The full panel of judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could require Louisiana public schools to feature posters with the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
Attorney Liz Murrill sought a rehearing with all 17 judges from the 5th Circuit after a three-judge panel ruled in June that the 2024 state law requiring the displays was “plainly unconstitutional.” A group of parents of public school students had filed a lawsuit against the state to block the law, which includes the text of a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments, from being enforced.
The case, Roake v. Brumley, could hinge on whether the law violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits governments from endorsing a specific religion. Whether a comparable law in Texas takes effect will likely depend on the outcome of the Louisiana case.
The plaintiffs in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Judges grilled their lawyers with questions about basing their arguments on the long-standing precedent from the case Stone v. Graham, a 1980 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned a similar law in Kentucky. Justices decided then that the First Amendment bars public schools from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
Some 5th Circuit judges said they believe the Stone decision was effectively nullified because it relied on a precedent from the 1971 case Lemon v. Kurtzman, which the Supreme Court overturned in 2022. The so-called Lemon test has been applied for five decades to decide what amounts to a violation of the Establishment Clause.
The 2022 case, Kennedy v. Bremerton, involved a Washington state high school football coach who was fired for praying at midfield after games and allowing students to join him. Joseph Kennedy got his job back after conservative justices prevailed in a 6-3 decision, saying the post game prayers do not amount to a school endorsement of Christianity.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs told the 5th Circuit judges that the Kennedy decision might have overturned Lemon but did not nullify the Stone ruling. Still, some judges questioned how an 11-inch by 14-inch poster amounts to coercion of religious beliefs.
In a news conference after the nearly two-hour hearing, Murrill expressed confidence in the state’s arguments but predicted the case is likely headed to the Supreme Court regardless of the 5th Circuit’s decision.
“We believe that you can apply this law constitutionally,” Murrill said.
Gov. Jeff Landry, who attended Tuesday’s hearing, called the Ten Commandments one of the nation’s foundational documents.
“I think Americans are just tired of the hypocrisy,” Landry said. “I just think that it’s high time that we embrace what tradition and heritage is in this country, and I agree with the attorney general. I like our chances.”
The Rev. Jeff Sims, one of the plaintiffs and a Presbyterian minister in Covington, issued a statement after the hearing saying he wants to be the one to decide on the religious education that his children receive.
“I send my children to public school to learn math, English, science, art, and so much more — but not to be evangelized by the state into its chosen religion,” Sims said. “These religious displays send a message to my children and other students that people of some religious denominations are superior to others. This is religious favoritism and it’s not only dangerous, but runs counter to my Presbyterian values of inclusion and equality.”
Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: [email protected].
Did you use this article in your work?
We’d love to hear how The 74’s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers. Tell us how
An impressively brilliant African American 14-year-old sent a thoughtful response to the column I published yesterday on the policing of Black men in America. He began by characterizing what I had written as “fascinating,” which could have meant a multitude of things coming from a teenager. He then explained that his eighth-grade English class included recent discussions about immigrant pursuits of the American dream. Accordingly, one major takeaway from those conversations with his teacher and peers was that many people come to the U.S. because it is perceived as a land of opportunity. My article complicated this presumption for him.
In addition to the racial profiling, harassment, abuse and police killings of unarmed Black Americans that I wrote about yesterday, this middle schooler’s perspective has me wondering how other youth his age, as well as collegians in the U.S. and abroad are thinking about the possibility of the American dream at this time for themselves and others. I am especially interested in knowing how attainable it feels among Asian, Black, Latino and Indigenous youth here and elsewhere across the globe. Juxtapositions of their perspectives with those of their white counterparts also fascinate me.
The Trump administration includes few people of color in leadership roles—certainly much, much fewer than in the Obama and Biden administrations. Programs and policies that were designed to ensure equitable opportunities for citizens who make our nation diverse have been ravaged (in some instances outlawed) during Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
Black, Latino and international student enrollments at Harvard University and other elite institutions have declined since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled race-conscious admissions practices unconstitutional. Immigrants are being threatened, terrorized and deported. It is possible that these challenges and realities have done little to erode immigrants’ and prospective international students’ faith in U.S. structures and systems. This is a researchable topic.
It would also be good for social scientists and education researchers to study how students in K–12 schools and on college campuses across the U.S. are appraising the equitable availability of the American dream to all citizens. Results collected via surveys and other research methods should be disaggregated by race, socioeconomic status, gender and gender identity, citizenship and documentation status, sexual orientation, religion, state and geographic region, political party, and other demographic variables. Those findings should be compared within and across groups. Furthermore, sophisticated analyses should be done at the intersection of identities (for example, perceptions of Asian American transgender immigrant youth).
In another column published earlier this week, I wrote about what I teach students in my classrooms. One statement therein seems worthy of amplification here: “To be absolutely sure, I have never instructed [students] to hate or in any way despise America.” I do, however, teach them truths about our nation’s racial past and present. Those lessons are not based on my opinions or so-called divisive ideologies, but instead rigorous statistics and other forms of high-quality, trustworthy data substantiate my teachings. As a responsible educator and citizen, I understand that the problem of inequitable access to the American dream requires a lot, including but not limited to consciousness raising, truth telling, reparations and restorative justice, and the implementation of equity-minded public policies, to name a few.
I want youth of color to love our country. I want immigrants who believe in the availability of the American dream to come here. But I also want access to the American dream to be fair and equitable. I want our nation to disable and permanently destroy structures and systems that cyclically reproduce disparate outcomes that disadvantage people who make our country beautifully diverse. I got a very real sense that the Black teenage boy who thoughtfully responded to what I wrote yesterday wants the same thing, too. Again, I think it would be “fascinating” to know how other adolescents and young adults, including those who are white, are thinking about who has full access to the American dream at this time.
Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.
Weeks after pushing through deeply unpopular program cuts, University of Nebraska–Lincoln chancellor Rodney Bennett has left his role six months early—with a $1 million golden parachute.
