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Graduate Level Courses on Institutional Prepared by Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education Back to Educational Transformation Main Page Introduction In mainstream business literature, the topic of organizational change or transformation is discussed intensively. Books and articles on the subject are generated in almost the same volume as leadership and management theory was addressed in the 1980s. The 1990s seem to be a decade rife with business scholars sharply focused on organizational change or transformation. In comparison, based on our recent literature search (Peterson, McLendon, & Anderson, 1998), the authors have found that scholars in the field of higher education have been slow to take up the subject. Given that change and transformation are common place on campuses across the country, we consequently expected to find higher education faculty attempting to weave institutional change and transformation into their courses on the complexities of college and university organizational behavior. Also, one would expect higher education graduate programs to have taken up the challenge of developing courses on higher education change or transformation. Quite to the contrary, this project has discovered that these types of courses are either non-existent or the subject is buried deep in the heart of other organizational theory classes. We know that organizational change: 1) affects individuals’ ability to feel effective, valued, and in control; 2) disrupts existing roles and working relationships, producing confusion and uncertainty; 3) creates conflict between winners and losers - those who benefit from the new direction and those who do not; and 4) causes a loss of meaning for people on the receiving end of the change (Bolman and Deal, 1997). Moreover, the history of higher education is riddled with extensive examples of post-secondary institutional change. Simply examining the past three decades with the shift from in loco parentis, to the summer of love, to the era of "Reganomics" and into the technology driven age of the 1990s yields a rich tapestry against which to examine and develop new ways of thinking about institutional change and transformation. To address this concern, the purpose of this paper is to report what higher education faculty are pursuing in relation to organizational change and transformation in courses currently being taught in the nation’s graduate programs. To accomplish these purposes, this study involved two steps. First, a survey of higher education programs identified faculty members offering courses being taught on the subject. Second, a content analysis of the syllabi and course materials collected from these faculty was conducted to provide a better understanding of their primary focus on, approach to, and topics addressed on the subject of institutional change and transformation. The intent of this paper is to assist higher education faculty members charged with the responsibility of developing a course on institutional change or transformation in identifying relevant materials and course ideas currently being used by their colleagues across the country. The following report provides an overview of the methodology, an analysis of the primary focus of the courses identified, the topics addressed, and the references used. An overview is also provided of the relevant courses that focus primarily on change or transformation. A brief statement of generalizations and conclusions are then presented. Also attached are tables of: 1) the faculty offering courses on change and the titles of those offerings (Table A), 2) the topics addressed (Table B), and 3) the relevant reference citations they used (Table C). Methodology This project was conducted as a part of the Kellogg Forum on Higher Education Transformation (KFHET) Project. The KFHET project is a national effort that is attempting to understand and promote change and transformation in institutions of higher education. This is a collaborative project of scholars, leaders of campuses undertaking change and transformation efforts and Kellogg staff members. It involves varied projects and activities devised to enhance our collective learning and to disseminate that knowledge about change and transformation efforts. This project, undertaken by our University of Michigan group, addresses the issue of what higher education programs were currently offering on the topic of higher education change or transformation. To obtain this information we surveyed higher education program chairs and directors from across the country to discover whether such courses were being taught. The ASHE membership directory was used to identify all institutions with graduate programs in higher education. Letters were sent to each program chair requesting a response that indicated whether they offered a graduate level class on higher education change or transformation or one in which it was a major section of another course. If so, we asked the chairs to identify the faculty members offering such courses. Each letter was followed up with a phone call, an Email message, or both. Through follow up with the responsible faculty members, we obtained copies of all relevant syllabi and course materials. We requested information from 69 different programs and received responses from 38. Of those 38, seven programs or the responsible faculty member forwarded materials for courses primarily dedicated to higher education change or transformation. Eleven others forwarded materials from other courses that had major sections dedicated to the subject of higher education change or transformation. In the ensuing discussion, "comprehensive" will refer to the seven courses that focus primarily on organizational change and "partial" will refer to the eleven courses with one or several sessions dedicated to higher education change or transformation. The resulting summary of responses and synthesis of the content of the syllabi should prove useful to faculty interested in offering similar courses and to administrators who currently may very well be dealing with change issues on their campus. Primary Content Focus of and Approach to the Courses Of the seven comprehensive courses fully dedicated to change issues and change theory, Table A connotes that five focus specifically on higher education while two deal with education and change in general. Most appear to be traditional lecture/discussion style graduate classes. The