Tag: academic

  • 3 Questions on Academic Innovation and Centers for Teaching and Learning for BU’s Wendy Colby

    3 Questions on Academic Innovation and Centers for Teaching and Learning for BU’s Wendy Colby

    In the evolving landscape of higher education, centers and institutes dedicated to teaching and learning can no longer be viewed as optional support units; they have become critical engines driving academic innovation at scale. Success in this mission depends on rethinking legacy structures, fostering a culture of collaboration across schools and colleges, identifying opportunities that deliver broad impact, and remaining grounded in the core principles that make teaching truly effective: clarity, engagement, reflection, inclusivity, adaptability, support and rigor.

    Wendy Colby, Vice President and Associate Provost at Boston University, leads BU Virtual and BU’s new Institute for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The Institute was established to chart a new vision and approach, thoughtfully reconstituting and expanding the role of several former units such as a Center for Teaching and Learning and Digital Learning Innovation. The goal—to create a university-wide nexus for advancing teaching and learning excellence and academic innovation.

    In part one of our conversation, Wendy and I talk about the role of academic innovation centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) within the university ecosystem.

    Courtesy Wendy Colby

    Q1: What does it take to conceive and build a new Institute that truly advances academic innovation and delivers on the promise to create more impact across a faculty community—especially one as large and diverse as you have at Boston University?

    A: It’s interesting. I approached the leadership of the Institute in the same way I approach any new leadership assignment. It started with a lot of listening—being out in the community, talking with faculty and students, and learning what was working well and where challenges persisted. I sat in on classes and was invited to guest lecture in a few. I saw some truly exceptional examples of teaching at its best, and I also examined how faculty and students were—or were not—using technology and tools to support the learning experience.

    Needless to say, I learned a great deal. I saw where innovation was thriving, and where faculty were often tackling similar challenges independently, without a shared platform for collaboration or access to scalable resources. I also saw the importance of leadership and advocacy at the top—working closely with deans and academic leaders to align on shared goals and priorities. It became clear that we needed to create the conditions for faculty to feel that this was an Institute by them and for them.

    From those early observations, we began to define what the Institute needed to be. We established a Strategic Advisory Council and an Institute Faculty Liaison group, comprised of faculty champions from across our schools and colleges. We also formed close alliances with key partners—most notably the Office of Undergraduate Affairs and the Dean of Students—to clarify the Institute’s role in student success and the broader student experience. These partnerships, built early in the Institute’s formation, have been essential to creating the conditions for success.

    Ultimately, what emerged most clearly is that our success depends on shared ownership. Impact at this scale cannot be achieved by any single unit alone. In a university comprised of many distinct academic and operational units, each with its own priorities and ways of working, collective alignment is not automatic—but it is powerful. When we operate as a connected university, able to harness, contribute to, and amplify the extraordinary work already happening across our community, the potential for impact is far greater than the sum of its parts.

    Q2: What are some of the initial initiatives you have created at the Institute, and how are these fostering meaningful faculty engagement and better student experiences?

    A: I’ll start by saying that I’ve now spoken with many leaders at other institutions who are either leading similar centers or institutes or working to transform their own in more meaningful ways. A common theme I hear is that these units often have incredibly talented teams—frequently comprised of former faculty—who work hard to develop thoughtful programming, offer workshops and create resources grounded in evidence-based pedagogy. Yet, too often, their impact is limited. They struggle to establish a clear institutional identity; they compete for faculty attention; and they tend to reach only a small subset of the community. Historically, that was a challenge we faced at BU as well.

    So, in addition to establishing a new vision and direction for the Institute—and situating it in a more central, visible location on campus—we organized our initial work around a small number of shared, strategic initiatives designed for scale, coherence and broad relevance.

    One of the Institute’s core initiatives is a campus-wide focus on AI in teaching and learning, developed in close collaboration with the AI Development Accelerator (AIDA) —a new center created to position Boston University at the forefront of leadership in AI. By combining the AIDA’s strategic and technical expertise with the Institute’s focus on pedagogy, faculty engagement and evidence-based practice, this collaboration enables a coordinated, university-wide approach to education, experimentation and responsible integration of AI into teaching and learning. Early efforts include the launch of a new AI at BU online certificate available to all undergraduate students, as well as discipline-specific studio sessions, guidance and resources designed to help faculty integrate AI thoughtfully into curriculum, assessment and classroom practice.

    Another flagship effort is the Classroom LX (Learning Experience) Transformation Initiative, which was created to address the overall student experience across courses and programs. Through early listening sessions with faculty and students, we identified a recurring challenge: While individual instructors were doing excellent work, students often encountered inconsistent experiences from course to course—particularly in the use of digital platforms, learning resources, communication norms and expectations. These inconsistencies created unnecessary friction for students and additional work for faculty.

    The Classroom LX initiative focuses on establishing shared principles, practices and design patterns that enhance the learning experience without constraining academic freedom. By providing faculty with common frameworks, toolkits and support for course design—especially in high-enrollment and foundational courses—we aim to reduce friction, improve clarity and engagement, and create more inclusive and supportive learning environments. Importantly, this work is codeveloped with faculty, grounded in evidence-based pedagogy, and designed to scale across disciplines while remaining flexible enough to meet individual needs.

    Together, these initiatives are just a few examples of the shift we are making from isolated programming to intentional, institution-wide efforts that support faculty, improve student experiences and create lasting impact at scale.

    Q3: Looking ahead, what role do you see Institutes like this playing in the future of higher education, and what lessons might other universities take from this work?

    A: I believe teaching and learning institutes must evolve from “centers of excellence” into strategic engines that help drive institutional priorities. Our role extends beyond faculty support and engagement alone—it is about connecting pedagogy, scholarly research, technology, the student experience and career readiness. We are also addressing themes like digital wellness and the growing connection between student wellness and academic success. Institutes like ours sit at the intersection of academic mission and institutional change. 

