Faculty, students and staff are joining together throughout the country to defend and advance higher education. Plan your action now and register it here: https://docs.google.com/…/1bhu9QLt1…/viewform…
Students Rise Up (Project Rise Up) is a plan to organize millions of students to disrupt business as usual and force our schools and our political system to finally work for us.
Right now, billionaires and fascists are attacking our schools because they know that student protest could bring them down. Our power is that we outnumber them. If working people and students unite to use our power of disruption and non-cooperation, we can crack the foundations of their power.
It all starts on November 7th, 2025 with walkouts and protests at hundreds of schools around the country. Join us.
Recent policy shifts have caused significant uncertainty in K-12 education funding, especially for technology initiatives. It’s no longer business as usual. Schools can’t rely on the same federal operating funds they’ve traditionally used to purchase technology or support innovation. This unpredictability has pushed school districts to explore creative, nontraditional ways to fund technology initiatives. To succeed, it’s important to understand how to approach these funding opportunities strategically.
How to find funding
Despite the challenges, there are still many grants available to support education initiatives and technology projects. Start with an online search using key terms related to your project–for example, “virtual reality,” “virtual field trips,” or “career and technical education.”
Explore national organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or Project Tomorrow and consider potential local funding sources. Local organizations such as Rotary or Kiwanis clubs can be powerful allies in helping to fund projects. The local library and city or county government may also offer grants or partnership opportunities. Schools should also reach out to locally-headquartered businesses, many of which have community outreach or corporate social responsibility goals that align with supporting local education.
Colleges and universities are another valuable resource. They may be conducting research that aligns with your school’s technology project. Building relationships with these institutions and organizations can put your school “in the right place at the right time” when new funding opportunities arise.
Strategies to win the grant
Once potential funding sources are identified, the next step is crafting a compelling proposal. Consider the following strategies to strengthen your application.
1. Focus on the “how and why,” not just the “what.” If your school is seeking funds to buy hardware, don’t simply say, “Here’s what we want to buy.” Instead, frame it as, “Here’s how this project will improve student learning and why it matters.” Funders want to see the impact their support will have on outcomes. The more clearly a proposal connects technology to learning gains, the stronger it will be.
2. Highlight the research. Use evidence to validate your project’s value. For example, if a school plans to purchase virtual reality headsets, cite studies showing that VR improves knowledge retention, engagement, and comprehension compared to traditional instruction. Demonstrating that the technology is research-backed helps funders feel confident in their investment.
3. Paint a picture. Bring the project to life. Describe what students will experience and how they’ll benefit. For example: “When students put on the headset, they aren’t just reading about ancient civilizations, they’re walking through them.” Vivid descriptions help reviewers visualize the impact and believe in your vision.
Eight questions to consider when applying for a grant
Use these guiding questions to sharpen your proposal and ensure a strong foundation for implementation and long-term success.
What is the goal? Clearly define what students will be able to do as a result of the project. Use action-orientated language: “Students will be able to…”
Is the technology effective? Support your proposal with evidence such as whitepapers, case studies, or research that can demonstrate proven impact.
How will the technology impact these specific students? Emphasize what makes your school or district unique, whether it’s serving a rural, urban, or high-poverty community and how this technology addresses those specific needs.
What is the scope of the application? Specify whether the project involves elementary school, secondary school, or a specific subject or program like a STEM lab.
How will success be measured? Too often schools reach the end of a project without a plan to track results. Plan your evaluation from the start. Track key metrics such as attendance, disciplinary data, academic performance, or engagement surveys, both before and after implementation to demonstrate results.
What are your budgetary needs? Include all associated costs, including professional development and substitute coverage for teacher training.
What happens after the grant is over? If you plan to use the technology for multiple years, apply for a multi-year grant rather than assuming future funding will appear. Sustainability is key.
How will success be celebrated and communicated to stakeholders? Share results with the community and stakeholders. Host events recognizing teachers, students, and partners. Invite local media and highlight your funding partners–they’re not just donors, but partners in student success.
Moving forward with confidence
Education funding will likely remain uncertain in the years ahead. However, by being intentional about where to look for funds, how to frame proposals, and how to measure and share impact, schools can continue to implement innovative technology initiatives that elevate teaching and learning.
