Tag: Events

For over two decades, the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students has bridged two worlds—the researchers who study transfer students and the campus staff who work with them. Located at the University of North Georgia, NISTS has gathered these groups for annual conferences, disseminated resources and research, and doled out awards for groundbreaking work.

Now, university leaders say they can no longer afford to fund NISTS. At the end of October, NISTS, at least in its current form, will shutter.

The institute “has made a lasting impact in improving transfer policy and practice nationwide,” and “its research has informed how colleges and universities support transfer student success,” university officials said in a statement.

But “unfortunately, due to ongoing budget constraints and a realignment of institutional priorities, the university is no longer able to financially support the Institute,” the statement read. “We are proud of the Institute’s legacy and the many partnerships it has built, and we remain committed to serving transfer students through our academic programs and student success initiatives.”

Janet Marling, NISTS’s executive director, said that over the past year, institute staff tried but ultimately couldn’t find a new permanent home for their work—at least for now. She hopes that other organizations will carry on parts of the institute’s work, including its conferences and programs, and house its research and resources so transfer professionals can continue to benefit from them.

“We have heard, time and time again, there just isn’t anyone else providing the resources, the community, the networking, the translation of research to practice in the transfer sphere in the way that NISTS is doing it,” Marling said.

‘A Terrible Loss’

NISTS prides itself on taking a unique approach, connecting staff who span the transfer student experience—from admissions professionals to advisers to faculty members—in an effort to holistically improve transfer student success. Transfer practitioners and researchers worry NISTS’s closure will have ripple effects across the field.

Alexandra Logue, professor emerita at the CUNY Graduate Center, said the transfer process inherently involves multiple institutions working together, including, in some cases, across state lines; about a quarter of transfer students choose to go to a four-year college or university in another state.

Logue appreciated that NISTS conferences offered a rare “chance for people from all the different states in the country to come together” to coordinate and swap best practices. Such programs also allowed transfer researchers like her to share their findings with staff working directly with transfer students on campuses.

“The research that we do is pointless if it isn’t put into practice,” Logue said.

While other organizations are doing powerful work to improve transfer student outcomes, NISTS played a major role in bringing new visibility to transfer students’ needs by making them a singular focus, said Stephen Handel, a NISTS advisory board member.

The institute “added a legitimacy to a constituency of students that often got forgotten,” Handel said. “NISTS was completely focused on that constituency alone, and that’s what made it unique.”

Eileen Strempel, also on the advisory board, said she got involved with NISTS when she served as an administrator at Syracuse University and sought to create a strategic plan to improve transfer outcomes—an area she hadn’t done much work in before.

“I felt like, oh, wow, there’s a brain trust already for me, the neophyte, the learner who doesn’t know very much about transfer at all,” she said. She called the closure “a terrible loss.”

She said NISTS leaders often asked conference participants how many of them had never attended a convention focused on transfer students before; Each year, most hands went up.

“To me, what that moment always crystallized was the important role that NISTS had” in helping practitioners figure out “how they could learn from other colleagues, that they didn’t need to recreate the wheel,” Strempel said.

Those lessons have had downstream effects on students.

Each practitioner came out better equipped “to help hundreds, if not thousands of students,” Strempel said.

Marling said one of the most exciting parts of the work was seeing its impact on students across the country. For example, she watched graduates of NISTS’s post-master’s certificate program in transfer leadership and practice go on to make meaningful changes on their campuses, such as establishing new transfer partnerships with other institutions or revamping training for advisers to improve transfer students’ experiences.

She said she feels “profoundly sad” about NISTS shuttering at University of North Georgia, but she also believes NISTS will live on in some form because of the “tremendous outpouring of support and concern” that followed the announcement of its closure.

“I’m very hopeful that the spirit of NISTS will continue,” whether that’s as an institute elsewhere or “within the many, many transfer champions that are working in higher education across the country. I’m really excited to see how individuals and institutions take what they’ve learned from NISTS and continue to grow their focus on transfer students and continue to provide equitable opportunities for these students.”

Higher education is in the midst of a crisis of confidence that has long been building. In this time of volatility, complexity and uncertainty, the steady hand of leaders matters more than ever. Yet academia does—at best—a very uneven job of preparing academic leaders for steady-state leadership, much less for times when the paradigm is shifting. This moment is creating an opportunity to reconsider how we prepare leaders for what will come next.

Why Is Leadership So Uneven in Higher Ed?

A primary reason lies in how we select and develop leaders. In academia, searches for department chair, dean and provost often emphasize top-level scholarly and research credentials and only secondarily consider an individual’s experience, perspective and ability to influence and motivate others to support shared missions. Academics in general do not respond well to directives: They expect to be persuaded, not commanded. Additionally, it is often only after being hired that those in formal positions of authority are provided with leadership-development opportunities to help foster those interpersonal skills—too late for foundational growth.

