Change as a Scholarly Act: Higher Education Research Transfer to

University of Nebraska at Omaha University of Nebraska at Omaha

DigitalCommons@UNO DigitalCommons@UNO

Higher Education Service Learning

Summer 2000

Change as a Scholarly Act: Higher Education Research Transfer to Change as a Scholarly Act: Higher Education Research Transfer to

Practice Practice

Judith Ramaley

University of Vermont

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/slcehighered

Part of the Higher Education Commons, and the Service Learning Commons

Please take our feedback survey at: https://unomaha.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/

SV_8cchtFmpDyGfBLE

Recommended Citation Recommended Citation

Ramaley, Judith, "Change as a Scholarly Act: Higher Education Research Transfer to Practice" (2000).

Higher Education

. 180.

https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/slcehighered/180

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by

the Service Learning at DigitalCommons@UNO. It has

been accepted for inclusion in Higher Education by an

authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UNO. For

more information, please contact

[email protected].

Achieving transformational change is a scholarly

challenge best dealt with by practicing public scholarship,

which is modeled by the leader and encouraged in other

members of the campus community. Like all good

scholarly work, good decision making by campus

leadership begins with a base of scholarly knowledge

generated and validated by higher education researchers.

Change as a Scholarly Act:

Higher Education Research

Transfer to Practice

Judith A. Ramaley

In Educating the Reflective Practitioner, Donald Schön (1987) says, “In the

varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground

overlooking a swamp. On the hard ground, manageable problems lend

themselves to solution through the application of research-based theory and

techniques. In the swampy lowlands, messy, confusing problems defy tech-

nical solutions” (p. 1). As a president, I spend most of my time in the

swampy lowlands. When I ascend to the cooler and breezier heights, I find

problems that are easier to define and easier to resolve, but less important.

Identifying Problems

A number of years ago, a group of community activists in the Portland met-

ropolitan area in Oregon developed a simple matrix of three types of prob-

lems that present themselves to policymakers and community leaders.

Real-world problems can be divided fairly effectively into these three types

on the basis of the relative degree of clarity of both the questions posed and

the solutions offered.

Type one problems can be articulated clearly, and the solution can be

chosen from among one or more already well-researched options or reme-

dies. They represent the high, hard ground.

Type two problems can be articulated clearly, but the solution or resolu-

tion is not readily apparent, and there are no well-researched choices to con-

sider. Here the ground is getting slippery, but not yet swampy.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION, no. 110, Summer 2000 © Jossey-Bass

MOVING BEYOND THE GAP BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Type three problems are confusing difficult-to-characterize “policy

messes” for which there is no agreement on either the most important issues

or the most promising remedies. These problems often are made more com-

plex by the conflicting values and perspectives of the various stakeholders.

Here we are in the swampy lowlands.

Like the reflective practitioner in Schön’s text, I frequently encounter

unique cases—type three problems—for which no precedent has prepared

me, situations in which several significant and sometimes equally impor-

tant values clash. These are cases that have too many variables, most of

them problematic in several ways at once. Schön (1987, p. 4) calls these

issues an “ill-defined melange of topographical, financial, economic, envi-

ronmental and political factors,” often, in my experience, changing shape

even as they come into focus.

A Learner Among Learners

A decade ago, when I was preparing a keynote address on the subject of the

president-practitioner for the Association for the Study of Higher Education

(ASHE) meeting in Portland, Oregon, I received a letter from my under-

graduate alma mater, Swarthmore College, which was at that time looking

for a new president. The college sought a person with these characteristics:

• Strong academic credentials

• Leadership skills

• Strong interest in fostering a culturally and racially diverse community

• High energy tempered with patience, persistence, a sense of humor, and

a tolerance for diversity of opinion

• Ability to be visible and accessible and to welcome interaction with other

people

What that ambitious portrait and many like it today are missing is a

critical point: an administrator today must also be a learner among learners,

willing to embrace the novel and unexpected and able to be an agent for

change. To do this, we presidents must model what it means to have a truly

educated mind and then use this mind in public. We must constantly study

our environment and test various ideas, let us call them hypotheses, in the

living laboratory over which we preside. It would be wise for us to apply to

ourselves the same expectations that we have of any well-educated person,

whose capacity to think through problems in the swampy lowlands will

depend both on the attitudes and knowledge and the skill and experience

to employ a rigorous scholarly approach.