Gillian Rhodes, Avantis Education
Gillian Rhodes is Chief Marketing Officer at Avantis Education, creators of ClassVR. With morethan 20 years of experience in education marketing and leadership, he is passionate about helping schools use the latest technology to engage students and improve learning outcomes.
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When Robert Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, young American scientists wanting to work with the world’s best researchers crossed the Atlantic as a matter of course. As a theoretical physicist, Oppenheimer’s choice was between Germany, particularly Göttingen and Leipzig, and England, particularly Cambridge. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that Cambridge didn’t work out for him, so in 1926 he went to work with Max Born, one of the leading figures in quantum mechanics, at Göttingen, receiving his doctorate there just a year later. His timing was good: within a few years from the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, attacks on academics, Jewish and otherwise, and then of course the Second World War, had destroyed what was perhaps the world’s most important university system. Let us note that academic structures, depending on relatively small numbers of intellectual leaders, usually able to move elsewhere, are fragile creations.
I used to give a lecture about the role of universities in driving economic development, with particular reference to scientific and technological advances. Part of this lecture covered the role of US universities in supporting national economic progress, starting with the Land Grant Acts (beginning in 1862, in the middle of the Civil War for heaven’s sake!), through which the federal government funded the creation of universities in the new states of the west; going on to examine support for university research in the Second World War, of which the Manhattan Project was only a part; followed by the 1945 report by Vannevar Bush, Science – the endless frontier, which provided the rationale for continued government support for university research. The Cold War was then the context for further large-scale federal funding, not just in science and technology but in social science also, spin-offs from which produced the internet, biotech, Silicon Valley, and a whole range of other advanced industries. So, my lecture concluded, look at what a century-and-a-half of government investment in university-derived knowledge gets you: if not quite a new society, then one changed out of all recognition – and, mostly, for the better.
The currently-ongoing attack by the Trump administration on American universities seems to have overlooked the historical background just sketched out. My “didn’t it work out just fine?” lecture now needs a certain amount of revision: it is almost describing a lost world.
President Trump and his MAGA movement, says Nathan Heller writing in The New Yorker this March, sees American universities as his main enemies in the culture wars on which his political survival depends. Before he became Trump’s Vice-President, JD Vance in a 2021 speech entitled “The Universities are the enemy” set out a plan to “aggressively attack the universities in this country” (New York Times, 3 June 2025). University leaderships seem to have been unprepared for this unprecedented assault, despite ample warning. (A case where Trump and his allies needed to be taken both literally and seriously.) Early 2025 campus pro-Palestinian protests then conveniently handed the Trump administration the casus belli to justify acting against leading universities, further helped by clumsy footwork on the part of university leaderships who seem largely not to have rested their cases on the very high freedom of speech bar set by the First Amendment, meaning that, for example, anti-Semitic speech (naturally, physical attacks would be a different matter) would be lawful under Supreme Court rulings, however much they personally may have deplored it. Instead, university presidents allowed themselves to be presented as apologists for Hamas. (Needless to say, demands that free speech should be protected at all costs does not apply in the Trump/Vance world to speech supporting causes of which they disapprove.)
American universities have never faced a situation remotely like this. As one Harvard law professor quoted in the New Yorker piece remarks, the Trump attacks are about the future of “higher education in the United States, and whether it is going to survive and thrive, or fade away”. If you consider that parallels with Germany in 1933 are far-fetched, please explain why.
SRHE Fellow Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.
From 24 to 31 October, the world marks Global Media and Information Literacy Week, an annual event first launched by UNESCO in 2011 as a way for organizations around the world to share ideas and explore innovative ways to promote media and information literacy for all. This year’s theme is Minds Over AI — MIL in Digital Spaces.
To join in the global conversation, over the next week News Decoder will present a series of articles that look at media literacy in different ways.
Today, we give you links to articles we’ve published over the past year on topics that range from fact-checking and information verification to the power of social media and the good and bad of artificial intelligence.
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How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.
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Dive Brief:
Most polled Americans, 70%, disagreed that the federal government should control “admissions, faculty hiring, and curriculum at U.S. colleges and universities to ensure they do not teach inappropriate material,” according to a survey released Wednesday by the Public Religion Research Institute.
The majority of Americans across political parties — 84% of Democrats, 75% of independents and 58% of Republicans — disagreed with federal control over these elements of college operations.