These approaches to recruiting formal leaders are rooted in flawed assumptions about how leadership works. True leadership is not about commanding compliance but about shaping unit culture through influence. Many leaders fail by not understanding the difference. An effective leader is a person of strong character who can build trusting relationships with others; these skills take time to develop and usually take root even before a person assumes a leadership role.

Another important reason that leadership in higher ed is uneven arises from conceptualizing leadership as a “heroic” individual endeavor. The same skills that help a formal leader to be successful—such as understanding the alignment of their actions with the unit’s mission; strong communication skills, including listening; the ability to navigate conflict, negotiation and conflict resolution; and formulating and articulating clear collective goals— are equally crucial for others to exercise to be fully engaged participants.

Leaders with formal roles and titles play a crucial role in promoting a productive and collegial culture. At the same time, they do not do so alone: It is equally important that participants who are not in formal administrative roles are also seen (and see themselves) as central in shaping these environments, and that they are aware of how their own actions and interpersonal dynamics contribute to their working and learning experiences.

In short, leadership responsibility is not limited to administrators. There are layers of formal leadership roles embedded inside departments and schools, visible whenever faculty members and staff take on responsibilities for shared governance and advisory roles; lead team research or manage grant portfolios; and select (hire), supervise, evaluate and mentor colleagues and other early-career individuals. These faculty and staff are leaders, too, whether or not they see, accept or internalize those roles.

When leadership is viewed simply as an individual attribute rather than a process that emerges from the relationships among people in teams, organizations miss the opportunity to develop cultures of excellence that support integrity, trust and collaboration at all levels. Thus, we argue that leadership ought to be understood as an ongoing process of character development and a responsibility shared by all members of an organization—not something that can be addressed in a one-off workshop, but as an integral dimension of the work.

The Foundations of Leadership: Influence Before Authority

Rather than framing leadership as something only people with formal authority do, a more productive model is to view leadership as influence. By influence we mean modeling the behaviors we seek to share and promote in our groups so that we can better shape the way we solve problems collectively. Leadership is not in essence a position; it is contributing to an ongoing process of shaping culture, norms and behavior within a unit.

Social psychology shows that we influence each other constantly. The more time we spend with people, the more we become like them and vice versa. This means that bad habits can spread as easily as good ones. When everyone is given an opportunity to develop good habits, they are more likely to spread throughout the community. Our character affects how we influence others. We are much more likely to be influenced by a person who demonstrates integrity and curiosity than we are by someone who is demanding and unwilling to listen.

Here are some areas of practice for developing better influence:

• Self-awareness and self-management: Focusing on oneself first helps individuals identify their strengths and areas for growth, while encouraging them to recognize and respect their roles and responsibilities in the current situation. Understanding oneself, one’s values, habits and motivations, is foundational to recognizing how we affect and are affected by those around us.
• Conflict resolution: Healthy debate is foundational to innovation and growth. Developing strong conflict-resolution skills contributes to increased perspective-taking, depersonalizing disagreement and yielding more effective discussion and problem solving.
• Decision-making: Understanding how we make decisions, and more importantly how heuristics influence and bias our decision-making, can help people slow down to make more ethical and effective decisions.

Opportunities for influence are available to everyone, not just those in formal leadership roles. Early-career faculty, staff and students can cultivate influence by setting examples for collaboration, through ethical behavior and by contributing to collective problem-solving. Leadership is not centrally about having authority over others; it is about shaping an environment in which ethical decision-making, respect and shared purpose flourish.

Reimagining Leader Development in Higher Ed

Now more than ever, individuals need support in managing their careers with integrity and purpose—aligning their personal values and goals with those of their institutions. Leadership development should not be viewed as a costly add-on. In fact, it can be integrated into the everyday fabric of academic life through accessible and scalable methods, including:

• Peer-learning cohorts that provide space for discussion and reflection on leadership challenges.
• Guided personal reflections on workplace dynamics, communication and decision-making.
• Structured mentoring programs that cultivate leadership skills through real-world interactions.
• Deliberative conversations around such themes as research ethics, authorship and collaboration to build trust and integrity within teams.
• Conflict-resolution training embedded in routine professional development activities.

Our experience at the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics shows that even modest efforts—like those above—can spark essential conversations between mentors and mentees, improve communication, and positively influence both unit climate and individual well-being. To support this work, we offer a free Leadership Collection—an online collection of tools, readings and practical exercises for anyone seeking to lead more effectively, regardless of their title or career stage.

When leadership development is embraced as a core part of academic life—not just a formal program or a luxury for a few—it can become a catalyst for healthier, more purpose-driven institutions.