There are two interesting and helpful ways to think about scholarship

and how we can use a scholarly approach to create a coherent and vision-

ary context for leadership and change. One way to approach being a public

learner is to practice and model for others what Harry Payne (1996) of

Williams College calls the intellectual virtues, “the willingness to explore

CHANGE AS A SCHOLARLY ACT

widely, the ability to test one’s ideas against those of others, the capacity to

listen thoughtfully, the strength to adduce reasons for assertions” (p. 18).

Payne traced the relationship between these intellectual virtues and the

character virtues of “honesty, humility, integrity, and independence” (p. 18)

and made the case that “all learning is for the sake of something beyond the

act of learning itself” (p. 18). In this case, the purpose of learning is to sup-

port the kind of decision making that can lead to institutional transforma-

tion. I have found that one of the things that helps encourage a more

scholarly approach to the management of institutional change is to involve

my own senior leadership team in the same kind of intellectual inquiry that

I would apply to any other challenging scholarly work. My goal is to “learn

our way” into an understanding of institutional change. In my experience,

learning is a means for institutional leadership to create a meaningful con-

text for transformational change.

In many of the conversations about change in higher education that I

have heard in the past several years, the importance of modeling a scholarly

approach to leadership was never mentioned. In a world composed pri-

marily of type three (swampy) problems, the act of leadership must become

an act of public learning, guided by the same expectations that we hold when

evaluating any other form of scholarship. Presidents and other administra-

tors must consistently demonstrate a devotion to rigorous inquiry that

allows for informed decisions to be made within a culture of evidence com-

patible with the scholarly values that are a defining feature of academic

institutions.

The second way to think about the scholarship of change is to use the

approach articulated by Ernest Boyer (1990) and then extended by Charles

Glassick, Mary Taylor Huber, and Gene Maeroff (1997). For Boyer, schol-

arship encompassed four kinds of intellectual work—discovery, integration

into a body of knowledge, the scholarship of teaching (interpretation), and

application. It soon became clear that members of the academy would not

accept this broader definition of scholarly work unless the rigor and value

of the work could be documented and assessed and its impact properly

understood. In the case of a scholarly approach to change, the impact takes

shape in large, tangible institutional terms.

Although Boyer died before he could complete this essential phase of

the work, Glassick and colleagues (1997) prepared a companion mono-

graph that outlined the features that characterize excellent scholarship,

regardless of who conducts the work and where it is performed. These same

elements should characterize the work of presidents and senior adminis-

trators as well. Rigorous scholarship, as well as good decision making, is

characterized by clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate methods,

significant results, effective presentation, reflective critique, and ethical

practice and respect for those involved or potentially affected by the work.

As a scholar, a president must think of each day as a glorious experi-

ment and must constantly encourage others at the institution to view every

program or case or problem as a learning opportunity, as a vehicle to test

MOVING BEYOND THE GAP BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

basic assumptions about the institution, and as a potential avenue for pos-

itive institutional change. Only when the presidential role is approached in

this manner can the leader be a public learner and properly lead a genuine

learning organization (Senge, 1990; Garvin 1995). At the same time, the call

to be a public learner and to model the adoption of a habit of experimenta-

tion and the acceptance of the associated risk that accompanies the uncer-

tainty of experimentation can make both the leader and his or her associates

anxious. After all, in most organizational environments, the leader is sup-

posed to be in charge, and a leader should not need to ask questions or

show the uncertainty that a scholarly attitude will reveal. According to

Napier and Sanaghan (1999), “Curriculums [sic] and administrative prac-

tices alike have suffered from divided loyalties and narrow frames of refer-

ence that make coordination and coherence in direction difficult to achieve”

(p. 19). In a university, the values, attitudes and behaviors that should be

modeled and encouraged are those of a rigorous scholar, but the approach

must be multidisciplinary.

It is uncommon for academic leaders to approach their responsibilities

in a scholarly mode. One reason for this is that we do not, as faculty mem-

bers, usually learn “in public.” We prefer to conduct our investigations on

our own terms, with conditions set by our own protocols and interests.

Then we share our best work with our peers using forms of communication

adopted to fit the norms and expectations of our particular discipline. As

Napier and Sanaghan (1999) have written, “Most leaders arise within the

context of their profession with its clear leadership traditions and particu-

lar beliefs.” To this insight, I would add that we also learn and then share

what we know according to particular rules and norms.