The poll’s results come as the Trump administration seeks to exert control over college workings, including in its recent offer of priority for federal research funding in exchange for making sweeping policy changes aligned with the government’s priorities.
Dive Insight:
The poll from the nonpartisan PRRI isn’t the first survey to suggest that large swaths of Americans disagree with the Trump administration’s approach to higher education policy.
Slightly more than half of Americans, 56%, said they disapproved of how President Donald Trump was handling higher education-related issues, a May poll from The Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago found.
However, the AP-NORC poll found a stark political divide, with 90% of Democrats disapproving of Trump’s approach and 83% of Republicans approving of it.
More specifically, 73% of Democrats said at the time that they disapproved of the withholding of colleges’ federal funds for not complying with the government’s political goals. Conversely, 51% of Republicans approved of that approach.
Another poll — this one of Jewish Americans conducted by Ipsos and researchers from the University of Rochester and the University of California — found in September that 58% said they disagree with the Trump administration pausing or canceling vast sums of federal research funding to Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles.
In both cases, the Trump administration has accused the universities of not doing enough to address antisemitism on campus and demanded sweeping policy changes. However, federal judges havelargely blocked the government’s attempted suspension of their research funding.
In the Ipsos poll, 72% of Jewish Americans said they were concerned about antisemitism on college campuses. But the same share said they believed the Trump administration was “using antisemitism as an excuse to penalize and tax college campuses.”
The Trump administration has so far cut deals with four colleges: three Ivy League institutions and, most recently, the University of Virginia, the first public institution to strike such an agreement.
More deals could be coming down the pike.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration offered priority research funding to nine colleges if they signed a compact dictating certain policies impacting their tuition, admissions and academics. Those provisions spanned from adopting a five-year tuition freeze to potentially dissolving campus units that “purposefully punish” and “belittle” conservative ideas.
While most of the colleges rejected the compact, Trump appeared to open up the deal to any interested institution. Additionally, two of the initial nine colleges — the University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt University — haven’t yet said publicly if they will sign or reject the compact.
Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said he would provide feedback on the compact, adding that he looked forward to “continuing the conversation,” according to The Vanderbilt Hustler.
Meanwhile, UT-Austin officials have been silent on the compact lately, though the chair of the UT System initially said it was “honored” its flagship received the proposal.
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Clear family-school communications and robust supports for students with learning differences are just a few ways education systems can improve family-school connections to support student outcomes, nonprofit Learning Heroes said in a report released Tuesday.
One of the biggest barriers to family-school partnerships is what the report calls a “perception gap,” or when families believe their child is performing at higher academic levels than what’s really occurring.
In fact, about 88% of parents in a 2023 survey said they thought their child was at or above grade level in math and reading. In reality, the actual share of children performing at this level is closer to 30%, as shown by 8th grade performance on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Although parents carry significant influence over their child’s education, they can’t help fix a problem they don’t know exists, the report said.
“Parents today have unprecedented voice and choice in their children’s education, yet, too often, lack the information to make confident, informed decisions,” said Bibb Hubbard, founder and CEO of Learning Heroes, in a Tuesday statement.
The organization used 10 years of research on family-school partnerships to inform best practices that improve these relationships with the aim of driving student success.
“With a decade of insights from parents, students, teachers, and principals, we have a clearer roadmap for creating schools and communities that work in true partnership with families and help every child thrive,” Hubbard said.
The Learning Heroes report offered these 10 suggestions for strengthening family-school partnerships.
Give parents accurate information on student performance
When parents know their child needs support, they are more likely to seek academic supports, such as tutoring and summer math or reading programs. They are also more likely to prioritize school attendance.
The report highlights state-level efforts in Texas, Arkansas and Virginia to provide parents videos, tools, and guides to bolster understanding of student grades and test scores. This also allows for comparisons with students across the state to help parents gauge their child’s college or career readiness.
Share multiple points of learning data
Results from annual state tests and other standardized or formative assessments can give families a fuller picture of their child’s strengths and needs.
Some 79% of parents said their children earn Bs and better, the report said, leading most parents to think their child is performing on grade level. However, report cards can include factors other than academic achievement, such as classroom participation, effort and completion of assignments, that don’t necessarily comport with grade-level performance.
“As it stands, too many report cards are still sending false signals, and many families, trusting the information they’ve been given, simply aren’t aware that their students may be behind,” the report said.