Conclusion: Leadership Development as a Cultural Foundation

Reserving leadership-development programming only for when people reach formal leadership roles is a missed opportunity to develop broader and more inclusive working cultures. Such cultures emerge from the relationships among the members of a group. Building better relationships starts with personal growth, self-awareness and emotional intelligence for each member. Taking responsibility for one’s own professional growth and for one’s influence on others is also an important kind of leadership.

True leadership, therefore, is not about directing others but about fostering environments in which good habits, strong ethics and meaningful engagement flourish. If universities want to build sustainable cultures of excellence, in which leadership is no longer an individual endeavor but a shared commitment to collaboration, they should start embedding it in professional development and routine practice for all. As uncertainty prevails, budgets are cut and people are navigating deep change, now is the moment to reconsider how we shape leaders in higher education.

For many college students, connecting their interests to career and life goals can be a challenge. Transfer students may find it especially difficult because they lack familiarity with the campus resources available to help them make those connections. A course at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management aims to help these students chart their path, in part by sending them on an international trip.

The Design Your Life in a Global Context course encourages transfer students to apply design thinking principles to their college career and beyond and organizes a short study abroad trip led by a faculty member. The experience, mostly paid for by the institution, breaks down barriers to the students’ participation and aims to boost their feelings of belonging at the university.

The background: All students in the Carlson School of Management undergraduate program have been required to complete an international experience since 2008. The goal is to motivate them to be globally competent, to support their development as business leaders and to create collaboration with international colleagues, according to the school’s website.

Study abroad experiences have been tied to personal and professional development. A recent survey of study abroad alumni by the Forum on Education Abroad found that 42 percent of respondents indicated studying in another country helped them get their first job.

For students in the Design Your Life in a Global Context course, the experience is made possible by funding from the Carlson Family Foundation, which provides scholarships through the Carlson Global Institute and the Learning Abroad Center.

In addition to Design Your Life in a Global Context, the university offers Design Your Career in Global Context, which sends students on a similar short study abroad experience.

The framework: Design Your Life in a Global Context meets once a week throughout the fall semester and then culminates in a 10-day trip to Japan, a country instructor Lisa Novack selected because of its unique focus on work-life balance and well-being.

“If you’re familiar with the concepts of ikigai, it’s all about finding one’s purpose and aligning what you love, what the world needs, what you’re good at and what you can be paid for,” said Novack, director of student engagement and development at the Carlson School. “We’re going to be learning about this concept while we’re abroad.”

Because transfer students, like first-year students, can face challenges acclimating to their new campus and connecting with peers, the class is designed in part to provide them with resources and instill a sense of belonging within their cohort.

In addition, the course helps students apply life design principles to their whole lives, modeled after Stanford University’s design thinking framework.

“Through the class, we equip students with the tools and strategies to design their college and career experience that aligns with their values, interests, strengths, needs and goals,” Novack said.

Going abroad: During the 10-day trip, students explore Tokyo and Okinawa.

They visit Gallup’s Tokyo office to learn about the Clifton strengths assessment and the research the organization is doing in Japan. In Okinawa, students learn from residents living in a “blue zone,” an area of the world where people live the longest and have the fewest health complications.

“We learn about some of the factors that contribute to longevity in that area of the world and then connect that back to designing one’s life and a life of purpose,” Novack said.

In addition to class content, the trip offers students an opportunity to participate in intercultural learning and experience international travel that may be unfamiliar.

Before they leave for Japan, Novack and her colleagues from the Carlson Global Institute support students with travel logistics, including securing a passport, creating a packing list and navigating currency exchange.

“I also bring in different food from the area,” Novack said. “We call it ‘taste of Japan.’ I have different candy or snacks from Japan and they get to experience the culture a little bit in that way and get excited about what we’re doing.”

Novack also leads guided reflections with students before, during and after the trip to help them make sense of their travels and how the experience could shape their worldview.

“I just hope that they recognize that the world and business are increasingly global and connected,” Novack said. “Being able to navigate difference and build connections and have conversations with people that are so different than you is a powerful learning experience.”

This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Lisa Novack’s name and the year in which international education became a requirement for undergraduate business students.

In the weeks since Trump officials asked university leaders to give feedback on their plan to ensure that colleges are adhering to the administration’s priorities, several of those leaders and others in higher ed have made clear that the proposal is a nonstarter—at least in its current form.

So far, leaders at 11 universities have publicly said they won’t sign the current draft of the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” according to an Inside Higher Ed database. Two others have said they are providing feedback. Universities will be added to the map and table below as they make public statements.

The wide-ranging proposal would require universities to ban consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition, commit to not considering transgender women to be women and shut down departments that “punish, belittle” or “spark violence against conservative ideas,” among other provisions. Trump officials say universities that sign on could get access to some benefits such as preferential treatment for grant funding. But those that don’t want to adhere to the agreement are free to “forego [sic] federal benefits.”