A challenge faced by any institutional leader who wishes to view insti-

tutional change as a scholarly act is that the research base on issues in higher

education that might support a scholarly approach to academic leadership

is spread across many different fields, built on a variety of different method-

ologies, and reported in a variety of different communication styles and

technical vocabularies—qualitative and quantitative, individual observa-

tions as well as comparative studies, theoretical and practical. The interdis-

ciplinarity of the research base that might guide good decision making in a

university setting represents a significant barrier to its use. It is difficult for

a practitioner to find the relevant studies and reports, to validate their con-

tents, and to assess the degree to which a particular set of findings might be

generalized to the administrator’s own institution and circumstances.

Ways to Encourage Public Learning in Others

A university is a special form of democracy that seeks to provide an envi-

ronment where all persons can do their best work and develop as educated

human beings, whatever role they play within the organization—student,

faculty, staff, administrator, trustee, or advisory board member. To accom-

CHANGE AS A SCHOLARLY ACT

plish these goals, everyone must continue to learn, and change itself must

be both an intentional and a scholarly act. To accomplish this consistency

of behavior, the president must model and encourage public learning.

Although many strategies might support the infusion of the experimental

mode into the governance and administration of a university, four

approaches, taken together, have proven very effective.

First, it is important for a leader to instill a discipline of reflection and

a culture of evidence, insisting that everyone back up their opinions and

observations with real information, not just perceptions. I frequently ask,

“How do you know that?” when faced with a critic who claims to be in pos-

session of the truth. To my delight, the self-appointed critic rarely has any

objective evidence for his or her criticisms or alarming observations.

Second, it is essential to create new patterns of conversation that

encourage and support the involvement of everyone in defining the issues

that will be important in building the organization. There are many ways to

do this. As I prepare this chapter, my own institution is engaged in a strate-

gic change initiative. In the first stage, the senior campus leadership learned

new approaches to problem solving. We also experimented with new ways

to involve a broad-based segment of the campus community in defining

questions critical to our future and in identifying and then evaluating strate-

gies that we might employ to address our critical issues.

As the process unfolds, a record is being kept on the University of Ver-

mont home page for anyone to examine and follow over time. There you

can see the schedule of activities, the results from each stage, and the logic

behind the process as a whole. Reports will also appear in our campus

faculty-staff newspaper. In this model, three new forms of conversation and

communication are being used to ensure campuswide accessibility to the

process—carefully designed interactions that promote careful listening and

thoughtful, informed input to the process; use of a Web site to provide a

map to the overall change process and a record of the results obtained at

each stage; and regular open forums and interactions to allow people to ask

questions and satisfy their concerns about what is happening and what it

might mean.

A third component of an experimental or scholarly mode is to adopt a

philosophy of experimentation and the active management of reasonable

risks. Several universities have begun to replace the more traditional con-

cepts of risk and risk management with a broader domain of risk bounded

by legal, financial, public relations, and institutional integrity considera-

tions. This new philosophy, which actively promotes the management of

known risks and a more experimental approach to the generation of cam-

pus strategies, results in the establishment of some of the features of a learn-

ing organization.

Presidents, like everyone else, operate within the norms and method-

ologies of their home disciplines. As a scientist, for example, I have explicit

assumptions about how to frame a question, how to test the validity of

MOVING BEYOND THE GAP BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

hypotheses I have about the issue, and how to communicate my results or

findings to others. Given my own scholarly background, I react more

quickly and favorably when someone else communicates their concerns or

findings in a “scientific mode.” My provost, who is a social scientist, has

quite different intellectual habits from my own. This complementarity of

disciplinary perspectives is helpful on a senior leadership team, especially

during a time of intense change. As Peter Senge (1990) has written, “The

organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that

discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn” (p. 4).

Transformational change itself also depends on superior learning (Eckel,

Green, and Mallon, 1999).

The final and fourth strategy needed to establish a successful learning

enterprise is to create new ways to facilitate access to information, so that

everyone can make informed choices.

In many institutions, essential infor-

mation such as budget details appear mysterious. A number of institutions,

including my own, are moving to the use of benchmarking and dashboard

indicators to measure critically important aspects of institutional perfor-

mance. These measures are readily available and are frequently posted on a

Web site.

In a college or university undergoing meaningful and intentional

change, a leader can serve as the facilitator of a research team by building a

shared vision for the future, challenging unexamined assumptions and

bringing to the surface mental frameworks or models that inappropriately

shape everyone’s thinking about the issues, fostering more connected learn-

ing (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1997) and a consideration of

the context of individual decisions and choices, and modeling the intellec-

tual virtues and adopting a scholarly approach to change (modified from

Senge, 1990).