His exit at Nebraska has prompted faculty concerns about executive spending as questions linger about whether program cuts driven by Bennett were avoidable. NU system officials, however, have defended the cuts as necessary due to a recurring budget deficit and argued that Bennett’s exit package is what was owed to him—a mix of unpaid leave, deferred income, health-care benefits and the remainder of his contract set to expire in June.
For Bennett, this marks the second time since 2022 that he has left a job early, departing his role as president of the University of Southern Mississippi a year ahead of schedule after nearly a decade at the helm there.
(A UNL spokesperson said Bennett was not available for an interview with Inside Higher Ed.)
Now UNL will soon embark on a new chancellor search as tensions simmer over recent events, though NU system President Jeffrey Gold noted a “need for healing” before that process begins.
While he initially proposed cutting six programs, that was later whittled down to four: statistics, earth and atmospheric sciences, educational administration, and textiles, merchandising and fashion design. Four more programs will be “realigned” into two new schools, under the plan.
The program eliminations will cut 51 jobs at UNL, most from the faculty ranks.
Other actions taken include faculty buyouts, which are expected to save $5.5 million; budget reductions at four of UNL’s colleges; and the elimination of some administrative and staff roles.
Those cuts, already unpopular, sting more now after Bennett officially stepped down Monday with an exit package of $1.1 million—prompting faculty outrage over spending priorities.
“The university cannot credibly claim that it lacks the resources to sustain academic programs and faculty positions while simultaneously paying over a million dollars to a failed chancellor,” Sarah Zuckerman, president of the UNL chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said in a statement sent to Inside Higher Ed and other media outlets. “This payout exposes the administration’s financial crisis narrative as a matter of priorities, not necessity.”
But Gold, NU system president since July 2024, notes the exit package will not be funded by taxpayer dollars and said the decision to leave early was “mutually discussed” with Bennett, his family and senior leadership and was made with the “best interests” of the campus in mind.
“The separation agreement—all components of it—will not be funded either from state appropriations or tuition funds, but rather entirely through other university discretionary resources, meaning privately raised dollars,” Gold told Inside Higher Ed. “It’s always a balance, but an attempt was made, and I think in this instance, successfully, to not use the same dollars that are used to support our faculty and our staff and, most importantly, our students.”
Many faculty members are also seething about what they see as fuzzy math to justify the cuts.
An outside analysis, conducted by the AAUP, argued that instructional spending across the system has declined in recent years while administrative pay rises and that the cuts fell disproportionately on the academic side. The analysis also suggested that by increasing its endowment draw by 1.3 percent, bringing it up to 6 percent, UNL would have been able to avoid cuts.
Gold said that “perhaps the campus has seen that analysis,” but he has not. He largely dismissed the notion of increasing the endowment draw, noting such a move is “at the discretion of the Board of Directors and senior leadership of the [University of Nebraska] Foundation.” Gold also underscored that two of the four program closures were supported by the Academic Planning Committee, a group of faculty, staff, students and administrators—though that fact has done little to assuage the concerns of others who have protested the cuts as needless or flawed.
Faculty Tensions
Faculty have also accused Bennett of steamrolling them in the process to determine the cuts. In November, UNL’s Faculty Senate voted no confidence in Bennett and urged Gold to evaluate Bennett’s “continued fitness to serve” as chancellor.
The no-confidence resolution blasted Bennett for “failures in strategic leadership, fiscal stewardship, governance integrity, external relations, and personnel management.” Those concerns are among many complaints from faculty during Bennett’s tenure.
Regina Werum, a UNL sociology professor and member of UNL’s AAUP chapter, told Inside Higher Ed by email that Bennett had “no rapport with faculty” and was rarely seen on campus.
“The Chancellor’s style is best described as disengaged from and more accurately as disdainful of faculty, staff, and students. He keeps himself insulated and largely invisible on campus, making sure to be present for photo ops with superiors and dignitaries,” Werum wrote.
A former Southern Miss official who worked with Bennett at that campus offered a similar take. Speaking anonymously, the former official said Bennett was a rare sight on campus and tended to offer scripted remarks to faculty. That official also criticized Bennett’s inexperience with teaching and research, noting he stepped into the job with a student affairs background.
“The problem was he didn’t want you to know that he didn’t know things, and because of that, he wouldn’t ask questions,” the anonymous official said. “It was a conundrum. You would try to help him understand what was going on, but he didn’t want to admit that he didn’t understand it all.”
The former official said Bennett’s cabinet encouraged him to consider other options at Southern Miss, but he wasn’t interested in having those conversations and saw cuts as the only route to plug budget holes. The anonymous administrator also said Bennett often ignored faculty advice.
“When he reorganized the Gulf Coast campus, he put together two large committees, 30 people each, that worked for six months coming up with recommendations,” they said. “And then when he rolled out the plan for the Gulf Coast, there was a lot of stuff in there that none of the committees had ever discussed. People felt like they wasted a lot of time on these committees, and they were designed to give him cover for the changes he was going to make anyway.”
The former USM official believes it was an enrollment collapse at that campus, known as Southern Miss Gulf Park, that hastened Bennett’s exit from a job he had held since 2013. Bennett initially announced in January 2021 that he planned to step down when his contract ended in June 2023. However, Bennett was officially out by June 2022, with no explanation.
Months later, a member of the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, which oversees Southern Miss and other universities, told local media he was “embarrassed” by the enrollment collapse at the satellite campus, which plunged by more than 50 percent from 2011 to 2022.
Despite sharp faculty criticism, Gold praised Bennett for his time as chancellor.
“For the 18 months that I had the privilege of working with Chancellor Bennett, I really enjoyed working with him. I found him to be very thoughtful, easy to work with, a very solid human being with a very strong love of higher education, and particularly public higher education,” Gold said.