    At a time when higher education faces significant disruption, our institutes have an opportunity to accelerate long-needed conversations about curricular innovation, assessment in the age of AI, learning design, inclusion and wellbeing, and what it truly means to educate students in a rapidly changing world. Our teams are uniquely positioned to guide and partner on this work thoughtfully and responsibly.

    At the same time, there is no single blueprint for success. Every university has its own culture, structures, and constraints, and meaningful change must be grounded in that reality. For me, the work always begins with learning and listening—being present in classrooms, engaging faculty and students, and observing teaching and learning in practice. You are rarely handed a clear roadmap. Instead, the work requires synthesizing what you hear, identifying recurring patterns and shared challenges, and distinguishing between isolated issues and opportunities for broader impact. That sense-making—turning complexity into clarity—is a critical leadership skill in and of itself.

    Equally important is building coalitions early. Sustainable impact depends on strong partnerships with academic leaders, deans, faculty and students, and on creating shared ownership around priorities and outcomes. When institutes are able to convene communities, align stakeholders and design initiatives that respect academic autonomy while supporting scale, they can become powerful catalysts for change. Ultimately, the lesson is that teaching and learning innovation succeeds not through mandates or isolated programs, but through trust, collaboration and a sustained commitment to improving the educational experience for all learners.

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  • Reclaiming the academic community: why universities need more than metrics

    Reclaiming the academic community: why universities need more than metrics

    by Sigurður Kristinsson

    For decades, talk of “the academic community” has flowed easily through mission statements, strategy documents, and speeches from university leadership. Yet few stop to consider what this community is or why it matters. As universities increasingly orient themselves toward markets, rankings, and performance metrics, the gap between the ideal of academic community and the lived reality of academic work has widened. But this drift is not merely unfortunate; it threatens the very values that justify the existence of universities in the first place.

    This blog explores why academic community is essential to higher education, how contemporary systems undermine it, and what a renewed vision of academic life might require.

    The word “community” can be used in two different senses. One is descriptive: communities are simply networks of people connected by place, shared interests or regular interaction. From this sociological standpoint, academic communities consist of overlapping groups (faculty, students, administrators, service professionals) brought together by institutional roles, disciplinary identities, or digital networks, perhaps experiencing a sense of belonging, solidarity, and shared purpose.

    But in debates about the purpose and future of universities, “community” is often used in a normative sense: an ideal of how academics ought to relate to one another. In Humboldtian (1810) spirit, contemporary advocates like Fitzpatrick (2021, 2024) and Bennett (1998, 2003) envision academic community as a moral and intellectual culture grounded in shared purpose, generosity, intellectual hospitality, mutual respect, and the collective pursuit of knowledge. From this philosophical perspective, community is not just a cluster of networks to be analyzed empirically but a normative vision of how scholarly life becomes meaningful. This aspirational view stands in stark contrast to the conditions shaping many universities today.

    For several decades, developments in universities around the world have been hostile to academic community. While the precise mechanisms vary, academics report strikingly similar pressures: managerial oversight, performance auditing, intensifying competition, and the steady erosion of collegial structures and shared governance. Five threats to academic community are particularly worrisome:

    Organisational (not occupational) professionalism

    In her analysis of how managerial logic has co-opted the language of professionalism to justify top-down control in public institutions, Julia Evetts (2003, 2009, 2011) introduced a distinction between occupational and organisational professionalism. Occupational professionalism in academia implies membership in a self-governing community of experts committed to serving society through knowledge. Today, however, universities increasingly define professionalism in organisational terms: compliance with targets, performance indicators, and standardised procedures. The result is a hybrid system: academics retain some autonomy, but it is overshadowed by bureaucratic accountability structures that fragment communal relationships and discourage collective responsibility (Siekkinen et al, 2020).

    Managerialism

    Managerialism prizes measurable production outputs, standardized procedures, and vertical decision-making. As Metz (2017) argues, these mechanisms degrade communal relationships among academics as well as between them and managers, students, and wider society: decisions are imposed without consultation; bonus systems reward narrow indicators rather than communal priorities; and bureaucratic layers reduce opportunities for collegial dialogue. Managerialism replaces trust with surveillance and collegial judgment with quantification.

    Individualism

    The rise of competition – over publications, grants, rankings, and prestige – has amplified what Bennett (2003) called “insistent individualism.” Colleagues become rivals or useful instruments. Achievements become personal currency. In such settings, it is easy to see oneself not as part of a community pursuing shared goods but as an isolated producer of measurable outputs. This ethos erodes the solidarity and relationality necessary for any robust academic culture.

    Retreat from academic citizenship

    Academic citizenship refers to the contributions – committee work, mentoring, governance, public engagement – that sustain universities beyond research and teaching. Yet because these activities are difficult to measure and often unrewarded, they are increasingly neglected (Macfarlane, 2005; Feldt et al, 2024). This neglect fragments institutions and weakens the norms of shared responsibility that should hold academic life together.

    Troubled collegiality

    Collegiality includes participatory and collective decision-making, a presumption of shared values, absence of hierarchy, supportiveness, a shared commitment to a common good, trust beyond a typical workplace, and professional autonomy. It has long been central to academic identity but has become contested. Some experience collegial labor as invisible and unevenly distributed; others see managerial attempts to measure collegiality as just another way of disciplining staff. Efforts to quantify collegiality may correct some injustices but also risk instrumentalizing it, turning a relational ideal into a bureaucratic category (Craig et al, 2025; Fleming and Harley, 2024; Gavin et al, 2023).

    Across all these pressures, a common thread emerges: the forces shaping contemporary academia weaken the relationships required for intellectual work to flourish.

    If community is eroding, why should we care? The answer lies in the link between community and the values that higher education claims to serve. A helpful framework comes from value theory, which distinguishes between instrumental, constitutive, and intrinsic goods.

    Community as instrumentally valuable

    Academic community helps produce the outcomes universities care about: research breakthroughs, learning, intellectual development, and democratic engagement. Collaboration makes research stronger. Peer support helps people grow. Shared norms encourage integrity, rigor, and creativity. Without community, academic values become harder to realize.