Provide parents access to information
Ensuring parents are aware of their child’s progress — not just through a quarterly report card, but through conversations with teachers and other means — can help parents take action to help their child improve.
Allow teachers time to connect with parents
Schools should prioritize parent-teacher teams by safeguarding the time teachers need tocommunicate with parents, as well as needed preparation time. One example is to allow one-to-one conversations between parents and teachers at back to school nights.
For instance, Prodeo Academy, a charter network in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, serving about 1,000 students, prioritized candid conversations, data-sharing and family-teacher conferences during the 2023-24 school year. These activities resulted in a notable increase among parents who recognized their child wasn’t working at grade level, the report said.
Avoid family engagement as a standalone goal
Integrating family engagement into overall school strategies for attendance, literacy and math achievement and other priorities will help educators and parents connect this effort to overall school outcomes.
For example, home visits can improve attendance, and student action plans created jointly by teachers and parents could help boost achievement.
Provide pathways to postsecondary success
Whether students attend college or go right into the workplace after high school graduation, schools should guide parents and students about the opportunities available. Access to Advanced Placement courses, dual enrollment, career awareness experiences and career and technical education can all help students discover their passions and start planning for their futures.
Don’t ignore social and emotional growth
About three-fourths of parents said it was “absolutely essential” or “very important” that their child’s school has high expectations for social and emotional development. That’s nearly as many — 80% — who said the same for learning and academic progress.
The report highlights the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning’s Guide to Schoolwide SEL, which includes strategies for family-school partnerships to support social-emotional learning practices. Strategies include helping parents understand what SEL is and setting a positive tone by communicating with families early in the school year.
Build teamwork to address student learning differences
Although nearly 1 in 5 students have a learning difference like dyslexia or dyscalculia, only 20% of parents of a child with a learning difference say it’s very easy to navigate the diagnosis process.
By communicating regularly and providing helpful resources, schools can help alleviate parents’ anxieties, which can get in the way of identifying and accepting a learning difference and getting the needed services.
Stop talking in ‘edu-jargon’
Terms used in the education field, such as “self-regulation,” “executive functioning” and “growth mindset,” may not be recognizable or may even be misunderstood by parents. Instead, educators should use terms understandable for families.
For instance, rather than saying “resilience,” educators could talk about how schools help students “overcome challenges” or “keep trying when things are hard.”
Having clear, accessible communications can help foster trust and collaborations with parents, the report said.
Create family engagement at all grade levels
Family engagement remains important in the middle and high school years as students become more independent. In fact, family engagement in middle and high school years is essential to helping teens feel seen, supported and motivated, the report said.
This involvement is critical for supporting school attendance, and school leaders should work with parents in all grades to remove barriers to regular attendance.
International education was growing. The United States hosted over 1.1 million international students in 2023/24, an all-time high and up 7% on the previous period. Graduate enrolments and OPT participation also reached record levels.
However, due to an unpredictable macro-environment, forecasts indicate that the US could expect a decrease of up to 40% in new international student enrolments this year, resulting in a potential loss of USD$7 billion to the US economy.
At the same time, budgets are tight. The loss of international student revenue can affect institutions in the U.S. Along with these losses, there are cuts in federal grants, with over 4,000 grants reduced to fewer than 600 institutions across the 50 states.
The result is an education sector that needs reliable revenue and an improved student financial experience.
Why instalments are becoming the default
Students are funding their degrees from multiple sources while managing the rising costs of living. In TouchNet’s 2025 Student Financial Experience Report, 55 percent of US students juggle three or more funding sources, 82 percent say financial tasks require moderate to high effort, and half of the international students surveyed stated that positive payment experiences with institutions had a positive effect on them.
That illustrates the importance of offering students flexible, self-service tools. By streamlining payment processes, offering alternative payment methods, and, most importantly, providing payment flexibility, those financial tasks that cause students stress can be alleviated. In turn, those positive experiences will lead to better-engaged students, who can worry about their financial standings a little bit less.
Apart from providing financial security and a positive experience to students, payment plans are crucial to an institution’s survival. International students contributed an estimated USD$43.8bn to the US economy in 2023/24. Protecting that value means eliminating friction from the invoicing, payment, and reconciliation processes across borders and currencies.