But if Gold felt differently, he wouldn’t be able to say so.
A nondisparagement agreement in Bennett’s separation agreement prevents certain university and system officials, including Gold and members of the Board of Regents, from making “any negative or disparaging comments or statements” about the now-former Nebraska chancellor.
Q: Where do CTLs come into the AI higher ed story? What has been going on with AI at CELT and UK, and what are you seeing nationally?
A: For some, CTLs might not be the first space that comes to mind when crafting vision and strategy or enhancing knowledge and skill about AI. Yet, for my money, regardless of where you are, you’ll be hard-pressed to find people who are more embedded in the discourse about AI in education, who are more knowledgeable about it in multidimensional ways, who experiment with and use AI tools daily, and who are more expert in both the scholarship and day-to-day realities of education across the institution. Teaching center staff are polymaths; they are scholars, practitioners, educators and curious minds that, every day, have to inhabit a dizzying range of epistemic grounds.
In response to the question, I’d venture that CTLs come into the story about AI in higher education before ChatGPT altogether. For years, we’ve engaged in critical and scholarly approaches to technology beyond how-to and best practices towards larger inquiries about how digital tools, platforms and infrastructures affect our capacity to learn, grow, connect and act in the world. Those are the waters in which we swim. From that history, CTLs were able to engage generative AI with nuance from the outset.
At the University of Kentucky, CELT began hosting information sessions, focused workshops, discussion forums and even play sessions starting in the first week of 2023. We were the main central unit to do so at that time, and we quickly became the go-to, trusted hub for faculty, staff and graduate students to make sense of AI as it might impact their scholarly work, student learning and our overall purpose.
As we begin 2026, CELT continues to make AI a central part of our work. We’ve led 200 AI-related events for thousands of participants and are working with the second faculty cohort of our Teaching Innovation Institute to focus on AI. In partnership with our Center for Computational Sciences, we’ve hosted education tracks for regionalsummits and an NSF ACCESS regional workshop. We’ve produced resources such as an AI use scale, which has proven popular among instructors and will soon release a comprehensive starter course on AI literacy for faculty, academic staff and graduate students.
Our work has informed the university advisory group on AI. I co-chair this group, which maintains guidelines on AI in educational, research, clinical and professional contexts. Colleagues have indicated that it has been meaningful for CTL leadership to play a significant role in composing institution-level guidance and contributing to a “post-AI” vision for education, scholarship and service.
Nationally, I’ve seen some variety in how CTLs are engaging with AI, though many are pursuing a version of what I’ve outlined here. CTLs are remarkably diverse in size, specialties, org charts, cultures and goals. Across higher education, though, I see an opportunity to further capitalize on CTLs in light of recent developments around institution-level requirements, curricular integration, industry partnerships and infrastructure.
If the first step is recognizing that CTLs are effective partners in making sense of AI as a disruption, the next step is including CTLs in these larger initiatives for implementation as well as assessment. There is a good deal of discussion about how to convincingly assess the impact of AI on student learning, scholarly activity and institutional success. This involves questions that often are oversimplified or shortchanged. What is learning? Where and how does it happen and for whom? What counts as evidence? How do we know that our data means what we say it means? What are the relevant scholarly precedents? What do we need to know about AI? CTLs stand to add a great deal of integrity and insight to these projects.
Q: You make the case for CTLs being an indispensable resource as universities navigate the AI tsunami. And yet, across the country, CTL budgets, staffing and sometimes even existence are under attack. How can CTL leaders better position their centers for institutional resiliency?
A: CTLs rarely operate with large budgets outside salary lines, which is to say that we traditionally have strategized for impact with this reality in mind. I don’t mean to dismiss the precarity that some CTLs may be feeling, but I do think there are ways to show our value and build resiliency, especially in the context of AI and when additional resources may not be available.
Christopher Hakala and Kevin Gannon have offered some great advice on that front. For me, the first step is about aligning CTL work with institutional priorities. Obviously, teaching excellence and student learning are a stated priority for any institution, but there are different ways that those goals resonate locally. Especially if we notice a gap, CTLs are well positioned to jump in and address it. A big part of resiliency is being imagined as a solution when the community is faced with a challenge.
AI offers a great example of an institutional exigency in CELT’s case, and we’ve contributed proactively to other priorities such as our quality enhancement plan, our state’s graduate profile and digital accessibility. But we should also make sure to prioritize the academic units within our institution. I regularly collaborate with our colleges and departments. Those leaders and their colleagues often are the most persuasive agents for communicating our value.
Resiliency is also built through partnerships that lend the CTL’s expertise, imprimatur and labor. AI is precisely the kind of catalyst that normalizes these exchanges even if they’re not typical. Other units may be able to assist with travel funding for a joint project, for example. In some cases, a unit might fund an initiative so long as the CTL coordinates it; our SoTL community is a good example of this. Bandwidth permitting, CTL staff can participate on funded grants that generate income through labor costs.
Despite the persistent urgency to expand, resiliency also means not losing sight of core services. At CELT, midsemester student feedback has become so popular that I have to shut off our request form early in the semester. Along with support for faculty dossiers and teaching portfolios, this work makes a clear case for our impact on career advancement as well as capitalizing on local data for student success.
When bandwidth seems scarce, light-lift activities can still offer a high yield. Communities of practice, reading groups, teaching triangles, drop-in hours and other programming that leverages the CTL as a community center can raise visibility and value while leaving gas in the tank. Faculty partners or affiliates allow for more sustainable reach and programming while increasing buy-in.
All of this, though—alignment, initiative, partnerships, services, reach—rely on relationships and recognition that CTL leadership needs to cultivate and work daily to affirm. We are, fundamentally, a relational enterprise. Our resiliency lies in our relationships.
Q: What was the career journey that brought you into a CTL and institutional leadership role, and what advice do you have for early or midcareer academics who might want to follow a similar professional path?