The State of the Research

Having laid upon the shoulders of presidents and other academic leaders a

mantle of scholarship, we are faced with two key questions: What body of

knowledge might we consult in order to perform the necessary step of ade-

quate preparation? How can a president acquire sufficient knowledge of the

relevant literature and the scholarly work that might illuminate our swampy

problems? In 1990, I asked a member of the Institutional Research and Plan-

ning Office at Portland State University to tally the topics and themes cov-

ered in six national journals and the programs of three national meetings.

The journals were the Journal of Higher Education, the Review of Higher Edu-

cation, Research in Higher Education, the ASHE-ERIC Research Report Series,

New Directions for Higher Education, and New Directions for Institutional

Research. The meetings were the Association for Institutional Research, the

Association for the Study of Higher Education, and the Society of College

and University Planning—all for the years 1988, 1989, and 1990. The ten

CHANGE AS A SCHOLARLY ACT

most frequently mentioned topics across all nine outlets for higher educa-

tion research were (1) institutional governance-management-organization,

(2) planning, (3) assessment-outcomes, (4) technology issues and applica-

tions, (5a) facilities management, (5b) institutional finances, (6a) faculty

salaries-personnel issues, (6b) the role of institutional research, (7) student

success-achievement, (8) admissions and enrollment, (9) community col-

leges, and (10) student issues-conduct.

In a second study, the University of Kansas Office of Institutional

Research and Planning studied the tables of contents of Change, the Journal

of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, and the Review of Higher

Education over the period from January 1988 through June 1990. The

themes were sorted out by using the ERIC search descriptions for each arti-

cle. The results were interesting. The most popular topic in all four journals

was college faculty. After that, the themes diverged. The list of topics

included minority and gender issues on campus, college students, educa-

tional change, the conduct of research, leadership issues, and the presidency.

Although many of these topics sounded interesting, they were not of

particular use to me in 1990 as I struggled with a steep learning curve as a

new president. I dragged home a foot high stack of “homework” every

night, consisting of correspondence, copies of other people’s letters, mate-

rials from various higher education associations, articles that someone had

copied and thought I should read, and reports from campus groups. In the

case of the campus reports, the authors had taken months to prepare the

documents and were nonetheless expecting an answer from me within a day

or two. As a scientist unfamiliar with qualitative research methods and the

scholarly approaches used by social scientists, I did not know how to assess

the validity of most of these studies and reports, nor could I determine their

usefulness to me as a practitioner. In addition, they did not match up very

well with the list of the top ten issues that I was thinking about in those

days as a new president. At that time, in the fall of my first year, I had the

following issues on my mind:

1. Women and minorities. There were only five articles on diversity, thir-

teen on minority students, and twelve on women in academia, a total

of less than 10 percent of the articles on planning and institutional gov-

ernance.

2. University-industry partnerships and technology transfer. These were not

on the list at all.

3. Fundraising. There were only eleven articles or speeches on this topic.

4. Team building and professional growth of staff. These issues were not vis-

ible as such but possibly contained as a section within some of the

many leadership articles, most of which I did not have time to read.

5. Community college and high school articulation. There were only thirty-

one articles and presentations on these topics (in sharp contrast to the

interest that at least K–12 articulation elicits today).

MOVING BEYOND THE GAP BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

6. College athletics. There were only six articles and presentations.

7. Research centers and institutes and interdisciplinary work. There were

eight articles on these topics.

8. Conflict resolution and good decision making. There were none.

9. Enrollment management and fostering student success. There were thirty-

three articles.

10. Effective on-campus and off-campus communication methods. There prob-

ably were none unless they were buried inside another topic.

As I write this chapter in 1999, I am two years into my second presi-

dency at the University of Vermont. Perhaps partly as a factor of my greater

presidential experience and partly because I now serve a different kind of

institution in changing circumstances, my list is actually now much longer

than the one I constructed in 1990. I had some difficulty deciding which

items to put in the top ten. In addition, my problem list now appears in the

form of questions rather than themes. Unable to confine myself to a simple

ten items, I expanded the list to a baker’s dozen. Even so, many of my key

questions did not make it onto the list:

1. Does investment in research really lead to the creation of jobs and to

economic development? How can I make the case that investing in my

university is truly an investment in the state’s future? What are the best

ways for universities to participate in economic and community devel-

opment?