    Community as constitutive of academic values

    In many cases, community is not merely a helpful means but a necessary constituent. Scientific knowledge, as philosophers of science like Merton (1979) and Longino (1990) have long emphasized, is inherently social: it requires communal critique, peer review, and collective norms to distinguish knowledge from error. Learning, too, is fundamentally relational, as Vygotsky (1978) and Dewey (1916) argued. You cannot have science or education without community.

    Community as intrinsically valuable

    Beyond producing useful outcomes, community enriches human life. Belonging, shared purpose, and intellectual companionship are deeply fulfilling. Academic community offers a sense of identity, meaning, and solidarity that transcends individual achievement (Metz, 2017). In this sense, community contributes directly to human flourishing.

    Several examples show how academic values depend on community in practice:

    Debates about educational values

    The pursuit of academic values requires reflection on their meaning. Interpretive arguments about values like autonomy, virtue, or justice in education contribute to conversations that presuppose the collective norms of academic community (Nussbaum, 2010; Ebels-Duggan, 2015). These debates require shared standards of reasoning, openness to critique, and a shared commitment to better understanding.

    Scientific knowledge and academic freedom

    No individual can produce knowledge alone. Scientific communities ensure that discoveries are evaluated, replicated, and integrated into a larger body of understanding. Likewise, academic freedom is not a personal privilege but a communal norm that protects open inquiry (Calhoun, 2009; Frímannsson et al, 2022). It depends on solidarity among scholars.

    Teaching as communal practice

    Education flourishes in relational settings. Classrooms become communities in which teachers and students jointly pursue understanding. Weithman (2015) describes this as “academic friendship” – a form of companionship that expands imagination, fosters intellectual virtues, and shapes future citizens.

    Across these cases, community is not optional; it is essential to academic values.

    Given its importance, how might universities cultivate stronger academic communities?

    Structural reform

    Universities should try to resist the dominance of market logic. Sector-wide policy changes could help rebalance priorities. Hiring, promotion, and reward systems should value teaching, service, mentorship, and public engagement rather than focusing exclusively on quantifiable research metrics. Without structural support, cultural change will be difficult.

    Cultural renewal

    A healthier academic culture requires a different mindset—one that foregrounds generosity, relationality, and shared purpose. In Generous Thinking, Fitzpatrick (2021) argues that building real community requires humility, conversation, listening, and collaboration. Community cannot be mandated; it must be practised.

    This requires academics to challenge competitive individualism, share work equitably, strengthen trust and dialogue, and reimagine collegiality as a lived practice rather than a managerial tool. Most importantly, it requires us to recognize ourselves as fundamentally relational beings whose professional purpose is intertwined with others.

    A moral case for academic community

    Academic community is not only epistemically valuable; it is morally significant. Relational moral theories argue that human flourishing depends on identity and solidarity. We become the moral human beings we are through our communal relationships (Metz, 2021).

    Applying this to academia reveals that collegiality is grounded in shared identity and shared ends. Since the moral obligations created by academic relationships remain professional, collegial community does not require intrusive intimacy. Far from suppressing dissent or professional autonomy, solidarity requires defending academic freedom and academic values generally.

    A relational understanding of morality thus implies that the ideal of academic community promises not only a more fulfilling and coherent sense of occupational purpose, but also a way of relating to others that is more satisfying morally than the current environment individualistic competition.

    Universities today face an existential challenge. In the rush to satisfy markets, rankings, and managerial demands, they risk undermining the very relationships that make academic life meaningful. Academic community is not a nostalgic ideal; it is the cornerstone of learning, knowledge, virtue, and human flourishing.

    If higher education is to reclaim a sense of purpose, it must begin by cultivating the social and moral conditions in which genuine community can grow. This requires structural reforms, cultural renewal, and a shared commitment to relational values. Without such efforts, universities will continue drifting toward fragmentation, losing sight of the goods they exist to protect.

    Rebuilding academic community is not merely desirable. It is necessary – for the integrity of scholarship, for the flourishing of those who work within universities, and for the public good that higher education is meant to serve.

    Sigurður Kristinsson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. His research applies moral and political philosophy in various contexts of professional practice, increasingly intersecting with the philosophy of higher education with emphasis on the social and democratic role of universities.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Harvard’s President Undercuts Academic Freedom and Learning

    Harvard’s President Undercuts Academic Freedom and Learning

    In a recent podcast, Harvard president Alan Garber said some things about teaching that I found at best odd, and at worse pretty much nonsense, because if we’re talking about teaching and learning—supposedly the core of the undergraduate experience at Harvard and elsewhere—it doesn’t make any sense.

    As reported by the Harvard Crimson student newspaper, reflecting on the present challenges to institutions around accusations of intolerance and hostility to free debate, Garber came down firmly on the side of not debating (bold is mine): “I’m pleased to say that I think there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you need to be objective in the classroom.”

    It came as news to me that it is a goal to be “objective” in the classroom, because objectivity is not a value that I associate with writing instruction, my primary field of expertise. As I’ve written here previously, my first-year writing students often struggled with this notion, believing that it was their job to not only be objective but in also to be “authoritative,” which had them adopting strange approaches to expression as they tried to BS themselves and the audience in a weird performance of fake erudition.

    Instead, I introduced students to the values that I believe properly attach to personal expression through writing—which is what all scholarship is, after all—values like transparency, openness, fairness, accuracy and curiosity (among others).

    They need to practice these things in order to build trust with their audience in the effort to be convincing, not as some kind of objective authority, but as someone who has proven themselves trustworthy through the deployment of sound writing practices and respect for the audience.

    As I told students, this is no guarantee of people agreeing with you or adopting your position, but in my view, the job of the writer is to be as clear as possible with their own positioning in order to foster an ongoing, in fact never-ending, academic conversation in which people with different perspectives come together to communicate across topics in ways that fundamentally illuminate those topics for the benefit of an interested and engaged audience.