From annual to monthly payments: what institutions gain
Moving from one or two large value annual due dates to monthly, quarterly, or term-aligned schedules spreads risk for students in a turbulent macroeconomic environment and smooths cash flow for institutions.
That shift helps students plan around scholarship disbursements, loans, family support, and part-time work, while giving bursar teams earlier visibility of potential issues.
The outcome is higher on-time payment rates, fewer past-due balances, and a better student experience.
What to demand from a payments partner
If you are rethinking fee schedules, the partner you choose matters.
Look for providers that offer multiple payment options for annual payments and instalment payments. Whether it’s credit or debit cards, bank transfers, or alternative regional payment methods, ensure that the provider you choose offers a wide range of payment options.
This way, students who need to pay you can complete the financial transaction in the most convenient way for them. A bonus is when the provider uses local payment rails to complete the transaction, helping you benefit from reduced intermediary fees.
Seek partners that can provide complete visibility of payments for both students and institutions. This will help to reduce your admin time. By maintaining a comprehensive record of student payment history, you can easily verify a student’s financial standing without having to search through paperwork.
On the other hand, students and parents (or anyone paying the tuition) can view the status of their payments, balances, sign up for payment plans, and check their standings without needing to raise support tickets.
Make sure a prospective provider can facilitate fast refunds and handle automated reconciliation. Linking in with the full record of payment history, any provider you onboard should be able to initiate refunds promptly and return funds to the originating account. Not only is that required from a regulatory standpoint, but with the rise in education payment-related fraud, it may save you multiple thousands of dollars in the long run.
Furthermore, if a student drops out of their course six months into their first year and has made seven payments for their tuition, it should be a simple process to refund them any amount they’re due. Choose a provider with capabilities to do so to save your team headaches.
How TransferMate helps you make monthly instalments work
TransferMate’s education solutions were built for the new reality we’re living through. Providing choice across instalments and payment methods is at the forefront of our platform, and is specifically designed to meet institutional control requirements and student expectations.
Here’s what you can expect from our integration:
Multiple instalment options out of the box: Offer students monthly schedules that they can opt into. Plans can be paid for across multiple cards, bank transfers, or local payment methods, with clear due-date reminders.
Recurring card payments for student housing: Students can sign up once for automated recurring card payments on their housing fees. This reduces missed payments, lowers the administrative load for teams, and provides students with predictable outgoings throughout the year.
API Client Dashboards: Finance and student accounts teams with embedded solutions from TransferMate can see payment histories and statuses per student, country, currency, or programme. This surfaces issues earlier and supports more innovative outreach to at-risk cohorts. As analytics deepen, you can monitor instalment adoption and on-time performance by segment.
Virtual Accounts and refunds: With our Global Account solution, you can accept and hold funds in multiple currencies, route payments over local rails, and issue refunds quickly without breaking reconciliation. And as a plus, you can convert currencies and make payments in those local currencies for any inter-campus requirements, scholarship, or guest lecturer fees.
Beneficiary Portal: Through our beneficiary portal, users can invite students, agents, and research partners to provide their bank details aligned to your reference fields (such as student ID, program code, etc). Instead of your team collecting sensitive bank details via email or phone, you can invite the beneficiary with a secure portal link, allowing them to complete the form in minutes. This results in fewer data errors, fewer returns, and faster payment processing for scholarship, bursary, commission, or refund payments.
Compliance and transparency. TransferMate operates the largest globally licensed fintech payments infrastructure, featuring end-to-end tracking that allows students and institutions to see when funds are sent and received. As we own our infrastructure, we offer preferential foreign exchange rates and zero transaction fees. Clients save real time and money, with one institution having increased the college’s revenue by about 3%, purely on the savings made on bank and credit card charges.
The strategy that pays back
The plain facts are simple, even if it is a hard truth to swallow.
Institutions do not control the macro environment.
But what you do control is how easy it is for students to enrol and pay. The sector is moving from annual lump sums to monthly and quarterly instalments because it improves affordability, supports retention, and strengthens cash flow.
Being part of that movement is as easy as reaching out to a payments partner and getting started.
Want to learn more about how TransferMate configures instalment options for your institution? Get in touch with our team today.