Higher ed leaders and observers see the compact as the Trump administration’s blueprint for overhauling America’s colleges and universities. Trump officials view it as an opportunity for the “proactive improvement of higher education for the betterment of the country.” Critics have urged institutions to reject the proposal, arguing it undermines institutions’ independence and carries steep penalties.

Nine universities were initially asked Oct. 1 to give “limited, targeted feedback” by Oct. 20 on the document that Trump officials said was “largely in its final form.” President Trump said in mid-October that any college that wants to “return to the pursuit of Truth and Achievement” could sign on but didn’t explain how interested institutions could do so. No college has publicly taken Trump up on his offer. The administration is reportedly planning to update the document in response to the feedback and send out a new version in November.

The University of Virginia has reached a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice that will pause pending investigations in exchange for assurances from the public flagship that it will not engage in unlawful practices around admissions, hiring, programming and more.

The DOJ announced the settlement in a Wednesday afternoon news release.

As part of the deal, UVA agreed to follow a July memo from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that bars the use of race in hiring and admissions practices as well as scholarship programs. UVA will be required to provide “relevant information and data” to the DOJ, according to the news release.

While the recent investigations into allegedly illegal diversity, equity and inclusion programs have been paused, that doesn’t mean those probes have been altogether closed. However, the DOJ will close the investigation “if UVA completes its planned reforms prohibiting DEI,” officials said.

“This notable agreement with the University of Virginia will protect students and faculty from unlawful discrimination, ensuring that equal opportunity and fairness are restored,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and a UVA alum, said in a statement. “We appreciate the progress that the university has made in combatting antisemitism and racial bias, and other American universities should be on alert that the Justice Department will ensure that our federal civil rights laws are enforced for every American, without exception.”

The settlement comes nearly four months after former UVA president James Ryan stepped down abruptly, reportedly under DOJ pressure to resign as part of an effort to resolve investigations.

UVA officials released a statement as well as the text of the agreement on Wednesday.

“We intend to continue our thorough review of our practices and policies to ensure that we are complying with all federal laws,” Interim President Paul Mahoney wrote. “We will also redouble our commitment to the principles of academic freedom, ideological diversity, free expression, and the unyielding pursuit of ‘truth, wherever it may lead,’ as Thomas Jefferson put it. Through this process, we will do everything we can to assure our community, our partners in state and federal government, and the public that we are worthy of the trust they place in us and the resources they provide us to advance our education, research, and patient care mission.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the deal “transformative” in a post on X.

“The Trump Administration is not backing down in our efforts to root out DEI and illegal race preferencing on our nation’s campuses,” McMahon wrote. “A renewed commitment to merit is a critical step for our institutions to once again become beacons of truth-seeking and excellence.”

UVA is one of several institutions to reach an agreement with the Trump administration in recent months, but the first public university to do so. Previously Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University all agreed to deals with the federal government after the Trump administration froze federal research funding over alleged civil rights violations.

While UVA reached a settlement with the federal government, it has rejected other proposals such as the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which would have required institutions to agree to tuition freezes, caps on international students and campuswide assessments of viewpoint diversity, among other demands, in order to receive preferential treatment for federal research funding. UVA was one of nine institutions originally asked to join the compact, though none of the original group, nor others invited later, have announced they will sign the proposal.

It can be tempting for department chairs to think about their role as a series of tasks on a to-do list: managing faculty and staff reviews, running department meetings, implementing a new university policy, dealing with unexpected emergencies. After all, it’s an ever-changing list that demands attention.

But focusing only on tasks misses the ways that chairs shape how department members interact with one another and the quality of relationships that result. Meetings are a common example. Chairs have choices about how to organize meetings, help staff feel included or excluded, coach new assistant professors about participation norms, and assign people to committees. How chairs do these routine tasks can have powerful effects on how department members relate to one another and the quality of relationships that develop. Cumulatively, small moments of interaction have a profound influence on a department and its culture and can be an important ingredient in helping to make departments healthier places to work.

However, many chairs aren’t used to noticing all the ways their everyday chair work impacts work relationships. To take advantage of the opportunity to positively impact relationships in departments, chairs need to develop their relational attention, or ability to notice opportunities to impact how people connect. Two years ago, I developed a six-part workshop series, Healthy Relationships at Work Fellowship, for chairs at University of Massachusetts Amherst, for a small cohort to work on just this issue. By engaging with research-based practices, they were able to develop competence and confidence as leaders while improving the quality of relationships in their departments.

Below, I describe four ways chairs can develop their relational attention and increase the occurrence of positive, inclusive relationships in their department. In describing these four suggestions, I share examples from two cohorts of chairs I’ve had the pleasure to work with.