A: Ironically, I never interacted with the CTL at my doctoral institution. I did, however, begin to work in instructional development through unique graduate assistantships that friends had held and encouraged me to pursue. It was also critical that I used teaching assignments as opportunities to experiment and explore broader issues in higher education. Those projects ultimately determined the direction of my graduate work as a whole.
As I looked beyond my program, I wanted that work to continue as a career. It meant moving away from the traditional faculty role I’d imagined toward a version of what Donna M. Bickford and Anne Mitchell Whisnant have described as the administrator-scholar. Of course, I discovered most of what I know about this sort of work and about higher education on the job. My goal—my backward design—was (and still is) to elevate scholarly teaching, meaningful learning and the significance of a college education.
To be clear, I don’t mean to imply any sort of self-made myth; I can’t stress enough how much my mentors and colleagues have enabled my career every step of the way. Like many paths, CTL work is collaborative by nature. It’s not a stage for solo acts.
I’m still learning a lot about leadership. I worked as an educational developer at my CTL before stepping into the associate director and, later, director and assistant provost roles. Looking back, I see some thematic coherence despite the usual noise of life. Those transitional moments typically involved acting upon an opportunity to make our projects, organization or people more successful at a particular inflection point of pressure or change. I’ve also prioritized becoming as familiar as possible with the full complexity of the university and its communities well beyond the immediate operations of the CTL.
For the curious, I’d recommend getting to know your local CTL if you haven’t already. Attend their events, participate in a program or just set up a time to learn more about the center. Whether you’re in a staff or faculty role, you might discover an opportunity to support or collaborate with the CTL, even in just small ways. I’d also recommend getting to know what it’s like to teach in different disciplines and under different conditions than you normally experience. Getting to know the landscape of CTLs and higher education more broadly helps significantly with clarifying your why as well as what you’d want to see in a new position.
There are some helpful organizations and resources to get a sense of educational development as a field of work. This is especially helpful if a CTL is not easily accessible. The POD Network is a good place to start, though there are other organizations as well as surveys of the field. If you’re a podcast listener, there’s never been a better time for higher education podcasts: Teaching in Higher Ed, Tea for Teaching, Intentional Teaching, Centering Centers and so on. Becoming conversant about the work and the issues is at least half of the journey.
Keep in mind that there are many career paths in educational development: some with CTLs, some with other kinds of administrative offices and some outside higher education altogether in both public and private sectors. Depending on your interests and skills, you can go into a variety of meaningful roles.
The last time we caught up with Suzanne Dove in September of 2024, she was serving as the assistant vice president, strategy and innovation at Bentley University. This past May, Suzanne started a new role as Chief Education Solutions Officer in the Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) at the University of Michigan (U-M). Now, a few months in her new role, I thought this would be a good time to check in with Suzanne.
Q1: Tell us about your new job. What does a Chief Education Solutions Office do? Where does your role fit in with CAI and U-M as a whole?
A: At the Center for Academic Innovation, my role as the inaugural Chief Education Solutions Officer (or CESO) is to open a new learning innovation horizon for the Center and help U-M achieve its next tier of educational impact. I do this by creating sustainable strategic partnerships that enable us to serve workforce and talent development needs of external organizations.
CAI has long been known for offering well-designed, U-M faculty-led online courses to millions of learners and thousands of organizations. This breadth gives us an advantage: Our teams have developed tacit knowledge as well as processes to stand up and scale successful programs ranging from MOOCs on platforms, like Coursera, to U-M online degree programs to innovative short-form offerings and integration of advanced technology into hybrid, online and residential learning.
With Michigan Online giving us even more flexibility, we can go further. We are positioned to partner directly with organizations that need high-quality workforce and talent development and offering features that both learning and development leaders and adult learners value, such as cohort-based learning, live sessions with U-M faculty, and customized content.
Like any new leadership role, a big part of my job is setting strategic priorities and putting the right operational structures in place. Equally important, if not more so, is building strong, collaborative relationships across three overlapping circles.
The first is CAI itself, a community of experts in online learning, project management, marketing, media production, ed tech and more who make it possible as I build the Education Solutions team to engage with external partners and craft relevant offerings that fit their needs. The second is leaders and faculty across U-M, many of whom are excited about expanding the university’s reach to nondegree learners and appreciate how our team brings market insights and industry relationships. The third circle is external organizations that are serious about upskilling their employees and are challenging the status quo around professional development and work-based learning. The partnerships I’m most energized by are those that challenge us to design innovative learning solutions that benefit learners, their organizations and the university. For a thriving workforce in a rapidly shifting landscape, we need to move boldly.
Right now, my day-to-day focus is on three things, in collaboration with other teams within CAI: building a strong partnership pipeline, making sure there’s a good fit between partners’ needs and CAI’s offerings, and ensuring we can deliver these solutions efficiently through Michigan Online. There’s a considerable operational component with any new endeavor and I’m really excited about that right now—it’s what gets me going in the morning! For example, how can we enhance traditional partnership development practices using generative AI? What new insights can we draw by digging into our existing data with an organizational lens? etc.
Q2: Knowing you for a good number of years now, I know that you’ve worked hard to develop as an academic innovation leader. What was it about this particular role at U-M that inspired you to make this big professional (and personal) move?
A: The University of Michigan’s Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) has earned a reputation as a national leader in shaping the future of lifelong learning. I could not imagine a better place to take this next step in my career. I feel grateful to have the support of my family and friends—they have been an invaluable source of encouragement and have been almost as excited as I am about the move! From the beginning of the interview process, I could tell that my new colleagues at CAI take organizational culture seriously and, as I have been onboarding, the CAI team has gone out of their way to extend a warm welcome, offering concrete guidance to help me succeed and just being incredibly helpful as I navigate the move to Ann Arbor.