About the author: Thomas Butler is head of education at TransferMate, driving innovation in payment solutions for the education sector. He leads teams focused on developing seamless, secure systems that simplify how institutions, platforms, and students send and receive international payments. Under his guidance, TransferMate powers collections in over 140 currencies across more than 200 countries, with fully regulated infrastructure and integrations via APIs, white-label platforms, and embedded solutions. Thomas works with both educational institutions and software partners to reduce bank fees, improve FX rates, automate reconciliation, cut administration, and enhance transparency, all to improve the payment experience and financial operations in education globally.
Higher education is in the midst of a crisis of confidence that has long been building. In this time of volatility, complexity and uncertainty, the steady hand of leaders matters more than ever. Yet academia does—at best—a very uneven job of preparing academic leaders for steady-state leadership, much less for times when the paradigm is shifting. This moment is creating an opportunity to reconsider how we prepare leaders for what will come next.
Why Is Leadership So Uneven in Higher Ed?
A primary reason lies in how we select and develop leaders. In academia, searches for department chair, dean and provost often emphasize top-level scholarly and research credentials and only secondarily consider an individual’s experience, perspective and ability to influence and motivate others to support shared missions. Academics in general do not respond well to directives: They expect to be persuaded, not commanded. Additionally, it is often only after being hired that those in formal positions of authority are provided with leadership-development opportunities to help foster those interpersonal skills—too late for foundational growth.
These approaches to recruiting formal leaders are rooted in flawed assumptions about how leadership works. True leadership is not about commanding compliance but about shaping unit culture through influence. Many leaders fail by not understanding the difference. An effective leader is a person of strong character who can build trusting relationships with others; these skills take time to develop and usually take root even before a person assumes a leadership role.
Another important reason that leadership in higher ed is uneven arises from conceptualizing leadership as a “heroic” individual endeavor. The same skills that help a formal leader to be successful—such as understanding the alignment of their actions with the unit’s mission; strong communication skills, including listening; the ability to navigate conflict, negotiation and conflict resolution; and formulating and articulating clear collective goals— are equally crucial for others to exercise to be fully engaged participants.
Leaders with formal roles and titles play a crucial role in promoting a productive and collegial culture. At the same time, they do not do so alone: It is equally important that participants who are not in formal administrative roles are also seen (and see themselves) as central in shaping these environments, and that they are aware of how their own actions and interpersonal dynamics contribute to their working and learning experiences.
In short, leadership responsibility is not limited to administrators. There are layers of formal leadership roles embedded inside departments and schools, visible whenever faculty members and staff take on responsibilities for shared governance and advisory roles; lead team research or manage grant portfolios; and select (hire), supervise, evaluate and mentor colleagues and other early-career individuals. These faculty and staff are leaders, too, whether or not they see, accept or internalize those roles.
When leadership is viewed simply as an individual attribute rather than a process that emerges from the relationships among people in teams, organizations miss the opportunity to develop cultures of excellence that support integrity, trust and collaboration at all levels. Thus, we argue that leadership ought to be understood as an ongoing process of character development and a responsibility shared by all members of an organization—not something that can be addressed in a one-off workshop, but as an integral dimension of the work.
The Foundations of Leadership: Influence Before Authority
Rather than framing leadership as something only people with formal authority do, a more productive model is to view leadership as influence. By influence we mean modeling the behaviors we seek to share and promote in our groups so that we can better shape the way we solve problems collectively. Leadership is not in essence a position; it is contributing to an ongoing process of shaping culture, norms and behavior within a unit.
Social psychology shows that we influence each other constantly. The more time we spend with people, the more we become like them and vice versa. This means that bad habits can spread as easily as good ones. When everyone is given an opportunity to develop good habits, they are more likely to spread throughout the community. Our character affects how we influence others. We are much more likely to be influenced by a person who demonstrates integrity and curiosity than we are by someone who is demanding and unwilling to listen.
Here are some areas of practice for developing better influence:
Self-awareness and self-management: Focusing on oneself first helps individuals identify their strengths and areas for growth, while encouraging them to recognize and respect their roles and responsibilities in the current situation. Understanding oneself, one’s values, habits and motivations, is foundational to recognizing how we affect and are affected by those around us.
Conflict resolution: Healthy debate is foundational to innovation and growth. Developing strong conflict-resolution skills contributes to increased perspective-taking, depersonalizing disagreement and yielding more effective discussion and problem solving.
