In the dynamic landscape of higher education, institutions face a myriad of challenges that threaten to inhibit their ability to nurture the leaders of tomorrow effectively. Academia is navigating new challenges, including the pressures of globalization, the complexities of digital transformation and the imperative of fostering diversity and inclusion. The need for innovative solutions and strategic approaches to these challenges has never been more pressing. Building Resiliency in Higher Education: Globalization, Digital Skills, and Student Wellness offers a comprehensive exploration of these critical issues, providing educators, administrators, policymakers, and researchers with a roadmap for navigating the complexities of the modern educational landscape. The book equips readers with the knowledge and insights needed to address these challenges head-on by delving into topics such as internationalization, innovation, and sustainability. This valuable resource aids understanding and responsiveness to the trends shaping higher education today through in-depth analysis and an interdisciplinary approach.
In the realm of higher education, the widening gap between academic curricula and the evolving demands of the global workforce is becoming an impending problem. Traditional educational models, while effective in imparting foundational knowledge, often struggle to equip students with the practical skills and competencies needed to succeed in today's rapidly changing job market. This disconnect between academia and industry expectations poses a significant obstacle for students and institutions alike, hindering their ability to adapt and thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape. Insights Into International Higher Education Leadership and the Skills Gap is a groundbreaking volume that offers a comprehensive solution to this pressing dilemma. Edited by Mustafa Kayyali and Bryan Christiansen, this book serves as a beacon for academic scholars seeking to bridge the divide between higher education leadership and the skills demanded by the modern workplace. Through a multifaceted exploration of visionary leadership, curriculum adaptation, and innovative teaching methodologies, this publication provides actionable insights and practical strategies for addressing the skills gap effectively.
As higher education institutions face challenges like technological advancements, student demographics, and funding constraints, effective strategic management is essential. This involves enhancing institutional capabilities through improved governance, resource allocation, and stakeholder engagement while fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration. By prioritizing strategic planning and capacity building, academic institutions can remain relevant and responsive to the needs of students, faculty, and the broader community. Further research empowers universities to achieve sustainable growth and fulfill their educational and social objectives. Building Organizational Capacity and Strategic Management in Academia explores the crucial role of leadership and strategic management in boosting the capacity and effectiveness of higher education institutions. It examines the complex dynamics of organizational change, innovation, and sustainable growth within the setting of academia. This book covers topics such as brand management, information technology, and strategic planning, and is a useful resource for business owners, academicians, educators, managers, computer engineers, scientists, and researchers.
Struggling to navigate the complex landscape of agricultural teacher education, scholars face a daunting challenge: the need for a comprehensive research synthesis tailored to their specific needs. While valuable, existing resources often need to provide the focused guidance required to address this discipline's myriad issues. This gap leaves scholars needing a clear roadmap for advancing agricultural teacher education, hindering progress and innovation in the field. Emerging Research in Agricultural Teacher Education revolutionizes the field of education through agricultural research. Offering a comprehensive synthesis of current research and proposing crucial areas for future investigation, this book serves as the definitive solution to the challenges plaguing scholars in the field. Consolidating decades of research and expertise into a single accessible volume, it provides scholars with the tools they need to navigate the complexities of agricultural teacher education with confidence and clarity.
The experts and practitioners contributing to this volume reveal a complex reality of HEI today. The book links the debate on education to topical issues in politics, society and economy, including questions of technological progress, social responsibility, sustainability, well-being and, broadly understood, resilience.
Well-Being and Higher Education explores the multiple connections of well-being to higher education and why those connections matter—for the individual lives of students and those who teach; for the institution; and for whether or not the unique promise of higher education to a democratic society can be advanced and realized. The publication's thirty-five original essays and provocations—by some of the most highly respected voices within and beyond the academy—address the theoretical underpinnings and practical expressions of these connections. Well-Being and Higher Education opens the discussion on learning's connection to well-being; responds to current challenges against the state of higher education today; and brings to the forefront a conversation considering the greater purposes of higher education and the need to preserve and revive the institution's role to look beyond itself to a greater good.
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused major disruptions to education around the world. Since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, most students on the planet were affected by the interruption of in-person schooling. To mitigate the educational loss such interruption would cause, education authorities the world over created a variety of alternative mechanisms of education delivery. They did so quickly and with insufficient knowledge about what would work well, for which children, and for what aspects of the schooling experience.Having to create such alternative arrangements in short order was the ultimate adaptive leadership challenge, one for which no playbook existed, one for which solutions would have to be invented, rather than drawn from existing technical knowledge. The nature of the challenge differed across the world and regions, and it differed also within countries as a function of the differential public health and economic impact of the pandemic on communities, and of variations in institutional and financial resources available to redress such impact, including availability of digital infrastructure and previous knowledge and experience of teachers and students with digi-pedagogies and other resources to create alternative education delivery systems.Sustaining educational opportunities amidst these challenges created by the pandemic was an example of adaptive education response not to a unique unexpected challenge but to one in a larger class of problems, just one of the many adaptive conundrums facing communities and societies. Beyond the challenges resulting from the pandemic, other complications of that sort predating the pandemic included those resulting from poverty, inequality, social inclusion, governance, climate change, among others. In some ways, the pandemic served as an accelerant for some of those, augmenting their impact or underscoring the urgency of addressing them. Adaptive puzzles of this sort, including pandemics, are likely to continue to impact education systems in the foreseeable future. This makes it necessary to strengthen the capacity of education systems to respond to them.Reimagining education systems so they are resilient in the face of adaptive challenges is an opportunity to mobilize new talent and institutional resources. Partnerships between school systems and universities can contribute to those reimagined and more resilient systems, they can enhance the institutional capacity of education systems to devise solutions and to implement them. Such partnerships are also an opportunity for universities to be more deliberate in integrating their three core functions of research, teaching and outreach in service of addressing significant social challenges in a context in rapid flux.In this book we present the results of one approach to produce the integration between research, teaching and outreach just described, resulting from engaging graduate students in collaborations with school systems for the purpose of helping identify ways to sustain educational opportunity during the disruption caused by the pandemic. This activity engaged our students in research and analysis, contributing to their education, and it engaged them in service to society. The book examines what happened to educational opportunity during the Covid-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, Belize, the municipality of Santa Ana in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kenya, in the States of Sinaloa and Quintana Roo in Mexico, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and in the United States in Richardson Independent School District in Texas. It offers an systematic analysis of policy options to sustain educational opportunity during the pandemic.