2. How can my institution best participate in the rapidly growing infor-

mation age and the increasingly complex knowledge marketplace?

What is intellectual property now? How will the knowledge media

develop and who will prepare materials for these media?

3. Is there a path toward a sustainable fiscal future? How can I reconcile

the competing demands of affordability and access on the one hand

with the demands to spend ever increasing amounts for academic

excellence, increasing health care costs, technology, and competitive

compensation for faculty and staff on the other?

4. Are there meaningful differences in the way students learn, what they

learn, and how much they learn in classroom and community settings

where they have direct contact with one another and with faculty when

compared with distance learning and various forms of virtual experi-

ences? How much should we invest in the capacity to do distance

learning, and what form should our participation take?

5. What strategies can I use to promote more effective communication

within the campus community, with the trustees, and with our exter-

nal constituencies? What can I do to get across important messages and

information in the flood of information that crosses everyone’s desk and

computer screen every day?

6. What does academic quality really mean, and how can I measure it?

CHANGE AS A SCHOLARLY ACT

7. How can I truly involve members of the campus community meaning-

fully in setting the direction of the institution and obtain buy-in for the

agenda we are developing? What does it really take to initiate and sus-

tain meaningful institutional change?

8. What are the best ways to contain and then decrease problem drinking

among our students? How can we best collaborate with the community

to deal with the shared consequences of drinking among high school

and college age youth?

9. How can we create truly multicultural competency and a climate that

supports diversity on campus, and by the way, how would I know that

we had done so? How can we detect and then effectively deal with bias

incidents and promote harmony on campus?

10. What can we do to ensure a successful and meaningful student expe-

rience and live up to our aspiration to prepare our students to live cre-

ative, productive, and responsible lives?

11. How will work be done in the university of the future, and how should

we classify jobs to reflect the changing nature of work?

12. What forms will effective governance (decision making) take in the

university of the future, and how can we ensure meaningful participa-

tion of trustees, faculty, staff, alumni, and students in defining and

addressing the institution-shaping issues that we will face over the next

decade?

13. By what means can we learn together fast enough to keep up with all of

these issues? What does it take to produce a true learning organization?

With the assistance of a doctoral student, Mika Nash-Gibney, I reviewed

the major topics contained in the same set of journals in 1998–1999. This

review yielded a long list of topics, here presented as a baker’s dozen. The

topics were as follows—(1) approaches to K–16 reform and the importance

of school-university partnerships; (2) the use of technology and distance

learning; (3) governance; (4) curricular design and the meaning and pur-

pose of an undergraduate education; (5) university-industry collaborations;

(6) national educational policy issues; (7) multiculturalism, affirmative

action, and admissions standards; (8) service learning; (9) nontraditional

students and adult learners; (10) workforce preparation, competency-based

testing, and needs of employers; (11) reform of the lending process-regulatory

burdens and direct lending; (12) national ranking schemes and higher edu-

cation quality and standards; and (13) tuition discounting, cost contain-

ment, and institutionally based aid. Although many of these topics would

be helpful to policymakers, they do not appear on the list of many of the

presidents I know. I would hope in the future for more overlap between

institutional concerns like mine and the research interests of higher educa-

tion researchers.

In 1990, most of the things I was worrying about did not show up in the

higher education literature at all. I did find my concerns in other publications

MOVING BEYOND THE GAP BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

aimed at presidents or trustees or administrators, but these articles were not

based on any scholarly research. They were usually in the form of essays and

opinion pieces, sometimes supported by methodologies and observations that

I might apply to my own circumstances but usually based on broad assump-

tions and assertions that were not held up to close scrutiny or tested.

In 1999, the list of research topics in the higher education literature

looks very different from the pattern a mere decade ago, indicating that

researchers are paying much closer attention to the major issues faced by

higher education. Some of my issues and questions still do not show up in

the scholarly literature, although they are regularly addressed in publica-

tions such as Change or monographs issued by associations such as the

American Council on Education, the Association of Governing Boards, and

the American Association for Higher Education. Most of these reports are

reflections on experience, but they frequently lack the rigor of scholarly

analysis and assessment, leaving me unsure what validity to assign to these

pieces. A few of my concerns have not shown up very often, if at all, in the

typical parade of publications that comes across my desk (for example,

issues 6, 11, and 13 from my 1999 baker’s dozen list of issues that concern

me), except in the forms of calls to action and recommendations for how I

should exercise my duty as a president to respond to a particular challenge,

such as college drinking or the lack of civility and civic responsibility on

college campuses today.