Decision-making: Understanding how we make decisions, and more importantly how heuristics influence and bias our decision-making, can help people slow down to make more ethical and effective decisions.
Opportunities for influence are available to everyone, not just those in formal leadership roles. Early-career faculty, staff and students can cultivate influence by setting examples for collaboration, through ethical behavior and by contributing to collective problem-solving. Leadership is not centrally about having authority over others; it is about shaping an environment in which ethical decision-making, respect and shared purpose flourish.
Reimagining Leader Development in Higher Ed
Now more than ever, individuals need support in managing their careers with integrity and purpose—aligning their personal values and goals with those of their institutions. Leadership development should not be viewed as a costly add-on. In fact, it can be integrated into the everyday fabric of academic life through accessible and scalable methods, including:
Peer-learning cohorts that provide space for discussion and reflection on leadership challenges.
Guided personal reflections on workplace dynamics, communication and decision-making.
Structured mentoring programs that cultivate leadership skills through real-world interactions.
Deliberative conversations around such themes as research ethics, authorship and collaboration to build trust and integrity within teams.
Conflict-resolution training embedded in routine professional development activities.
Our experience at the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics shows that even modest efforts—like those above—can spark essential conversations between mentors and mentees, improve communication, and positively influence both unit climate and individual well-being. To support this work, we offer a free Leadership Collection—an online collection of tools, readings and practical exercises for anyone seeking to lead more effectively, regardless of their title or career stage.
When leadership development is embraced as a core part of academic life—not just a formal program or a luxury for a few—it can become a catalyst for healthier, more purpose-driven institutions.
Conclusion: Leadership Development as a Cultural Foundation
Reserving leadership-development programming only for when people reach formal leadership roles is a missed opportunity to develop broader and more inclusive working cultures. Such cultures emerge from the relationships among the members of a group. Building better relationships starts with personal growth, self-awareness and emotional intelligence for each member. Taking responsibility for one’s own professional growth and for one’s influence on others is also an important kind of leadership.
True leadership, therefore, is not about directing others but about fostering environments in which good habits, strong ethics and meaningful engagement flourish. If universities want to build sustainable cultures of excellence, in which leadership is no longer an individual endeavor but a shared commitment to collaboration, they should start embedding it in professional development and routine practice for all. As uncertainty prevails, budgets are cut and people are navigating deep change, now is the moment to reconsider how we shape leaders in higher education.
Elizabeth A. Luckman is a clinical associate professor of business administration with an emphasis in organizational behavior and director of leadership programs at theNational Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
C. K. Gunsalus is the director of NCPRE, professor emerita of business and research professor at the Grainger College of Engineering’s Coordinated Sciences Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Nicholas C. Burbules is the education director of NCPRE and Gutgsell Professor Emeritus in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Arizona State University has received a $50 million donation to launch the Global Institute for the Future of Energy, a collaboration between its Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and the Thunderbird School of Global Management that seeks to promote education and innovation regarding energy production and use.
The gift comes from Bob Zorich, who earned his master’s degree in international management in 1974 from Thunderbird’s predecessor, the American Graduate School of International Management.
“ASU has long been a pioneer in building bold, pragmatic solutions for the future,” said Zorich, founder and managing partner of the Texas-based private equity firm EnCap Investments. “President Michael Crow has taken a visionary and action-oriented approach to positioning the university as a leading center for research, educational excellence and global influence. For these reasons, I was excited to fund the formation of this energy institute at ASU because of the university’s unique ability to scale and reach a global audience.”
Zorich’s gift will help the institute recruit a chair and staff and start developing curriculum for students, executives and the public. In the second year, the institute aims to launch a fellowship and executive-in-residence program, as well as a series of public programs, including lectures, summer camps and a global energy conference.
In addition, some of the funds will support Energy Switch, a point-counterpoint show on Arizona PBS that brings together experts from government, NGOs, academe and industry to debate energy-related topics.
“Energy is central to nearly every facet of our daily lives, and we have to prepare now for an evolving energy future,” Crow said in a statement. “With the rapid growth of AI and other fast-moving innovations, we have a responsibility to ready the next generation of energy leaders and solutions. Bob Zorich’s visionary investment will empower our global understanding of energy, our vital literacy and how we can work together to develop the best paths forward.”