I’ve always relished the challenges of sharpening an impactful idea, taking it from conception to development and experimentation to scale and sustainability. As I’ve settled into this role, I have found that CAI “on the inside” matches the external image I had formed before I joined the organization. I’m impressed by the strong leadership vision and strategic mindset of my colleagues on the Center’s senior leadership team as well as the interest in ideation and experimentation, the deep expertise and operational excellence at every level on the various teams that make up the Center.
Creating the CESO role came from a clear commitment to an idea that has taken root at many U.S. universities in the past several years: that higher education institutions should serve not just degree-seeking students but also workforce development demands of our regions and talent development needs of external organizations more broadly. Trouble is, universities tend to be decentralized, and it can be a struggle to coordinate across different units with overlapping missions. So, when it comes time to execute on this vision, success may occur in pockets, but scaled solutions can hover out of reach. I was energized by the opportunity to step into the CESO role at CAI, where scale and global reach are part of our core value proposition.
Q3: What career advice do you have for other non-faculty educators interested in growing into a leadership role? What skills, experiences and networks have been most valuable to you across your higher education career?
A: We already talked about the importance of mentors and sponsors in our last conversation, so I won’t repeat myself on that topic. Another important lesson is to tend your network. I know the term “networking” often carries a transactional connotation that can be off-putting to mission-driven folks who value community. But in fact, I think of the network of academic innovators I’ve been lucky enough to work with as a community or web, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Here are a few strategies I’ve found helpful when investing in that network:
Is there a former colleague you’ve fallen out of touch with? Set a monthly or quarterly reminder to reach out to three people you’ve worked with in the past (holidays are a great opportunity to reach out and let someone know you’re thinking of them!). Share an article or a joke that reminded you of them, ask for their help in a small way and offer your help in return, ask about something important in their lives, or just let them know you thought of them.
Cross-functional committees or cross-institutional organizations or conferences can be a great way to meet people and hear perspectives you wouldn’t ordinarily encounter. Sometimes, a few people discover a mutual interest and want to continue the conversation outside the committee or conference. Can you make a move that will help make this happen? Maybe you offer to compile email addresses of those who’d like to continue the conversation, maybe you’re even willing to organize a few virtual meetings so the group can come together. These types of small but visible investments will be valued by your peers and help you build your network.
This year, two of my most treasured academic innovation colleagues passed away suddenly. They were two of the people I would call on to help me sharpen an idea, to offer support when I was feeling discouraged, or to share in the excitement of a successful experiment. I miss them every day, and it reminds me about the importance of community, not just for learners but for learning innovators. So I guess my best career advice today is, keep nurturing your network.
Changes at the Pentagon, Charlie Kirk and cancel
culture, free speech and misinformation, globalized censorship,
Indiana University, how to support FIRE, and more!
Timestamps:
00:00 Introductions
02:11 What is the Press Clause, and who does it apply
to?
05:53 FIRE’s position on Oklahoma student grading
incident
08:50 What does FIRE need from Members besides
financial support?
Become a paid subscriber today to receive invitations
to future live webinars.
If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE
at thefire.org and would
like access to Substack’s paid subscriber podcast feed, please
email [email protected].
The bell rings at 10:00 a.m. A teacher begins explaining quadratic equations. Some students lean forward, pencils ready. Others stare at the clock. A few are still turning yesterday’s lesson over in their minds. On the surface, it’s a standard, well‑planned class period. But here’s the catch: Learning doesn’t always happen on schedule.
Think about your own class last week. Did every student learn exactly what you were teaching? Or did some of them circle back a day or two later with new questions, fresh insights, or sudden understanding?
Across the country, laws and regulations attempt to define and balance synchronous and asynchronous instruction. Some states fund schools based on seat time, measuring how long students sit in classrooms or log into live online sessions. Here in Indiana, recent legislation even limits the number of e‑learning days that can be asynchronous, as if too many days without live teaching would somehow shortchange students. These rules were written with the best of intentions–ensuring students are engaged, teachers are available, and learning doesn’t slip through the cracks.
Over time, “asynchronous instruction” has picked up a troubling reputation, often equated with the idea of no teaching at all–just kids simply poking through a computer on their own. But the truth is far more nuanced. The work of teaching is so difficult precisely because all learning is, at its core, asynchronous. The best teachers understand the enormous variance in readiness within any group of students. They know some learners grasp a concept immediately while others need more time, multiple exposures, or a completely different entry point. Giving them space beyond the live moment is often exactly what allows learning to take hold.
Devoting resources to well-designed asynchronous learning, such as recorded lectures available for rewatch, self-paced learning modules, project-based activities, and educational games, allows students to immerse themselves in instructional materials and gain a better understanding of content on their terms. Instead of helping students catch up during class time, teachers can focus on whole-group instruction and a deeper analysis of curriculum content.
When we’re measuring butts in seats or time in front of a screen with an instructor on the other end, live, we’re measuring what’s easy to measure, not what’s important. Real student engagement happens in the head of the learner, and that is far harder to quantify.
That’s why I can’t help but wonder if some of these mandates, while well‑intentioned, actually get in the way of real learning, pushing schools to comply with a regulation rather than focus on the conditions that actually help students grow.
What if, instead of focusing so much on the ratio of synchronous to asynchronous minutes, we asked a better question: Are students being given the time, space, and support to truly learn? Are we creating systems that allow them to circle back and show growth when they’re ready, not just when the bell rings? As an administrator, I know our district is still figuring out the complexities of putting these goals into practice.
Instead of tying funding and accountability to time in a seat, imagine tying it to evidence of growth. Imagine policies that encourage schools to document when and how students show understanding, no matter when it happens. Imagine giving educators the freedom to design opportunities for students to revisit, rethink, and re‑engage until the learning truly sticks.
The teaching might be synchronous. But the learning is always happening asynchronously, and if we can shift our policies, practices, and mindsets to honor that truth, we can move beyond compliance and toward classrooms where students have every chance to succeed.