1. Invest in one-on-one relationships with department members.

It is easy for department chairs to take for granted that they know the faculty and staff in their departments—and that they know you. After all, as a faculty member you have likely had many casual conversations and sat in many meetings with them. But relying on your past knowledge can leave chairs with an incomplete view. We all inevitably have some faculty or staff we favor and those we avoid, leaving us with uneven relationships and information about their work, motivations and lives. Similarly, faculty and staff may have a hard time viewing you as an impartial department chair unless you take the time to demonstrate it. After all, making visible efforts to cultivate relationships is a cornerstone of inclusive leadership.

One important way to create the foundations for positive inclusive relationships with your department members is to re-establish your relationships with them. You can do this by holding 30-minute one-on-one meetings with every member of your department. Given that chairs often have very little idea about what staff do and how they contribute to the department, it is important to meet with staff as well as faculty. In some departments, it may be important to meet with students as well.

Before beginning these one-on-one conversations, try to get in a mindset of openness, humility and genuine curiosity, no matter your relationship history. Ideally these meetings can occur in their workspace (versus your own office) so you convey that you are interested in them and are willing to come to their space. Ask open-ended questions about their interests, their motivations and their jobs. In smaller departments, these meetings can happen over the course of a month, while in larger departments it may require a whole semester. In larger departments, where one-on-one meetings seem impractical, you can hold meetings with small groups of people in similar roles or ranks. These meetings demonstrate that you want to hear from everyone, no matter your past relationships.

You may also learn new things that you can use to make your department a healthier place. For example, you may learn that two faculty unknowingly have a shared research or teaching interest. By connecting them, you can help to strengthen the connections within the department and potentially spark new collaborations.

What you learn in these meetings can also help to address unhealthy relationships. For example, one chair learned new information about a curmudgeonly faculty member who frustrated his colleagues (including the new chair!) because he had a reputation for not pulling his weight on committees. When the new chair asked him, “How do you want to contribute to the department?” she learned that the one thing he cared about was graduate education. With this new information, she placed him on a committee that matched his interests, and he contributed to the committee fully. By crafting his job to his interests, the faculty member was more intrinsically motivated to participate, and his colleagues were no longer annoyed by his behavior on committees.

2. Learn about the diversity of your faculty, staff and students and demonstrate your interest in learning from them.

Departments, like all organizations, are diverse in visible (race and gender) and invisible (political, neurodiversity) ways. While there is lots of debate about DEI these days, learning about the diversity of your faculty and staff helps you become a better leader because you can understand how to help everyone succeed. To develop positive inclusive relationships, chairs have to make visible effort to demonstrate respect and express genuine interest in people different from themselves.

To build chairs’ foundational knowledge, you can learn about the experiences of diverse groups in your department, school or university by reading institutional resources, such as climate surveys, or by having a conversation with college or university-level experts. For example, a conversation with a school DEI leader can speak to the experiences of your faculty, staff and students. A university’s international office can provide insight into immigration-related issues, which may be useful for understanding the complexity of managing immigration for international faculty, staff and students.

Bolstering your own knowledge can help contextualize issues that come across your desk. For example, if a student comes to you to complain about a faculty member’s teaching, and you have learned that members of that group have to fight for respect in your university’s classrooms, your knowledge about the broader climate can help you think of this complaint in light of the larger context as you consider what an appropriate response might be.

If you have more confidence in your knowledge, skills and abilities to manage DEI, you can connect more publicly. For example, if there are on-campus employee resource groups or off-campus community organizations, reach out and tell them you would like to learn from them; ask if there are any events that would be appropriate for you to attend. Given your stronger foundation in terms of the local DEI landscape, you can offer to connect marginalized faculty and staff with on-campus mentors and communities.

The ability of chairs to engage publicly with DEI issues will depend both on their own expertise and their institutional and local contexts, as DEI work grows more fraught in many parts of the country. Some chairs who have expertise in DEI or related topics may be comfortable hosting activities in their departments. For example, one chair hosts a monthly social justice lunch and learn, a voluntary reading group for faculty and staff. Given her expertise, she chooses the article and is comfortable facilitating the discussion herself.

Chairs can also create opportunities for critical feedback for the department. For example, if there is tension between groups within the department, instead of ignoring it, create a game plan for how to receive critical feedback about what’s causing the tension and how it might be addressed. Faculty and staff exert a lot of energy withstanding such tension; finding ways to address it can be a huge relief and release of energy.

Remember, faculty and staff evaluate a leader’s inclusivity based not just on one-time events, but instead search for patterns in terms of the leader’s efforts around inclusion. You don’t have to have all the answers about how to serve the diversity of members in your department, but you can strengthen your networks to include those with knowledge and expertise.