three courses offered by institutions participating in the KFHET project include different but complementary content perspectives and approaches. A seminar at the University of California at Los Angeles has a developmental focus on theory. It functions as an exploratory or grounded research-based seminar that combines a review of institutional data from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) database, literature and case examples in an attempt to create a theory of institutional change. A seminar offered at the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education combines a synthesis of change theory and approaches from both the higher education and organizational literature with the preparation of teaching cases of institutional transformation efforts and of professional white papers on topics related to organizational change and transformation. The University of Massachusetts at Boston offers a seminar focused more specifically on what is known about implementing change. Course activities focus on student involvement with their own institutional change efforts. Other major foci or perspectives integrated into these seven comprehensive courses include the role and leadership, planning, organizational development and quality improvement. In the eleven partial courses change issues and theory are mainly imbedded as a subset of a course which is focused more broadly on organization theory, management or administration in education or higher education. More specifically, the change and transformation component of these courses is usually treated in a small number of class sessions. The small number of courses focusing completely on higher education change and transformation and the only slightly larger number of courses focusing partially on change in a general course on organization theory or management, suggests that the subject has not received significant attention by higher education programs. Content analysis of the topics addressed in both the comprehensive and partial courses identified the following fourteen topic categories: definitions or defining issues, organization structure, organization theory, technology issues, assessment or evaluation, faculty or teaching issues, the individual and change, change agents, change success or failure, change theory, change strategy, leadership, change climate or culture, the nature of change, and change outcomes or effects. The frequency with which they were mentioned is summarized in Table B. In the seven comprehensive courses, the topics most often addressed were either change strategy or change theory (7 & 4 courses respectively). Definitions, the nature of change, and change outcomes or effects are the next most prevalent topics (3 courses each). All other topics were covered in only one or two courses. The eleven courses which only partially address change, like the comprehensive courses, place a heavy emphasis on topics such as the nature of change or change theory (6 & 4 courses respectively). Change strategy is the next most prevalent topic (3 courses each). The topics of leadership for change and change climate or culture were given less emphasis (2 courses each). The topics of organization structure, organization theory, and change outcomes or effects were treated lightly (1 course each). To summarize, it becomes clear that the predominant thrust of most courses on institutional change or transformation revolve around change theory, defining the nature of change and change strategy. While it appears that the other topics are given less emphasis, it is difficult to assess whether they were imbedded as a subset of each of the predominant topics. Just because topics such as leadership or the faculty role in change may not appear frequently in the subject headings, one should be cautious about making the assumption that they are not addressed in the courses. Moreover, the range of topics included in both the comprehensive and partial courses provides a broader array of topics one might consider in designing a syllabus for a course on organizational change and transformation. Because the syllabi collected for this phase identified only the primary references that are relevant to higher education change and transformation, the items listed in Table C ? while extensive - are probably not an exhaustive list of all these used. Surprisingly, there was no clear consensus with regard to the various books and journal articles used in the comprehensive courses. Seventeen different publications (books or journal articles) were drawn from sources focusing either on higher education (13) or on education generally (4). Only one was mentioned in more than one course. Six publications were from sources outside of the education mainstream and none of those were mentioned more than once. All but one dealt with organizational change dynamics. In the eleven courses giving partial attention to organizational change, we found twenty-one different publications focusing strictly on higher education. Only two were mentioned more than once. Ten publications were focused outside of higher education. All of these dealt with organizational change. Across all comprehensive and partial courses, the diversity of publications referenced is even more varied. The eighteen courses referenced a total of thirty-five different publications dealing with higher education and fifteen were non-higher education focused. Only five of those are mentioned more than once. Interestingly, the most frequently mentioned (eight times) is one from the general organization literature, Bolman and Deal’s Reframing Organizations. Among the higher education references the ASHE Reader on Organization and Governance in Higher Education is mentioned five times and Birnbaum’s How Colleges Work four times. It should not be surprising that the primary references utilized in all courses center on a organizational behavior books generally and two that focus on education organizational theory not change. In part, this reflects the broader focus of these partial courses. On the other hand, it is interesting and quite surprising to note that no seminal work on higher education change and transformation emerges as a dominant primary reference for either the comprehensive or the partial courses. This constitutes a source of difficulty in developing such a course, but moreover, hints at a substantial void in our higher education literature. Summary of Comprehensive Change