    I don’t think any of this is controversial and has, in fact, been the underlying engine of academic inquiry for, I don’t know … ever? That faculty having opinions rooted in their expertise and then expressing those opinions somehow became controversial is not a problem with the academic conversation.

    I admit that this framing of discourse is a little quaint in an era where attention is the primary (perhaps only) coin of the realm and attempting to be accurate, transparent and fair seems to matter very little, but one of the great things about the essentially conservative nature of higher education institutions is that we get to cling to out-of-fashion notions because we believe they are consistent with our underlying values.

    I wonder where Garber got this notion that objectivity in the classroom is something that used to be the norm. I don’t remember my Econ 101 professor in fall 1988 regaling the class with a balanced discussion of socialist and Marxist (or even New Deal) economic theory. Instead, I was subjected to what would become bog-standard neoliberal notions about markets, competition and deregulation—notions that are highly contested within the field of economics.

    Which is as it should be! This is the work of academia.

    It’s possible that Garber is paying a little bit of lip service to audiences he knows have been critical of what they perceive as the ideological biases in higher ed, but it is enervating to see a college president validate critiques that have been overwhelmingly applied in bad faith to undermine institutions. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you should consider the testimony of former Republican governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb, who spent a semester teaching at an elite university, expecting to find an ideological monoculture, but experienced the opposite—a place of open debate, differing viewpoints and productive intellectual exchange.

    Holcomb was “surprised,” but he shouldn’t have been, because those of us who work within higher education know that the critique Garber is validating is overwhelmingly untrue.

    Oh, that elite institution where Holcomb found not objective presentation of information but open debate? Harvard.

    What is a bigger threat to free expression on campuses, faculty expressing opinions in classrooms, or institutional leaders publicly declaring it’s important for faculty to keep things “objective”?

    One of Garber’s rationales for championing objectivity was that this approach would be in the interest of students, saying, “How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”

    Harvard students, or at least one Harvard student, Adam Chiocco, also writing at The Harvard Crimson, reject this rationale, pointing out that one of the things that draws students to Harvard is the faculty, who have deep expertise and “the most refined and developed perspectives in academia.” Garber is essentially asking faculty to shelve that expertise in the service of what, exactly?

    Chiocco isn’t having it. As he says, “When a professor offers their perspective, students can see how an expert in a field thinks through an issue, how their arguments are structured, and often gain new ways to analyze sources. Good professors will then invite disagreement with their views, challenging students to contemplate and present thoughtful questions and objections.”

    This is happening in thousands of classrooms across the country every single hour of the day. While there are outlier exceptions who may abuse the privilege of their position, we know, and Garber knows, as former governor Holcomb knows, that they are by far the exception.

    Chiocco again: “For all involved, binding expertise to the ideal of neutrality constricts the possibilities for meaningful learning.”

    I don’t think the freedom of students to learn and faculty to teach is helped by a university president giving credence to a fiction or offering a vision that is inconsistent with what we know to be good educational practices.

    There are obviously bigger threats to academic freedom right now, like Texas A&M censoring Plato and canceling graduate courses on ethics because a professor can’t promise to guide discussion according to the dictates of a politically partisan legislature.

    But part of fighting those larger forces is making the affirmative case for the work faculty and students do. President Garber failed that part of his duty with his podcast remarks.

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  • Academic writing and spaces of resistance

    Academic writing and spaces of resistance

    by Kate Carruthers Thomas

    At SRHE’s Annual Conference 2025, I gave a paper which argued that community, collegiality and care were key elements of the writing groups and retreats I’ve facilitated for female academics. I used Massey’s heuristic device of activity space to foreground interactions of gender, space and power in those writing interventions. I concluded that in embodying community, collegiality and care, they can potentially be seen as activity spaces of resistance to the geographies of power operating across universities and the individualised, competitive neo-liberal academy.

    Academics must write. Written outputs are one of the principal means by which academics enact professional capital as experts and specialists in their disciplinary fields (French, 2020 p1605). Scholarly publications are central to individual and institutional success in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF). Writing does not automatically or quickly lead to publication and just finding the time to write productively presents challenges at all career stages. But as Murray and Newton state: ‘the writing element of research is not universally experienced as a mainstream activity’ (Murray and Newton, 2009 p551). 

    Applying Massey’s analytical tool of activity space: ‘the spatial network of links and activities, of spatial connections and of locations within which a particular agent operates’ (2005 p55)to this context, we can imagine the UK HE sector as an activity space shaped by networks and power relationships of disciplines, governance, financial and knowledge capitals, metrics and institutional audit. We can also imagine the sector’s 160 universities as nodes within that wider activity space. Massey coins the term ‘power geometry’ to describe how individuals and groups are differently positioned in relation to different geographies of power in activity spaces. For example, UK universities are more or less powerfully positioned across a spectrum of elite, pre-1992 and post-1992 institutions.

    We can also consider each university as an activity space, with its own spatial networks and connections shaped by the wider sector and by regional and local factors. These are enacted within each university through systems of management, workload and performance, creating the environments within which ‘agents’ – staff and students – work and study. Academics in more senior ranks, with higher salaries and research-focused roles are more likely to produce scholarly publications (McGrail, Rickard and Jones, 2006). And while the relationship between research and teaching is a troubled one across the sector, this tension is exacerbated for academics located in post-1992 institutions, many describing themselves as ‘teaching intensive’. Research and publication remain strategic corporate priorities for post-1992s, yet workload allocation is heavily weighted towards teaching and pastoral support.

    So, in relation to academic writing and publication, academics are also differentially positioned, more and less powerfully, within the activity space of the university. One of the key factors influencing that positioning is gender. If we scratch the statistical surface of the UK HE landscape we find longstanding gender inequality which is proving glacially slow to shift. Women form an overall majority of UK sector employees in academic and professional services roles but 49% of academic staff, 33% of Heads of Institution and 31% of Professors are women (Advance HE, 2024). They predominate in part-time, teaching-only and precarious contracts, all of which play a role in slowing or stalling academic career progression. These data cannot be seen in isolation from women’s disproportionate responsibilities for pastoral and informal service roles within the university and gendered social roles which place a burden of care for family, household and caring on many women of all working ages.