3. View committees as connection opportunities.

Chairs can use committees, meetings and other routine ways that faculty and staff gather as opportunities to build higher-quality connections. By focusing your relational attention on these routine interactions, you can improve relationship quality. For example, people often don’t know why they’ve been placed on a committee or task force, nor do they know what other people bring to the table. As a chair, you can use introductions strategically. Publicly communicating your view of faculty and staff strengths and potential contributions to committees, task forces and meetings helps them feel respected and makes it more likely others will view them that way. This can increase the chances that these routine ways of interacting will result in positive connections.

Committees and meetings are also opportunities to create greater inclusion of staff and to spread knowledge about their work. University staff too often feel like second-class citizens and that faculty don’t know or care about their expertise. To counter this tension, one chair introduces staff members as experts in their respective areas and provides them with opportunities to present in their areas of expertise in meetings. This chair reported that these innovations created new positive connections between faculty and staff; faculty had a new appreciation for staff work, and the staff felt seen and valued.

4. Design social events as connection opportunities.

We are in a moment in which many people want, and some have, the ability to work remotely. At the same time, faculty and staff desire more connection from work. As an architect of social relationships, chairs have the opportunity to hold meaningful social events that will bring people together. There is no one-size-fits all for designing such events: The goal should be to make events magnets, not mandates.

To start, think creatively about what will bring people together in your specific department. For example, one department chair knew all faculty would come together to support their students. In his department, faculty wanted their undergraduates to have a good experience in the major because they genuinely valued undergraduate education. Accordingly, the chair organized an open house event for faculty and students. In the process of connecting with students, faculty also deepened their connections to each other.

Another chair created a social event around the dreaded faculty annual reviews. The day before the reviews were due, she reserved a conference room and brought snacks so that faculty could trade tips about how to complete the cumbersome form. Still others hosted department parties at their homes, used departmental funds to host monthly lunches or upgraded the department’s shared space to make it more conducive to shared interactions.

Improving the quality of relationships through social events in a department doesn’t have to rely on the chair alone; it can also be the work of a culture committee that can brainstorm social events that will resonate. Ideally, these events will become part of the rhythm of the department. One caveat: It is not advisable to use workplace socializing to try to repair relationships between warring internal factions. In fact, it can make things worse.

Each of these four approaches can help chairs invest in and improve the health of relationships in their departments. It is, of course, also important to contain and manage negative relationships in them (that is another topic I address in the Healthy Relationships at Work program). But taking advantage of these everyday opportunities through strategically investing in your relationships, your knowledge and the ways people connect provides important sustenance to support departmental relationships and ultimately a positive departmental culture.

We’re two admissions leaders working to reframe how families and institutions think about the gap year. I’m Carol, a former college admissions dean with more than 20 years in higher education, and I’m also a therapist who works with teens. My co-author, Becky Mulholland, is director of first-year admission and operations at the University of Rhode Island. Together, we’re building a new kind of gap year model, one that centers on intention, purpose and career readiness for all.

The gap year concept is overdue for a cultural reset. Most popular options on the market focus on travel, outdoor adventure or service learning, but they rarely emphasize self-exploration in conjunction with career readiness or curiosity about the future of work. The term itself is widely misunderstood and sometimes dismissed. Despite its reputation as a luxury for the privileged, it’s often the families juggling cost, stress and uncertainty who stand to gain the most from a well-supported pause.

For many families, college is the most expensive decision they’ll ever make. Taking time to pause, reflect and plan shouldn’t be seen as risky—it should be seen as wise. At 17 or 18, it’s a lot to ask a young person to know what they want to do with the rest of their life. A 2017 federal data report found that about 30 percent of undergrads who had declared majors changed their major at least once, and about 10 percent changed majors more than once. These shifts often lead to extra courses and sometimes an extra semester or even a year. That’s a lot of wasted money for families who could have benefited from a more intentional pause.

And yet for many parents, the phrase “gap year” still stirs anxiety. They imagine their child lying on a couch for three months, doing nothing, or worse, never learning anything useful and losing all momentum to return to school. The idea feels foreign, risky and hard to explain. They don’t know what to tell their friends or extended family. We push back on that fear and work to normalize the idea of intentional, structured time off. It’s not just for the elite—it needs to be reclaimed as a culturally acceptable norm. That’s why we champion paid, structured earn-while-you-learn pathways such as youth apprenticeships, paid internships, stipend-backed fellowships and employer-sponsored projects that keep income stable while skills grow.

We personally promote the value of intentional pauses when talking with families and prospective students about college, helping them reframe what a year of growth and clarity can mean. We also strongly support programs with built-in pause requirements before graduate school. I’ve read thousands of applications as a dean and witnessed how powerful that year can be when it’s well guided.