Courses This section provides a more in depth summary of the information gleaned from the course syllabi and materials provided by the faculty teaching comprehensive courses on change and transformation. Specifically, it reports on the nature of each course, its rationale, its target audience, the nature of the class sessions, and the course projects or products expected. University of California, Los
Angeles (KFHET member) UCLA is offering the "Transformational Efforts in Higher Education Institutions" seminar over the expanse of an entire academic year. This seminar meets every other week for three quarters for a total of sixty hours. The seminar is being facilitated by Marguerite Bonon-Hammouth from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) but also involves Alexander and Helen Astin and Elaine El-Khawas. The size of the seminar is limited. It operates like a formalized educational study or discussion group. Minutes are kept and the focus centers on discourse revolving around transformation in institutions of higher education. The ultimate goal of the seminar is to develop a viable preliminary theory or model of institutional transformation. The rationale reflects the interests of the seminar members which were stipulated during the first session. The seminar is largely self-directed via consensus of participating members. During the first term, the specific questions identified were: 1) "How does change get initiated?"; 2) "How does change get sustained?"; 3) "Who are the initiators of change?"; 4) "Are there universal understandings/elements of transformation across institutional types?"; and 5) "What constitutes transformation?" The target audience is specific and is reflected in the composition of ten second or third year graduate students and four faculty members. The design of the course centers on discourse around the topics of the role of leadership, issues of sustainability, and outcomes of change. The course is particularly congruent with the KFHET program, as many of the discussions revolve around particular findings that result directly from other program activities. For example, some discourse will focus on the observations from site visits to the University of Arizona and Portland State University (institutional participants in KFHET), presentations given by three members participating in a transformation effort at UCLA, a review of relevant dissertations and literature, and student participation in the December, 1998 KFHET group meeting in Los Angeles. Other conversations revolve around questions similar to the following examples: 1) "Is sustaining change a separate process apart from the overall process of transformation?"; 2) "When do you finally know when institutional change has taken?"; 3) "Is change different from transformation?"; 4) "What are common resisting forces and why do they occur?"; and 5) "Does the college or university president have a role in the transformation process?" Seminar work outside of class participation includes the development of an annotated bibliography and the preparation of an essay focusing on learnings about and student’s understanding of transformation. Lastly, students are included in the designing of the agenda for the following term. University of Massachusetts
- Boston (KFHET member) UMass ? Boston is offering "Effecting Change in Higher Education" as a seminar with an action orientation. This is a graduate level seminar led by Bernard W. Harleston from the Department of Leadership in Education. The class size is small to ensure quality discourse and it meets weekly. Operated as a participatory seminar, the primary purpose revolves around examining what works in existing change processes in higher education. The rationale for the seminar is not explicitly stated in the course materials but seems to reflect a concern for developing leadership for institutional change. This seminar is different in that it is issue driven and practice focused. Subsequently, topics covered revolve around how change actually happens and how to effectively manage change rather than on development of a change theory. Some of the topics addressed in the seminar include the nature of change in higher education, motivation behind change, roadblocks and facilitators of change, strategies for evaluating change, the role of institutional culture, and characteristics of effective leaders when they act as change agents. The intended audience for this seminar is graduate students interested in pursuing or furthering a career in higher education administration. Given the nature of the UMass Boston program, most students are part time and working higher education professionals. The design of the seminar fosters a participatory environment that includes lecture, discussion, case studies, and student led sessions. Outside of classroom participation, each student is involved in researching a major change event at a higher education institution ? usually their own. The final product includes a discussion of the case that reflects the students understanding of the relevant literature and course conversations. The guiding questions for the project includes: 1) "What was the status of the policy, activity, or program prior to beginning the change process?"; 2) "What were the justifications for selecting the particular goals and changes?"; 3) "What was the process that guided the change?"; 4) "What were the implementation steps?"; 5) "What is your evaluation?"; and 6) "What is your analysis and evaluation of the total process?" University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