    Academic writing groups and retreats are a popular response to the challenge of writing productively. They can ‘be a method of improving research outputs’ (Wardale, 2015 p1297); demystify the process of scholarly writing (Lee and Boud, 2003 p190), and ‘enable micro-environments in what is perceived of as an otherwise often unfriendly mainstream working environment’ (ibid).  Groups and retreats are often targeted at different academic career stages and/or specific groups within the academic workforce. Since 2020, as critical higher education academic and diversity worker, I have run online writing groups and in-person writing retreats for female academics at all career stages, most employed at my own post-1992 university. Over 140 individuals have participated in one or other of the interventions and I used a range of methods (survey, interview, focus group) to gather data on their motivations, experiences and outcomes.

    The combined data of all three studies show that the primary motivation of every participant was to create protected space for writing, space not made sufficiently available to them within working hours, despite the professional expectation that they will produce scholarly publications. In this context, the meaning of ‘space’ is multi-dimensional: encompassing the temporal, the physical and the intellectual. The consequence of the interaction of protected temporal and physical/virtual space is intellectual space, or what was referred to by several participants as ‘headspace’ – the extended focus and concentration necessary to produce high quality scholarly writing (Couch, Sullivan and Malatsky, 2020) .

    When I launched the online writing group (WriteSpace) during the UK’s first COVID-19 lockdown, MS Teams software enabled the creation of a virtual ‘writing room’ and a sense of community over distance. Socially-isolated colleagues sought contact with others, even those previously unknown to them. As lockdown restrictions eased and remote, then hybrid, working arrangements ensued, the act of writing alongside others virtually or in-person remained an important way to engage in a shared endeavour. The in-person residential retreats in 2023 and 2024, followed Murray’s structured retreat model (Murray and Newton, 2009 p543).  Participants wrote together in one room, for the same time periods over three days. They also ate, walked and socialised together.

    Each of the writing interventions were multi-disciplinary spaces for female academics at all career stages, including those undertaking part-time doctoral study. Whatever their grade or experience, no one individual’s writing was more important or significant than another’s. These hierarchically flat spaces disrupted the normative power relationships of the workplace and the academy. On the retreats, additional practices of goal setting and review in pairs encouraged ongoing reflection and exchange on writing practices and developing academic identities.

    Many participants experienced the facilitation of the groups and retreats as professional care – a colleague taking responsibility for timekeeping, recommending breaks and stimulating reflection on writing practices. The experience of care was extended and heightened at the residential retreats because all meals were provided in a comfortable and peaceful environment and no household chores were required. This was particularly significant in the context of women’s social roles and conditioning to care for others.

    Viewing these writing interventions as activity spaces situated within the wider contexts of the university and the UK HE sector foregrounds interactions of power, space and gender in the context of academic writing. The writing interventions were not neutral phenomena. They were deliberately initiated and targeted in response to a gendered imbalance of power in the academy and the university. They were occupied solely by women. They intentionally prioritise temporal, physical and intellectual space for writing over teaching, administrative, pastoral, household and domestic responsibilities. Within them, academic writing becomes a social practice and a common endeavour.

    The interventions do not remove longstanding and pervasive gender inequality across the UK sector, change gendered social roles, resolve the tensions between teaching and research in the contemporary neoliberal academy, nor increase workload allocation for academic writing. However, in embodying community, collegiality and care they can potentially be seen as activity spaces of resistance to the normative geographies of power operating across universities and the wider sector. 

    Kate Carruthers Thomas is Associate Professor of Higher Education and Gender at Birmingham City University. Her research is interdisciplinary, drawing on educational, sociological and geographical theories and methods. She also has a track record in creative research dissemination including graphics, poetry and podcasting.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Instead of defining Black children by their test scores, we should help them overcome academic barriers and pursue their dreams

    Instead of defining Black children by their test scores, we should help them overcome academic barriers and pursue their dreams

    by Nosakhere Griffin-EL, The Hechinger Report
    January 5, 2026

    Across the U.S., public school districts are panicking over test scores.

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the Nation’s Report Card, as it is known, revealed that students are underperforming in reading, with the most recent scores being the lowest overall since the test was first given in 1992.

    The latest scores for Black children have been especially low. In Pittsburgh, for example, only 26 percent of Black third- through fifth-grade public school students are reading at advanced or proficient levels compared to 67 percent of white children.

    This opportunity gap should challenge us to think differently about how we educate Black children. Too often, Black children are labeled as needing “skills development.” The problem is that such labels lead to educational practices that dim their curiosity and enthusiasm for school — and overlook their capacity to actually enjoy learning.

    As a result, without that enjoyment and the encouragement that often accompanies it, too many Black students grow up never feeling supported in the pursuit of their dreams.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    Narrowly defining children based on their test scores is a big mistake. We, as educators, must see children as advanced dreamers who have the potential to overcome any academic barrier with our support and encouragement.

    As a co-founder of a bookstore, I believe there are many ways we can do better. I often use books and personal experiences to illustrate some of the pressing problems impacting Black children and families.

    One of my favorites is “Abdul’s Story” by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow.

    It tells the tale of a gifted young Black boy who is embarrassed by his messy handwriting and frequent misspellings, so much so that, in erasing his mistakes, he gouges a hole in his paper.

    He tries to hide it under his desk. Instead of chastening him, his teacher, Mr. Muhammad, does something powerful: He sits beside Abdul under the desk.

    Mr. Muhammad shows his own messy notebook to Abdul, who realizes “He’s messy just like me.”

    In that moment, Abdul learns that his dream of becoming a writer is possible; he just has to work in a way that suits his learning style. But he also needs an educator who supports him along the way.

    It is something I understand: In my own life, I have been both Abdul and Mr. Muhammad, and it was a teacher named Mrs. Lee who changed my life.