Gap years, when framed and supported correctly, can foster self-discovery, emotional growth and direction. But the gap year industry itself also needs to evolve. The industry should move toward models that prioritize intentional career exploration, rooted not only in personal growth and self-awareness but in helping students find a sense of fulfillment in their future careers and lives. If colleges acknowledged the value of these experiences more visibly in their advising models and admissions narratives, they could relieve pressure on families and students and potentially reduce dropout rates and improve long-term outcomes.

We believe it’s time for higher education to actively support and normalize the gap year, not as an elite detour, but as a practical and often necessary path to college and career success. It’s time to give students and their families permission to pause.

The University of Virginia and Dartmouth College have become the latest higher ed institutions to publicly reject the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” Now just three of the nine institutions that the federal government originally presented with the document have yet to announce whether they will sign.

UVA announced Friday that it opposes the offer of yet-unrevealed special funding benefits in exchange for signing the compact. The statement came the day of an on-campus demonstration urging university leaders not to sign. Dartmouth unveiled its response Saturday morning. Both rejections came despite the universities attending a meeting Friday with White House officials about the deal.

“As I shared on the call, I do not believe that the involvement of the government through a compact—whether it is a Republican- or Democratic-led White House—is the right way to focus America’s leading colleges and universities on their teaching and research mission,” Dartmouth president Sian Leah Beilock wrote in a message to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which the president also shared with her community.

“Our universities have a responsibility to set our own academic and institutional policies, guided by our mission and values, our commitment to free expression, and our obligations under the law,” Beilock wrote. “Staying true to this responsibility is what will help American higher education build bipartisan public trust and continue to uphold its place as the envy of the world.”

Beilock hasn’t been a publicly outspoken opponent of Trump; at a Heterodox Academy conference in June, she said, “It’s really a problem to say just because the administration, with many things that we all object to, is suggesting something inherently means it’s wrong.” But she also said back then that “we shouldn’t have the government telling us what to do.”

In a message Friday to McMahon, also shared with the community, UVA interim president Paul Mahoney wrote that “the integrity of science and other academic work requires merit-based assessment of research and scholarship. A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education.”

The compact asks colleges to agree to overhaul or abolish departments “that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” without further defining what those terms mean. It also asks universities, among other things, to commit to not considering transgender women to be women; reject foreign applicants “who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values”; and freeze “effective tuition rates charged to American students for the next five years.”

In exchange for these agreements, the White House has said signatories would “be given [funding] priority when possible as well as invitations to collaborate with the White House.” But the administration hasn’t revealed how much extra funding universities would be eligible for, and the nine-page compact doesn’t detail the potential benefits. The compact, as well as a Thursday statement from the White House, can also be read as threatening colleges’ current federal funding if they don’t sign.

Mahoney told McMahon that his university agrees “with many of the principles outlined in the Compact, including a fair and unbiased admissions process, an affordable and academically rigorous education, a thriving marketplace of ideas, institutional neutrality, and equal treatment of students, faculty, and staff in all aspects of university operations.”

“Indeed,” Mahoney wrote, “the University of Virginia leads in several of these areas and is committed to continuous improvement in all of them. We seek no special treatment in exchange for our pursuit of those foundational goals.”

The decisions make UVA the fifth and Dartmouth the sixth of the nine initial institutions presented with the deal to publicly turn it down. UVA is also the first public university and first Southern institution to reject it. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the first of the nine to turn it down, on Oct. 10, followed by Brown University and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Southern California.

UVA’s rejection of the compact comes after the Trump administration successfully pressured then–UVA president James Ryan to step down in June. The Justice Department had demanded he step down. The UVA Board of Visitors voted to dissolve the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion office in March, but multiple conservative alumni groups and legal entities complained that Ryan failed to eliminate DEI from all corners of campus.

A coalition of groups opposed to the compact, including the UVA chapter of the American Association of University Professors, praised the rejection in a Friday news release.

“Today’s events demonstrate the power of collective organizing and action to defeat tyranny,” the statement said. “We hope that we serve as an example to the other public universities that received the ‘Compact’—the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of Arizona—giving them the courage and clarity not to buckle.”

UVA faculty groups had overwhelmingly urged university leaders to reject the compact. And hundreds of demonstrators showed up to the anticompact rally Friday on the UVA campus in Charlottesville, Cville Right Now reported.

Alongside Arizona and UT Austin, Vanderbilt University also hasn’t revealed its decision. But after MIT announced its refusal of the compact, Trump offered it to all U.S. colleges and universities to sign.

White House officials met Friday with some universities about the proposal. The Wall Street Journal reported that UVA, Dartmouth, Arizona, UT Austin and Vanderbilt were invited, along with universities that weren’t part of the original nine: Arizona State University, the University of Kansas and Washington University in St. Louis.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston compared the compact in a statement to efforts from former presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who she said “called on our universities to be of greater service to the nation.”

