be in job retraining at any given time. Furthermore, in the next ten years close to 10 million jobs are predicted to open up for professionals, executives, and technicians in highly skilled service operations.

There already is a trend towards more adult education. There is not only a need to train for new careers, but also longer-living-adults grow bored with old careers and seek new careers, and healthy energetic retirees seek activities.

Education at all levels will be growing. It was recently predicted that 130,00 new kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) teachers would be needed by 2010 according to the National Center for Education Statistics. National, regional and institutional planning and decision-making will be needed regarding more and better teacher education. In the U.S. all levels of education are using the Internet more, from rural elementary and high schools, to universities increasing their markets to distant and international students.

Small businesses all as well as large corporations, need to learn to see employee training as an investment rather than an expense. One company finds it reaps $30 in profits from each dollar it spends on training!

Corporations, management, employees and individuals are getting used to the idea of life-long learning as a significant part of home life and work life at all levels. An institution of higher education can help a region to lead and have good economic development but this requires being active in the region’s planning and decision-making.

According to futurists, as minority and low-income households buy computers and join the Internet, they are increasingly able to educate and train themselves for technology and high-tech careers.

The information based organizations depend on teams of task-focused specialists and more independent specialists internationally. This creates many opportunities for small businesses, career choices, and continuing education units, as old careers and specialties become obsolete and new ones appear rapidly. People change careers on an average of every ten years. It has been found that generations in their 20’s and 30’s have more in common with their peers around the world than with their parents’ generation. Computers, the Internet and wireless communication technologies are making national and international economies much more