George Philhower, Ed.D., Eastern Hancock Schools
Dr. George Philhower is the superintendent of Eastern Hancock Schools, a rural district located just east of Indianapolis. With five years of experience as a superintendent, George is driven by a vision where every student and staff member wakes up eager to go to school each day. He believes this is possible when everyone feels safe and valued, has opportunities for success, engages in meaningful work, plays and learns with friends, and is supported by caring adults. George holds a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary and Special Education from Cardinal Stritch University, a Master’s in Instructional Leadership from the University of Indianapolis, and both an Ed.S. and Ph.D. from Indiana State University.
Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)
In late 2023, Robin Baker made the career pivot from assistant professor at OHSU-PSU School of Public Health to learning designer at Dartmouth College. I asked if Robin would be willing to share some thoughts about her career path, and she graciously agreed.
Q: What motivated you to shift from a traditional faculty position into a learning designer role? What preparation and background did you bring to the work of a learning designer, and what advantages and challenges have been posed by coming from a faculty role?
A: I decided to transition from a traditional faculty role to a learning designer position after considerable reflection on what I wanted my work and life to look like. I was in a soft money–funded position, where success often felt tied to research output and securing grants. But in practice, most of my energy went into teaching and supporting students, the parts of the job that truly mattered to me. Over time, I began to realize that the pace and structure of that kind of academic role were not sustainable for me in the long run. As I thought more deeply about what aspects of my work I found most rewarding, I realized that, in addition to teaching and mentoring, I found immense satisfaction in designing learning experiences that were inclusive, authentic and relevant. I often spent significant time redesigning assignments and activities to make them more engaging and meaningful for my students. Learning design offered a way to stay connected to the core of what I value: teaching, learning and student success.
I brought to this role a strong foundation in pedagogy, assessment and curriculum design, developed through years of intentionally reflecting on my teaching. Whenever I noticed a strategy fell flat, I dug into the literature and experimented with new approaches, refining my practice based on evidence and observation. Another advantage that my previous life as a faculty member has provided me is that I have developed empathy and practical insight into the challenges that faculty face when trying to create robust learning experiences, provide meaningful feedback and maintain a work-life balance. I have found that acknowledging those realities and engaging in open, honest dialogue helps build trust and leads to more creative and effective solutions. Coming from a faculty background has allowed me to serve as a bridge between teaching practice and design strategy.
At the same time, that transition has come with some challenges. In my faculty role, I was accustomed to being the sole decision-maker for my courses, so adapting to a highly collaborative environment, where I needed to influence others without formal authority, was a major shift. In this context, I had to develop strong project-management skills, work within structured timelines and production workflows, and communicate clearly across teams. Learning to navigate these processes and contribute meaningfully without directing every decision was initially difficult, but it strengthened my ability to work strategically, build consensus and support high-quality learning experiences in partnership with others.
Q: Having now experienced life as both a full-time professor and full-time learning designer, how do the two roles compare and contrast? For someone trained for research and employed mostly in teaching (as most Ph.D.s are), what recommendations might you have for anyone else contemplating a similar career path?
A: Having experienced life as both a full-time professor and now as a full-time learning designer, I see both roles as connected by a shared commitment to improving student learning, though they differ in scope and kind of impact. As a faculty member, I had a very immediate connection with students: teaching, mentoring and witnessing their growth in real time. That direct engagement was deeply rewarding and energizing, but it also came with heavy workloads, administrative pressures and blurred boundaries. Over time, I found that level of intensity difficult to sustain, which prompted me to reflect on the kind of work-life balance and long-term impact I wanted.
As a learning designer, the work feels broader and more strategic. Instead of focusing on one group of students, I now collaborate with faculty across disciplines to design courses and learning environments that enhance teaching and learning for many more students. The impact is less direct but often greater in scale, as it shapes the systems and supports that enable effective teaching.
At the same time, I think it is important to acknowledge that the loss of direct connection with students can be a real adjustment. There is something uniquely special about witnessing students’ aha moments and seeing the immediate results of your teaching. As a learning designer, that feedback loop is more indirect. Faculty are often very appreciative of our collaboration, but it does not carry quite the same emotional resonance as seeing students thrive firsthand. For anyone considering this transition, it is worth reflecting on how central that kind of direct engagement is to their sense of purpose and whether there are other ways, such as mentoring colleagues, engaging in professional development or contributing to the broader learning community, to fill that gap.
Another concern I often hear from faculty considering this path is the fear of losing autonomy, particularly the flexibility to structure their own days or pursue creative ideas. In my experience, that depends heavily on the team and institutional culture. In my current role, which is largely remote and hybrid, there is a genuine appreciation for the whole person. We are trusted to manage our time and energy, and that autonomy is still very much present.
The difference is that I now have a healthier kind of control. I set realistic goals for what I can achieve in a given day, while being careful not to let work bleed into personal or family time. That structure allows me to work efficiently and intentionally and it has given me space to reconnect with family, friends, community and nature. For anyone thinking about making this transition, it’s worth having open conversations about team expectations, workflows and culture. Understanding these aspects up front can help you gauge whether the role is a good fit and set you up for long-term satisfaction.
A: In many ways, my role as course co-director is a meaningful complement to my work as a learning designer. In this role, I serve as one of the faculty for the capstone course, guiding students as they pull together what they’ve learned across the program and apply it to complex, real-world challenges. It’s been incredibly rewarding to reconnect directly with students, something I’d missed since stepping away from a full-time faculty role.
What makes this role even more meaningful is that I was one of the learning designers who helped faculty develop many of the courses in the M.H.A. program. Now, I get to see that work come full circle. It provides me with a unique perspective on how our strategies are implemented in practice and highlights opportunities to further refine the learning experience.
I also appreciate how this teaching role complements, rather than competes with, my work in learning design. My design experience informs how I approach the capstone, helping me think carefully about scaffolding, alignment and authentic assessment. At the same time, teaching keeps me connected to the student perspective, giving me a firsthand understanding of how learners experience our courses. That insight flows directly back into my design work and strengthens my collaborations with faculty.