“President Trump has called on universities to do their part in returning America to its economic and diplomatic successes of the past: a nation of full employment, pioneering innovations that change the world, and committed to merit and hard work as the ingredients to success,” she said, adding the administration hosted “a productive call” with several universities. 

A White House official said UVA and the other seven invited universities participated in the call.

“They now have the baton to consider, discuss, and propose meaningful reforms, including their form and implementation, to ensure college campuses serve as laboratories of American greatness,” Huston said. 

After four universities rejected the Trump administration’s compact for higher education, the White House met Friday with some universities about the proposal. 

A White House official confirmed plans of the meeting to Inside Higher Ed but didn’t say what the purpose of the gathering was or which universities would attend. Nine universities were asked to give feedback on the wide-ranging proposal by Oct. 20.

The virtual meeting planned to include May Mailman, a White House adviser, and Vincent Haley, director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, according to a source with knowledge of the White House’s plans. Mailman, Haley and Education Secretary Linda McMahon signed the letter sent to the initial nine about the compact.

So far, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California have publicly rejected the deal. Dartmouth College, the University of Arizona, the University of Texas at Austin, and Vanderbilt University haven’t said whether they’ll agree to the compact. UVA said late Friday afternoon that it wouldn’t agree to the proposal.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Arizona State University, the University of Kansas and Washington University in St. Louis were also invited. According to the Journal, the goal of the meeting was to answer questions about the proposal and to find common ground with the institutions.

Inside Higher Ed reached out to the universities, but none confirmed whether they attended the meeting.

The nine-page document would require universities to make a number of far-reaching changes from abolishing academic departments or programs that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas” to capping international undergraduate enrollment at 15 percent. Institutions also would have to agree to freeze their tuition and require standardized tests for admissions, among other provisions.

Trump officials have said that the signatories could get access to more grant funding and threatened the funding of those that don’t agree. The Justice Department would enforce the terms of the agreement, which are vague and not all defined.

After USC released its letter rejecting the proposal, Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, told the Los Angeles Times that “as long as they are not begging for federal funding, universities are free to implement any lawful policies they would like.”

Following the first rejection from MIT last Friday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that all colleges could now sign on. The White House has said that some institutions have already reached out to do so.

The source with knowledge of the White House’s plans said that the meeting “appears to be an effort to regain momentum by threatening institutions to sign even though it’s obviously not in the schools’ interest to do so.”

Former senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and trustee at Vanderbilt, wrote in a Journal op-ed that the compact was an example of federal overreach akin to previous efforts to impose uniform national standards on K–12 schools.

“Mr. Trump’s proposed higher education compact may provoke some useful dialogue around reform,” he wrote. “But the federal government shouldn’t try to manage the nation’s 6,000 colleges and universities.”

A Joint Warning

The American Council on Education and 35 other organizations warned in a joint statement released Friday that “the compact’s prescriptions threaten to undermine the very qualities that make our system exceptional.”

The organizations that signed requested the administration withdraw the compact and noted that “higher education has room for improvement.” 

But “the compact is a step in the wrong direction,” the letter states. “The dictates set by it are harmful for higher education and our entire nation, no matter your politics.”

The letter is just the latest sign of a growing resistance in higher ed to the compact. Faculty and students at the initial group of universities rallied Friday to urge their administrators to reject the compact. According to the American Association of University Professors, which organized the national day of action, more than 1,000 people attended the UVA event. 

And earlier this month, the American Association of Colleges and Universities released a statement that sharply criticized the compact. The statement said in part that college and university presidents “cannot trade academic freedom for federal funding” and that institutions shouldn’t be subject “to the changing priorities of successive administrations.” Nearly 150 college presidents and associations have endorsed that statement.

The joint statement from ACE and others, including AAC&U, was a way to show that the associations, which the letter says “span the breadth of the American higher education community and the full spectrum of colleges and universities nationwide,” are united in their opposition.

“The compact offers nothing less than government control of a university’s basic and necessary freedoms—the freedoms to decide who we teach, what we teach, and who teaches,” the statement reads. “Now more than ever, we must unite to protect the values and principles that have made American higher education the global standard.” 

But not everyone in the sector signed on. 

Key groups that were absent from the list of signatories include the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of American Universities, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, Career Education Colleges and Universities, and the American Association of Community Colleges.

Inside Higher Ed reached out to each of those groups, asking whether they were invited to sign and, if so, why they chose not to do so. Responses varied.

AAU noted that it had already issued its own statement Oct. 10. AASCU said it was also invited to sign on and had “significant concerns” about the compact but decided to choose other ways to speak out.  

“We are communicating in multiple ways with our member institutions and policymakers about the administration’s request and any impact it might have on regional public universities,” Charles Welch, the association’s president, said in an email.

Other organizations had not responded by the time this story was published.