(KFHET Member) The University of Michigan is offering "Managing Change and Transformation in Higher Education Institutions" as a Ph.D. level seminar taught by Marvin Peterson from the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. The size of the seminar is limited in order to facilitate interactive discourse and meets weekly. The seminar has three primary purposes: 1) "to examine the various theories, models, strategies and approaches to change and transformation in higher education; 2) to develop a framework for understanding how these processes can guide transformation efforts that improve an institution’s educational and managerial capacity; and 3) to develop skill in applying these models and concepts to analyze and guide complex institutional change and transformation dynamics." The rationale for the seminar suggests that change in higher education, particularly over the last four decades, has been manifest in many different institutional responses to a wide array of forces. Institutional change has been evolutionary or primarily centered on micro changes in particular segments of an institution and these changes usually only marginally affect basic institutional missions and delivery systems. As we move into the 21st century, the demand for institutional change and transformation will be much more comprehensive and require both a macro and micro perspective. Several forces challenging higher education are spurring a metamorphosis from what we have typically understood as post-secondary education toward a new "postsecondary knowledge industry." This industry change will impact our traditional organizational forms of higher and post-secondary education institutions. The resultant change may require institutional redesign and stimulates institutional transformation. This becomes the focus for the seminar. The intended audience for this seminar is a group of advanced doctoral students and visiting scholars with a background in higher education organizational behavior who are interested in an in-depth exploration of organizational change and transformation as it impacts post-secondary institutions. The course operates in a seminar format that relies heavily on synthesis of readings on several topics, classroom discussion, student led presentations, case study analysis, and a search of relevant material outside the required readings. The seminar includes special sessions featuring Kellogg Foundation staff presentation on transformation, attempts to change major elements of the University of Michigan, the transformation of a School of Library Science to a School of Information, and a case study presented by Olivet College officials. Olivet is an institution undergoing an institutional transformation as part of the KFHET program. Seminar projects will include developing an annotated bibliography, preparing pedagogical case studies, and writing white papers on organizational change and transformation topics. The annotated bibliography will include selected references on organizational change and transformation in higher education. The case studies, designed to be useful for pedagogical purposes, will examine a macro change or transformation by an institution or major campus unit. The white papers will focus specifically on the topic of transformation and will be based on the literature and on case examples. These projects are intended to be of publishable quality and to be available to those in the higher education community interested in change or transformation in postsecondary institutions. University of Maryland -
College Park The University of Maryland offered "Organizational Change in Higher Education" during the fall term 1998. This course was lead by Frank Schmidtlein from the Department of Education Policy, Planning, and Administration. The course is designed as a weekly graduate level seminar emphasizing discourse and shared information from outside readings. The primary purpose of the course centers around five topical areas including: 1) examining the antecedents to change, 2) the nature of change and change processes, 3) appropriate organizational theory, 4) various change strategies currently employed in higher education today, and 5) whether or not these change processes work. The rationale of the class suggests that higher education is facing unprecedented demands to change in a variety of ways. Consequently, scholars must take into consideration various change structures, processes, priorities, and costs. The course is designed to explore the nature and legitimacy of those demands and the kind and effectiveness of the institutional response. The intended audience for the course is advanced graduate students with some background in organizational theory. The environment of the classroom is supportive of both discussion and debate of the issues. Outside of classroom participation, students must complete a short paper on their views on institutional change, a review of one book and two articles, and a term paper based on a topic of their choosing. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
University of Arkansas is offering the " Organization Development and Change in Higher Education" course during the summer sessions. This is a graduate level course led by John Murray, Jr. from the Higher Education Leadership Program. Meeting three times a week, the class is an over all examination of the theory and practice of organization development as it relates to change in higher education. As an entry-level course, the bulk of the material centers on organizational theory and an introduction to the change process. The primary purpose of the course is placed on familiarizing students with basic organizational development, planned change, teamwork, and leadership principles. The rationale behind the course is apparently to serve as an entry level graduate course, and to provide students with a general overview of the issues relating to organizational development as it relates to change. The goals for the course are articulated in three points: 1) to provide the students with an opportunity to develop a general understanding of organizational development and change processes, 2) to insure they grasp the complex nature of higher education institutions, and 3) to build a solid foundation from which to facilitate a planned change in their home institution. The target audience for this course is entry-level graduate students focused on becoming higher education practitioners and change agents. The design of the course appears to be the standard classroom lecture format with time allocated for discourse, case studies, and teamwork. Course requirements outside of classroom participation include an examination, a team project (developing a written plan for implementing a major change initiative), a written case study analysis, and a presentation based on Covey's Seven habits of highly successful people. University of Northern Colorado