Balancing both roles does require intentional structure and realistic expectations. I’ve learned to be clear about what I can reasonably accomplish each week and to protect time for rest, family and personal commitments. I rely on block scheduling to focus on design projects, faculty consultations and capstone mentoring, while making sure these blocks don’t spill into evenings or weekends. Maintaining these boundaries has been essential for sustaining both quality and balance.
I’m also fortunate to have supportive leadership in both the learning design team and the M.H.A. program, who recognize the value of these complementary roles. That culture of trust and flexibility makes it possible to do both well.
In many ways, this dual role gives me the best of both worlds: the broader, systemic perspective of learning design and the direct, human connection of teaching. Together, they keep me grounded in why this work matters and allow me to contribute to both faculty and student success in meaningful, sustainable ways.
Why Universities Need the Right Partnership Criteria
When a higher education institution outsources its enrollment, marketing, or student engagement efforts, the stakes are high. Missteps don’t just cost money — they cost time and, most critically, can hinder enrollment growth. Many universities make the mistake of selecting vendors that focus on chasing leads, rather than aligning with the school’s mission or long-term goals.
Without clear partnership criteria, even well-intentioned collaborations can falter. Misaligned university partnerships often lead to disjointed campaigns and wasted resources. What begins as a lead generation effort can evolve into dependency on a vendor that operates in isolation, without being guided by the institution’s strategy.
The right partner, by contrast, integrates seamlessly with the institution’s mission, aligns its services with the institution’s desired outcomes, and acts as a true extension of the institution.
The Risks of Choosing the Wrong Partner
The wrong partner can create more problems than it solves. Some vendors sell services focused solely on activities — ads placed, events hosted, emails sent — without tying its efforts to the institution’s overarching strategy. This approach often fails to generate real enrollment growth, causing internal teams to struggle with unqualified leads and retention challenges.
Another potential risk stems from failing to consider how a partner will mesh with the institution’s legacy systems. Universities invest heavily in their marketing resources, such as their customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and brand assets. A vendor that imposes its own tools without considering the university’s existing infrastructure can create costly redundancies.
Equally concerning are long-term, restrictive partnership contracts that lock an institution into dependency and limit its flexibility, leaving it at the mercy of a vendor whose priorities may clash with the institution’s broader objectives or evolving market conditions.
Strategic Alignment as the Core Test
The foundation of any successful university partnership is strategic alignment. True partners base the services they offer on the institution’s unique goals. They view marketing, admissions, and student success teams as interconnected — not completely separate entities.
Shared key performance indicators (KPIs) are a key component of this alignment. When both the institution and its partner commit to tracking metrics such as the conversion rate from inquiry to application, the yield rate from admission to enrollment, and the one-year retention rate, they create mutual accountability across every stage of the student journey.
Archer’s Growth Readiness Assessment offers a model for this type of collaboration. This tool helps an institution evaluate its readiness to scale its programs — whether they are in person or online — by evaluating the university’s internal capacity, identifying any potential hurdles, and aligning its in-house teams and external partners. Performing such an assessment early in the vendor selection process ensures the university partnership is built on a foundation of clarity and trust.
Procurement Criteria That Drive Success
When it comes time for an institution to formalize a partnership, focusing on transparency, flexibility, and accountability can make the difference between achieving sustainable growth and creating new operational challenges.
Institutions that emphasize these criteria are better positioned to form partnerships that deliver measurable results and long-term value.
Transparency in reporting and asset ownership is vital. An institution should establish whether it will retain full ownership of the assets created and determine how often performance reports will be shared. A transparent partner will make reporting accessible and collaborative, not proprietary.
Flexible contracts are another hallmark of a strong university partnership. The institution should have the freedom to pivot when markets shift or as its internal capacity grows. It should avoid rigid, long-term agreements that limit its control or create dependency.
Accountability across the student journey should be among the institution’s demands. The most effective partners understand that success extends beyond generating leads and inquiries. Contracts should define what accountability looks like from marketing through enrollment and retention, with clearly articulated performance standards for each stage.
Integrating With Legacy Systems
Integration is a crucial element of successful university partnerships. A capable partner doesn’t replace or disrupt the institution’s existing systems — it strengthens them.
When integration is done well, the partner respects the university’s existing data, assets, and workflows, leading to a more unified, seamless experience for both staff and students. When integration is done poorly, the results can be costly, creating redundancies, inefficiencies, and siloed teams.
Archer’s Onward student engagement platform demonstrates how thoughtful integration can amplify an institution’s capacity without disrupting its operations. Onward uses behavior-based triggers and personalized multichannel engagement efforts to guide students from inquiry through enrollment — working alongside admissions services and complementing the institution’s existing systems rather than supplanting them.
By respecting the institution’s infrastructure, this kind of partnership model helps the university scale its engagement strategies without losing its operational continuity.
10 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Partner
Selecting the right partner for an institution requires more than comparing price points or promises of lead volume. The most beneficial partnerships are built on mutual accountability, transparency, and shared metrics for success. The right partner should have staff with extensive institutional knowledge and higher ed industry experience, enabling it to provide universities and colleges with the best tools to improve their operations and achieve growth.
Asking the right questions early helps ensure alignment and prevent costly missteps. Institutions can consider asking the following 10 questions when vetting potential partners:
How do you handle internal and external communications? Institutions need to know who their main points of contact will be, and how knowledge and strategies will be shared across teams.
What metrics do you use to measure success across the student journey? The ideal vendor should be able to provide full-funnel visibility and focus on metrics that truly drive enrollment growth.
How frequently will our teams review results together? Successful partnerships depend on transparency and regular communication.