    One day after I got into a fight, she pulled me out of the classroom and said, “I am not going to let you fail.” At that point, I was consistently performing at or below basic in reading and writing, but she didn’t define me by my test scores.

    Instead, she asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    I replied, “I want to be like Bryant Gumbel.”

    She asked why.

    “Because he’s smart and he always interviews famous people and presidents,” I said.

    Mrs. Lee explained that Mr. Gumbel was a journalist and encouraged me to start a school newspaper.

    So I did. I interviewed people and wrote articles, revising them until they were ready for publication. I did it because Mrs. Lee believed in me and saw me for who I wanted to be — not just my test scores.

    If more teachers across the country were like Mrs. Lee and Mr. Muhammad, more Black children would develop the confidence to pursue their dreams. Black children would realize that even if they have to work harder to acquire certain skills, doing so can help them accomplish their dreams.

    Related: Taking on racial bias in early math lessons

    Years ago, I organized a reading tour in four libraries across the city of Pittsburgh. At that time, I was a volunteer at the Carnegie Library, connecting book reading to children’s dreams.

    I remember working with a young Black boy who was playing video games on the computer with his friends. I asked him if he wanted to read, and he shook his head no.

    So I asked, “Who wants to build the city of the future?” and he raised his hand.

    He and I walked over to a table and began building with magnetic tiles. As we began building, I asked the same question Mrs. Lee had asked me: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    “An architect,” he replied.

    I jumped up and grabbed a picture book about Frank Lloyd Wright. We began reading the book, and I noticed that he struggled to pronounce many of the words. I supported him, and we got through it. I later wrote about it.

    Each week after that experience, this young man would come up to me ready to read about his dream. He did so because I saw him just as Mr. Muhammad saw Abdul, and just like Mrs. Lee saw me — as an advanced dreamer.

    Consider that when inventor Lonnie Johnson was a kid, he took a test and the results declared that he could not be an engineer. Imagine if he’d accepted that fate. Kids around the world would not have the joy of playing with the Super Soaker water gun.

    When the architect Phil Freelon was a kid, he struggled with reading. If he had given up, the world would not have experienced the beauty and splendor of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

    When illustrator Jerry Pinkney was a kid, he struggled with reading just like Freelon. If he had defined himself as “basic” and “below average,” children across America would not have been inspired by his powerful picture book illustrations.

    Narrowly defining children based on their test scores is a big mistake.

    Each child is a solution to a problem in the world, whether it is big or small. So let us create conditions that inspire Black children to walk boldly in the pursuit of their dreams.

    Nosakhere Griffin-EL is the co-founder of The Young Dreamers’ Bookstore. He is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about Black children and education was produced byThe Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’sweekly newsletter.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-instead-of-defining-black-children-by-their-test-scores-we-should-help-them-overcome-academic-barriers-and-pursue-their-dreams/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • Associate Provost on Coordinated Attack on Academic Freedom

    Associate Provost on Coordinated Attack on Academic Freedom

    Valerie Johnson has watched—and fought against—political attacks on academic freedom for years. A political scientist and associate provost of diversity, equity and inclusion at the Catholic DePaul University, Johnson understands well the political incentives for conservatives to bring universities to heel.

    This year brought an avalanche of new and continuing attacks on what professors can teach, speak about and research at American colleges and universities, led by the Trump administration and exacerbated in states like Florida and Texas, where Johnson describes these changes as swift and effective.

    Together with co-authors and editors Jennifer Ruth, a film professor at Portland State University, and Ellen Schrecker, a professor emerita of American history at Yeshiva University, Johnson wrote The Right to Learn: Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom (Beacon Press, 2024). In October, the book was granted the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Frederic W. Ness Book Award, an annual honor that highlights the “book that best illuminates the goals and practices of a contemporary liberal education.”

    Johnson spoke with Inside Higher Ed over Zoom about the impetus for the book and how she interprets the escalating attack on academic freedom today.

    The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: What prompted you to write this book? Was there a specific moment when the scope of this campaign against academic freedom that you describe became unmistakable for you?

    A: Yes, it was the summer of 2021. A friend of mine was working with the African American Policy Forum, and they wanted to sound the alert that we were seeing a rollback of rights. And so they had asked Jennifer Ruth, my co-author and co-editor of the book, to work on what they called the Faculty Senate campaign. Twenty twenty was a momentous year. We began to see gag orders about what could be taught. So Jennifer and I … wanted to alert all faculty senates across the United States that we were seeing this erosion of academic freedom and that they should pay attention. We asked them to write resolutions asking their administrations to reaffirm academic freedom.

    Q: How have faculty senates or governing bodies adapted—or failed to adapt—to the current legislative landscape?

    A: Well, I would like to say I’ve seen quite a bit of resistance, but unfortunately people have a way of conceding when their livelihoods are at stake. And how you answer that question is also determined by where you are in the country. If you’re in a red state—like Florida, like Texas—where there are prohibitions like, “Hey, you cannot teach on this, this, this and this,” then either you stay there and withstand some degree of punishment, or you leave. A lot of faculty are leaving red states for bluer states.

    It’s actually been very surprising to me. This period in American history has really caused me to rethink what I originally believed about human nature. It is very surprising how cowardly people are … I am a political scientist by training, and I [know] only about 4 to 5 percent of people will protest anything. And we have seen various rallies, protests, etc., but it hasn’t been as engaging as I would like to see.

    Q: One of the things that the book addresses is that efforts on the right to degrade academic freedom are strategic rather than reactive. What evidence convinced you that this was an organized, long-term project?

    A: There’s always been attempts to erase history. Frederick Douglass said a long time ago that America is false to its past. It’s false to its present, and it resigns itself to be false to the future.