I asked myself in 1990, and I continue to ask myself now, why higher

education researchers are not analyzing issues that are most meaningful to

people who are faced with the challenge of leading institutions out of the

swamp. Where is the base of scholarly knowledge that I could draw on to

guide my institution onto higher ground? Why are my colleagues writing

personal pieces about issues that I care about but that lack the rigor of schol-

arly work? Why is it so hard to apply the results of many of the more

scholarly pieces to my own circumstances? Above all, why is the field of

higher education research so out of sync with the needs of people like me,

who are trying to exemplify in our practice of the presidency the same rigor-

ous standards that apply to any other form of scholarly work? Even if higher

education researchers were publishing exactly what I need, how would I find

time or develop the expertise to read the studies and interpret them?

My educated, but untested, answer to all but the last of these questions

is that as in most other fields, the faculty who work in higher education are

seeking legitimacy within the intellectual hierarchy of the contemporary dis-

ciplines. The more that faculty in higher education programs seek status,

the more they are likely to pull away from contact with the real world from

which they originally drew their questions and in which their findings

might be tested in the context of practice. This seems especially paradoxi-

cal in the field of higher education because the object of the research in this

discipline is the actual world of the institution that lies just beyond the

researcher’s office door.

CHANGE AS A SCHOLARLY ACT

When I submitted my manuscript to the editors of this volume, they

offered another explanation for the gap between my interests as a chief exec-

utive and the content of the scholarly literature on higher education. They

pointed out that researchers write for many audiences, including legisla-

tures, students, and parents. I must admit that I doubt that much of this

work actually gets into the hands of legislators, students, or parents unless

it is translated from the scholarly literature by someone else. However, I

would be interested to know more about how researchers who are interested

in higher education select their topics for research and who they think the

audiences will be for their findings and interpretations.

By trying to dress up any field that derives directly from the practical

necessities of a profession, we risk losing the vitality that makes the life of

a scholar-practitioner so interesting. My scholarly interests as a president

are very much shaped by the realities of the institution I serve and by my

external constituencies. In addition, I must be aware of the larger, more gen-

eral realities of the academic community as a whole, as well as the particu-

lar experiences of the community of educational institutions of which we

are a part—in our case, the cohort of public research and land-grant uni-

versities. The interests of a generalist like me must inherently be interdisci-

plinary, and I am forced, by the nature of my work, to keep the big picture

in mind and to concentrate on the things that matter the most. I cannot

worry only about the issues I wish to define, because the world presents me

with issues on its own terms, not mine, and with its own urgencies. I can-

not use exclusively the language or jargon of any one field lest my faculty

and administrative colleagues give me up for lost.

Improving the Scholarly Base

What can be done to create the scholarly base to support the intellectual

and knowledge needs of a learner among learners, a scholar-president? As

higher education researchers plan their agenda for the future, I hope they

will keep in mind some of the needs of presidents and other academic lead-

ers and approach their work with the swampy questions of higher educa-

tion in mind. It would help if, in selecting topics for investigation,

researchers would emphasize issues of interest to policymakers, focus on

the big picture, avoid studying small questions, encompass more compara-

tive studies so that a particular institutional experience could be studied in

a larger context, and provide a clear interpretation that would allow practi-

tioners to see how broadly the results might be applied to other similar cir-

cumstances.

What about my last question? Even if higher education researchers

were publishing exactly what I need, how would I find time or develop the

expertise to read the studies, interpret them, and apply them to the issues

facing my own institution?

I propose changing the role of the institutional

research office, so that it can support leadership and change as an act of

MOVING BEYOND THE GAP BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

scholarship. In most cases, these offices evolved to collect data and provide

statistical reports for various compliance reviews. These tasks require the

services of data managers rather than scholars (Barbara Holland, personal

correspondence with author, June 17, 1999). Institutional research offices

should evolve into institutional studies offices. These new offices would be

staffed by higher education researchers who would help presidents and

other academic leaders find and properly interpret the base of existing lit-

erature that could be applied to practice. They could also conduct research

designed to support transformational change as well as contribute to a

shared body of literature on higher education.