UNC is offering the "Advanced Theories for Changing Organizations" course during the spring semesters. This is a doctoral level course led by Gene Hall from the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department. Meeting weekly, this course takes a broad based and sweeping approach to dealing with change. The focus is not primarily on change in higher education. It also centers on lower level schools, business and policy arenas. The main emphasis is placed on planning for and facilitating the processes of change and has a primary focus on developing advanced understanding of organizational theory as it applies to the dynamics of the change process. The rationale for the course inferred from the course materials is that there is a need to understand how change is facilitated in organizations and to develop the ability to transfer theory to practice. As such, this course has a heavy organizational theory thrust. Some of the course objectives include the development of: 1) advanced knowledge and understanding of organizational theory, 2) skills in using these theories, 3) thoughtful and critical analyses of these theories as they apply to organizational leadership during change, 4) the ability to apply these theories while analyzing change in particular organizations, 5) the ability to identify the effects of leadership as they engage in major organizational change, 6) critiquing skills while reading course material, and 7) the ability to apply all elements learned in a concrete (real) organizational change problem. In addition to class participation, course assignments include frequent case study analyses and several written assignments. These written assignments include a literature review, a journal article, an implementation assessment, or development of an assessment tool. Arizona State University
The ASU offered "Organizational Change" course takes a slightly different perspective and does not focus specifically on change in higher education. The course is led by Leonard Valverde from the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department. This course is general in nature and tackles the problem from three different levels. The first level centers on Hispanics and education. The second level brings the class through organizational theory and identifies how public schools, community colleges and four-year institutions are characterized as organizations. The last component of the class addresses specific change strategies and how individuals can become advocates and agents for lasting change. An interesting aspect is this course’s attempt to tie in Hispanic issues into an organizational change course. From the materials provided, it appears that Hispanic issues are used to identify and formulate the basis of a critical problem that is either being addressed or needs addressing and might be ameliorated by some transformation process. The segment of the class dedicated to the question of why schools/colleges are "failing Hispanics" serves as the foundation for further discourse and application of theory to a particular problem. In addition to the previous focus, this course has a further rationale. Essentially, the under-girding assumption is based on the notion that all organizations will go through a change process at some point in their existence. "Change is made necessary for different reasons, such as, change of purpose, new circumstance like demographics and resources, invention of technology, etc…Therefore, it is necessary that educational leaders be competent (knowledgeable and skilled) at bringing about constructive change in educational organizations." The target audience for this course is graduate level students interested in becoming educational leaders or policy specialists. Participants should exit the course with a solid knowledge base of the concepts and literature about formal organizations and change, insight about planning and strategies for change, and the ability to "intersect change strategies with and for the improvement of education for people of color, particularly Hispanics." In addition to classroom participation, students are responsible for delivering one paper that addresses a specific change problem, develops a plan delineating a solution to the problem, and designs an implementation strategy to resolve the initial problem. Conclusion Although change and transformation is gaining a stronger foothold as a topic in the higher education literature, few higher education graduate programs provide courses that specifically address the topic. Only seven of the 69 graduate programs that we canvassed reported offering comprehensive courses on institutional change or transformation in higher education. These courses have three primary foci: change theory, change strategy, and the nature of change. For a majority of the comprehensive change courses, the general format is a discussion oriented seminar. It appears that there are as many different approaches to these types of courses as there are faculty teaching them. On one end of the continuum we have the year long UCLA exploratory seminar and on the other, the Arkansas traditional entry level graduate course. Some courses are designed as advanced Ph.D. seminars for higher education students (Michigan) while others are open to students from different areas of education (Northern Colorado). Course requirements range from lengthy annotated bibliographies, to literature based publishable papers, to case studies, to team projects and to classroom presentations. The three references most utilized in these change courses include Bolman and Deal’s Reframing Organizations; Peterson et al.’s ASHE reader on Organization and governance in higher education; and Birnbaum’s How colleges work. However, the diversity of references used in both the comprehensive and partial courses, the lack of consensus on useful references, and the paucity of major works dealing with change and transformation in higher education seems to be a clear void. As demonstrated in this paper, even the comprehensive courses offer a wide range of approaches for examining institutional change or transformation in higher education from those focusing specifically on transformation in higher education institutions to those that focus more on organization theory and behavior applied to change in education. A closer examination reveals a more insightful picture. The comprehensive courses provide models for the field and an opportunity to advance our knowledge of organizational change and transformation in higher education. This paper was designed to present the reader with a look into what is currently being done on campuses across the country. Hopefully, this material will assist those interested in designing and adapting courses of their own References Peterson, M. W., McLendon, M., & Anderson, A. D. (1998). ED875: Organizational Change and Transformation in Higher Education - Journal Article Reference List. Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education: University of Michican, Ann Arbor, Michigan. |