    America has always created a story that it is something it is not, and I think the values that we have are largely aspirational. When universities talk about their mission statements, they’re not saying it’s [complete], they are saying, “This is who we’d like to be.” There has always been a concerted effort to blame the victim when it comes to people who have marginalized identities and to ensure that, largely, their stories are not told. And so through education, if you could limit discussions of race and social equality, then people aren’t thinking about it. They’re not thinking about passing legislation that pursues those goals. And you could make people believe that, “Hey, all the problems of the past have been resolved,” when, in fact, if you look empirically, they haven’t.

    Q: When you were doing your research, were there any state-level policies or actors that really surprised you, either in their influence or how quickly they spread?

    A: Yeah, I would say Florida and Texas. It was very quick. [Governor Ron] DeSantis definitely took over the university system very quickly [with] Don’t Say Gay and Anti-Woke. I mean, it’s amazing, but it’s an easy setup. For the average citizen, it’s a part of the culture wars where they see LGBTQIA rights, for example, or women’s rights, and they’re alarmed by them … It is “me against them,” and particularly in red states and the Bible Belt, it has been a pretty easy sell to the citizenry because it aligns with some of their well-cherished values, but it doesn’t promote human rights. It doesn’t promote a country or a world where people are seen not by any sort of cultural or identity markers, but by their membership in the human race.

    Q: Are there any aspects of the current debate that you think are most misunderstood, either by the media or the public or folks in higher ed?

    A: Yes, I think there are a couple of things that are really misunderstood. One is structural inequality, or when you look at, for example, inequality by race. I think most people think that the civil rights movement resolved any social economic inequality when, in fact, it did not. I always use the metaphor of a Monopoly game gone wrong—just because you change the policy doesn’t mean you change the conditions. So let’s say you and I are playing a game of Monopoly, and halfway through the game, I realize you’ve been cheating all along. So I call you out on it, and your response to that is, “OK, let’s change the policy. No more cheating.” And then you say, “Let’s resume the game.” The problem with that is you have already amassed the red hotels, the green houses. Generation by generation, those people who benefited from slavery or land appropriation of the Native Americans and Mexicans, or Jim Crow and residential segregation, that’s a cumulative advantage. For those people who were disadvantaged, there’s a cumulative disadvantage that moves forward from generation to generation. Existing racial inequality—I don’t think people actually understand it. They saw shows like The Cosby Show, and they are like, “Oh, wow, all people from minoritized backgrounds, they’ve made it.” In fact, it’s really a myth.

    To that extent, if you say that you want to provide opportunities that create inclusion on college campuses, they’re looking at that like, “Well, wait a minute. They’ve made it. So this is unfair to me.” Then you have this disdain for DEI. Of course, for people between the ages of zero and 18 in America, the majority of them are nonwhite. So every single year, campus enrollment is becoming less white … and American universities and colleges that are going to have to depend on American students for their enrollment will increasingly have to court and recruit students who are nonwhite because of the demographic shift.

    Q: How should universities communicate with the public about academic freedom without reinforcing the right wing framing that expertise equals elitism?

    A: One thing that is constantly on my mind is: How do you talk about something as heavy as academic freedom? In a way, I wish we would have retitled the book something like “The Right to Learn: Resisting the Attack on What You Can Learn,” or something like that. When you put “academic freedom,” people ask, what is academic freedom? People know about free speech, but people don’t know about academic freedom. That is why you have an increasing number of students who come to college campuses believing that they should get a tailor-made curriculum.

    So, what can universities do? I believe in community education. I love it when community groups and politicians ask me to come and speak to regular community folk. We have to see our enterprise as not only teaching in the university, but outside of the university, and that could be done with op-ed pieces or just going where people are—churches, community institutions … I think that’s the only way it’s going to happen. We have to get out of the ivory tower.

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  • AI In Academic Publishing: Disruption or Evolution? – Faculty Focus

    AI In Academic Publishing: Disruption or Evolution? – Faculty Focus

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  • AI In Academic Publishing: Disruption or Evolution? – Faculty Focus

    AI In Academic Publishing: Disruption or Evolution? – Faculty Focus

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  • Florida public universities plan to cut at least 18 academic programs

    Florida public universities plan to cut at least 18 academic programs

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    Dive Brief:

    • State University System of Florida institutions collectively plan to terminate 18 academic programs and suspend another eight after reviewing how many degrees they award, Emily Sikes, the public system’s vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, said at a meeting last week with lawmakers. 
    • In the review, SUSF officials identified 214 programs systemwide that they say are underperforming based on how many graduates they’ve produced in the past three years. System universities plan to continue at least 150 of those programs while consolidating another 30.
    • The large majority of underperforming programs, 68%, are in the liberal arts, education and science fields, including ethnic and cultural studies, foreign languages, philosophy and religious studies, and physical and social sciences programs. 

    Dive Insight:

    As required by SUSF regulations, the 12-university system has conducted productivity reviews of degree programs every three to four years for roughly the past decade and a half, Sikes said.

    Over that time, the system’s institutions have axed over 100 programs based on those reviews, she said. Most of those programs were cut in 2011, when the first such review yielded 492 programs deemed to be underperforming, leading university officials to terminate 73 of them.

    In this year’s review, SUSF officials looked for bachelor’s programs graduating fewer than 30 students over the last three years, master’s programs awarding fewer than 20 degrees and doctorate programs with fewer than 10 graduates during that period. 

    Master’s programs made up 55% of the 214 that fell below graduate thresholds. But, Sikes added, there is a reason for that: SUSF universities often award master’s degrees to students who don’t complete doctoral programs so they have something to show for their time and effort.

    Another 31% of the underperforming programs were bachelor’s, and 14% were doctorate.

    For the eight programs set for suspension, the universities will stop enrolling students and “take a hard look” at either updating the curriculum to improve the program or deciding to wind it down, Sikes said.

    While Florida’s university system has reviewed its program productivity for years, other states have begun mandating their public colleges trim their offerings along similar lines. 

    This summer, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education announced that six of the state’s public colleges planned to eliminate 75 programs, suspend another 101 and consolidate 232 others in response to a new state law. 