The institutional studies office could also be developed as a research

center that would support and extend the scholarly work of faculty whose

primary appointments are in the academic units, and it could identify and

support promising lines of scholarly inquiry that could benefit professional

practice and the exercise of leadership. It is common practice for some

faculty to hold administrative appointments as directors and chairs of

departments and programs. Why not consider an institutional studies

appointment or fellowship that would be comparable? A true institutional

studies office could help presidents and other academic leaders by serving

an R&D function for the institution and its leaders, while at the same time

providing technical assistance to faculty members and advanced students

who wish to conduct research on issues in higher education. The following

are some of the tasks it could perform:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of the new programs we are trying to put in

place and assist in creating a base of evidence to support regular program

review of continuing programs

• Interpret national data and research by relating them to our own institu-

tion, pointing out where the national trends fit our situation and where

they do not, and why

• Sort through the case studies, project reports, and monographs that cross

my desk in waves and tell me which have application to us, which address

issues that we are also facing, and what conclusions the authors have

drawn

• Identify people who are doing interesting research on higher education

to bring to our campus as consultant-evaluators and to give us an oppor-

tunity to reflect on our mission, our progress, and our aspirations

• Do studies that could help us address our own issues more thoughtfully

and with a richer base of knowledge about ourselves, our experience, and

the relevance of the work of others to our own efforts

• Provide technical assistance to other units on campus that wished to con-

duct studies of performance or to assess and address issues specific to that

part of the institution

• Conduct research that would support the development of new measures

of performance to address those elements of our mission that are not

CHANGE AS A SCHOLARLY ACT

commonly assessed, such as the impact of our community involvement

and professional service on quality of life in the community

There is much to be gained from good communication among researchers,

managers and administrators, and campus leadership. Good contact can

keep all three groups honest. An appropriate bridge builder is the scholar-

president, the learner among learners who must slog back and forth

between the swamp and the dry highlands. Over the years, I have learned

that a frequent shift of perspective between inductive and deductive rea-

soning, theory and practice, and formal inquiry and application can enrich

our scholarship. It is also a useful route to making informed choices that

have institution-wide consequences. If researchers always take the high road

and presidents and others mostly have to take the low road, “We’ll ne’er

meet again,” to quote the old Scots ballad. If we travel together, we can spin

out some fine tales and like the Canterbury pilgrims can entertain one

another along the way, while keeping our aspirations and our spirits high.

Notes

1. As far as I know, the ideas were never published, so I use them here without being

able to provide a citation.

2. The term culture of evidence was used regularly by Steve Weiner, formerly the exec-

utive director of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, to describe the grow-

ing importance of assessment and accountability in the design of quality assurance in

the institutional review process conducted by regional accrediting bodies.

3. This last element was not presented in Glassick and others as a feature of excellent

scholarship, but integrity is mentioned as one of the qualities of a scholar.

4. The four strategies suggested here are based in part on a list found on a large piece

of newsprint in the St. Johnsbury Extension Office of the University of Vermont. I was

told that it first appeared in someone’s church bulletin.

5. 5a and 5b and 6a and 6b indicate that these items were tied for that position on the list.

6. In a few instances, I know that what I want simply is not available, even if I had time

to look for it. We really know very little, for example, about adolescent drinking and

how best to treat or manage drinking at that age. This knowledge is needed if we are to

address the growing problem of binge drinking on college campuses.

References

Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, R. M., Goldberger, N. R., and Tarule, J. M. Women’s Ways of

Knowing. (10th anniversary ed.). New York: Basic Books, 1997.

Boyer, E. L. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. Princeton, N.J.:

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.

Eckel, P., Hill B., Green, M., and Mallon, R. On Change: Reports from the Road: Insights

on Institutional Change. Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1999.

Garvin, D. A. “Barriers and Gateways to Learning.” In C. R. Christensen, D. A. Garvin,

and A. Sweet. (eds.), Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership.

Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1995.

Glassick, C. E., Huber, M. T., and Maeroff, G. I. Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the

Professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.

MOVING BEYOND THE GAP BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Napier, R., and Sanaghan, P. “The Changing Nature of Leadership: Implications for Busi-

ness Officers.” NACUBO Business Officer, 1999, 33(1), 48–60.

Payne, H. C. “Can Or Should a College Teach Virtue?” Liberal Education, 1996, 82(4),

18–25.

Schön, D. A. Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1987.

Senge, P. M. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New

York: Doubleday, 1990.

JUDITH A. RAMALEY is president of the University of Vermont.