What have you learned from working with other institutions, and how will that inform our partnership? Vendors should always be willing to adjust their services based on past wins and challenges. They should also have the right resources to serve all of their clients with equal urgency.
How will you collaborate with us to set enrollment goals and forecast program growth? Credible vendors rely on historical data to inform their projections, and take the time to carefully explore existing growth drivers.
How do you differentiate marketing strategies at the institutional level from those at the program level? Institutions can benefit from asking for examples that illustrate this distinction.
What can we expect from this partnership in the first 90 days? Vendors should be able to communicate clear timelines for processes, such as onboarding steps, reporting cadence, and performance metrics.
Will our institution own all assets, data, and creative from day one? Institutions should have ownership of any assets created and have a clear understanding of how they will be shared and managed.
Are there any additional fees we should be aware of? Items such as creative assets will need to be refreshed over time, so institutions need to understand what associated costs may arise.
What questions do you have for us? An ideal partner wants to understand the institution’s unique needs, strengths, and challenges. Using historical data, it can shape a data-driven strategy for the institution, including realistic marketing budgets and lead goals.
These questions establish a framework for transparency, accountability, and scalability — ensuring the partnership begins from a place of trust and aligned goals.
Key Takeaways
Effective university partnerships start with asking the right questions.
When your institution prioritizes alignment, accountability, and integration, you can avoid critical missteps.
The right partner will strengthen — not replace — your institutional vision and help equip you to scale sustainably.
Build University Partnerships That Advance Your Goals
At Archer Education, we work with accredited universities to build strategic partnerships rooted in a shared vision that drive scalable enrollment growth. With decades of higher ed experience, our team of industry experts has developed a flexible partnership model that supports internal growth, so that institutions can build self-sufficiency over time.
Contact our team to learn how our tech-enabled marketing, enrollment, and retention services can support your institution’s long-term goals.
Cliffrene Haffner attended the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in South Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her university applications were stalling and she felt stressed and anxious.
“Life felt unstable, as if I were hanging by a thin thread,” Haffner said. But it was at ALA that she discovered News Decoder.
“Joining News Decoder helped me rebuild my voice,” she wrote. “It created a place to write honestly and with purpose whilst supporting others in telling their stories. At a time when the world felt numb and disconnected, we used storytelling to bring back hope on campus by sharing our fears, thoughts and expectations.”
At News Decoder, students work with professional editors and news correspondents to explore complicated, global topics. They have the opportunity to report and write news stories, research and present findings in global webinars with students from other countries, produce podcasts and sit in on live video roundtables with experts and their peers across the globe.
Many get their articles published on News Decoder’s global news site.
A different way of seeing the world
Out of these experiential learning activities, they take away important skills valuable in their later careers, whatever those careers might be: How to communicate clearly, how to recognize multiple perspectives, how to cut through jargon and propaganda and separate facts from opinion and speculation.
One milestone for many of these is our Pitch, Report, Draft and Revise process, which we call PRDR. In it, students pitch a story topic to News Decoder with a plan on how to research and report it. We ask them to identify different perspectives on problems they want to explore and experts they can reach out to for information and context.
Then we guide them through a process of introspection, if the story is a personal reflection on their own experience, or a process of reporting and interviewing. News Decoder doesn’t promise students that their stories will get published at the end of the process. They have to work for that — revising their drafts until the finished story is clear and relevant to a global audience.
One student who went through the process was Joshua Glazer, now a student at Emory University in the United States. Glazer came to News Decoder in high school as an exchange student in Spain with School Year Abroad.
“I think the skills that I got out of that went on to really change the course of my education and how I view the world,” Glazer said. “Because when you step into the world of journalism you learn a different way of seeing the world.”
Recognizing our biases
Glazer learned that for journalism, he had to be less opinionated. “You have to really approach things kind of as they are in the world,” Glazer said. “And that is hard to do. That is not an easy skill that we can do as humans because we inherently have biases.”
He said it challenged him to look inwards and recognize his biases and counter them with evidence.
“So I think those skills have really changed the course of how I view having an argument with somebody because all of a sudden, you know, when you have an argument with someone, it’s all opinion,” he said.
For Haffner, who is now a business administration student at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, News Decoder reshaped how she and her peers understood storytelling.
“It taught us to let go of rigid biases and to make authenticity the centre of our work,” Haffner said. “Students from different backgrounds found a space where their voices were heard, respected and valued. Our stories formed a shared map, each one opening a new room to explore, each voice strengthening the collective journey we were on. In that chaotic period, we created something meaningful together. Something bigger than us.”
Working through the complexity of a topic
Marouane El Bahraoui, a research intern at The Carter Center in the U.S. state of Georgia, also discovered News Decoder at the African Leadership Academy. At the time, he was interested in writing about the effectiveness of the Arab Maghreb Union — an economic bloc of five North African countries. He grew up in Morocco but didn’t want to approach the topic from a purely Moroccan perspective.
“It was like a very raw idea,” he said.
He pitched the story and worked with both News Decoder Founder Nelson Graves and correspondent Tom Heneghan to refine the idea. They guided him in the reporting and writing process.
“One aspect that I liked a lot from my research was the people that I had the chance to talk to,” he said. “It was during Covid and I was just at home and I’m talking to, you know, professors in U.S. universities, I’m talking to UN officials, experts working in think tanks in D.C. and I was thinking oh those people are just so far, you can’t even reach them. And then you have a conversation with them and they’re just normal people.”
He also found writing the story daunting. “It was a little bit overwhelming for me at the time,” he said. “You know, you’re not writing like an academic essay.”
Graves encouraged him to write in a straightforward manner. In school, he had been taught to write in a beautiful way to impress.
“From News Decoder, something I learned is to always keep the audience in mind who you are speaking to, who are you writing to,” he said.
He took away the importance of letting readers make their own conclusions. “You’re not writing to tell the reader what to think,” he said. “You are writing to give them ideas and arguments, facts and leave the thinking for them.”