    In April, Indiana lawmakers introduced graduation quotas for public college programs, requiring a three-year average of at least 15 graduates for bachelor’s programs, 10 for associate degrees, seven for master’s programs and three for doctoral degrees. The quotas were part of a controversial last-minute bonanza of new higher ed policies that lawmakers baked into a budget bill this year. 

    The speed of the program cuts led to confusion and chaos for some Indiana faculty this summer. “Even tenured faculty are wondering, am I going to have a job in two months?” one faculty governance leader in Indiana told local media in June.

    Ohio enacted a similar law this spring, called SB 1, which has led to dozens of proposed program cuts at the state’s public universities.

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  • Why institutions must protect personal academic tutoring at all costs

    Why institutions must protect personal academic tutoring at all costs

    Join HEPI for a webinar on Thursday 11 December 2025 from 10am to 11am to discuss how universities can strengthen the student voice in governance to mark the launch of our upcoming report, Rethinking the Student Voice. Sign up now to hear our speakers explore the key questions.

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Gary Jones, Dean of Student Success and Experience, Scholars School System, Dr Steve Briggs, Director of Learning, Teaching and Libraries, University of Bedfordshire, Professor Graeme Pedlingham, Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Student Experience, University of Sussex, Dr David Grey, UKAT Chief Executive Officer and Professor Abigail Moriarty, Pro Vice-Chancellor Education & Students, University of Lincoln.

    A recent analytic induction study (Grey & Bailey, 2020) defined personal academic tutoring in UK higher education as a “proactive, professional relationship between student and tutor sustained throughout the entire student journey.” This partnership involves “dialogue, metacognition, and a structured programme of activities” aimed at fostering student agency, self-efficacy, independent learning, and career and future goals.

    Personal academic tutors play a crucial role by supporting students to “assimilate to the university environment”, facilitating learning and decision-making, reviewing progress, and providing essential information. They enhance both academic ability and emotional well-being through holistic support during one-to-one or group meetings at key academic moments. Personal academic tutors are described as “knowledgeable, approachable, helpful, patient, caring, reliable and non-judgmental” staff members who possess the skills to actively listen, instruct, and advise. They play a crucial role in supporting student success and outcomes.

    HE size and shape is changing

    The increasingly perilous position of economic sustainability in the UK higher education sector has meant that a growing number of institutions are instigating reviews of their ‘size and shape’. In turn, many providers face some tough decisions around what should be prioritised. We anticipate that multiple university senior leadership teams may review academic workload plan allocations during the 2025/26 academic year to ensure that academic staff time can be optimised. As such, consideration may be given to changing time allocations to prioritise teaching preparation and delivery, assessment, and research over personal academic tutoring. We argue that teaching and research should not be treated as more important than personal academic tutoring when allocating time. Nor should teaching and research time be reduced in favour of personal academic tutoring. Rather, we argue for equivalency and that time allocation for personal academic tutoring is an activity institutions should seek to protect, not cut. 

    The value of university education has become a sharper and often more critical question in media narratives, as well as for people considering studying in higher education. With the increasing cost of living and studying at university, the question of how universities can make the benefits to students as visible as possible is understandably at the forefront of many of our minds. We argue that personal academic tutoring is a critical part of achieving this through a strategic, purposeful, proactive, and student-centred approach that is informed by data rather than risking falling into a reactive approach.

    The impact and benefit of personal academic tutoring

    Personal academic tutoring plays a fundamental role in enhancing attainment and impacts the Office for Students’ metrics, which determine institutional success (such as the Teaching Excellence Framework, National Student Survey and Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey). Effective tutoring can be measured in many ways, but not least of these is the positive benefits for helping students to stay on course and be successful, directly supporting those key B3 continuation and completion rates. Effective personal academic tutoring is therefore a virtuous circle for improving student outcomes and experience, and can help give direct evidence of value to both current students and potential applicants.

    Meaningful individualised relationships that encompass the entirety of a student’s learning journey are fostered through effective personal academic tutoring.  Successful tutors nurture a sense of belonging and mattering, aid in navigating the complexities of the higher education study experience, cultivate vital analytical and transferable skills, and impact student career aspirations and employability. At its best, personal academic tutoring transcends traditional teaching methods by facilitating purposeful, structured interactions outside of learning, empowering student agency and promoting the holistic development of all students. As highlighted by NACADA, teaching beyond the curriculum and discipline can help to bring together and contextualise students’ educational experiences in terms of extending aspirations, abilities and lives beyond campus boundaries and timeframes.  

    Academic workload planning and personal academic tutoring

    A recent UKAT senior leaders’ network group meeting provided a forum for discussions regarding allocating dedicated resources for personal academic tutoring in universities. Here, we explored the variation and inconsistencies across the sector regarding how universities operate their personal academic tutoring in terms of academic workload planning. Members reported that across institutions, resource allocation was often determined locally but was driven by central university policy. As the group engaged in thought-provoking dialogue, a critical question emerged: If we genuinely value the importance of learning beyond the traditional subject curriculum, why is personal academic tutoring often not prioritised to the same extent as other activities in the initial stages of academic workload allocation?

    The case for a personal academic tutoring first mindset

    Recognising there are institutional differences, possible common ways of addressing this challenge were discussed, considering the aforementioned financial constraints facing the HE sector. Abi presented to attendees a cup metaphor for academic workload planning based on her previous work. This suggests that, given the significance of personal academic tutoring on student outcomes, personal academic tutoring time should be the first thing built into an academic’s workload plan. She noted, however, that this is often not the case and time allocation for personal academic tutoring may be the last thing added into the workload ‘cup’ (behind teaching, assessment and research), in turn causing the cup to overflow and damaging the significance associated with personal academic tutoring. There was an overwhelming consensus that we should all adopt a personal academic tutoring first ethos in terms of academic workload planning. Accordingly, we encourage readers who will be undertaking academic workload plan reviews over the coming months to reflect on how they allocate personal academic tutoring time, particularly if personal academic tutoring has not historically been the first pour into the workload cup.

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