Special to the Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE —
Joshua Powers, professor and chairman of the department of educational leadership, administration, and foundations (ELAF) at Indiana State University, returned to ISU on July 5 after completing his American Council on Education fellowship.
One of only 38 selected into the prestigious administrative preparation program, Powers had a fall placement at Wright State University working with President David Hopkins and a spring placement with President Daniel Fogel at the University of Vermont. His primary project focus through the fellowship was on strategy implementation with additional projects in organizational restructuring, campus diversity, interdisciplinary initiatives, general education and program review.
“I am honored and humbled to have been supported by President [Dan] Bradley, Provost [Jack] Maynard, Dean [Brad] Balch and my colleagues in ELAF to pursue this opportunity and look forward to ways in which my varied learning can be of service to ISU.”
The fellowship also included visits to more than 50 colleges and universities in the U.S. and overseas, association meetings and related higher education organizations to discuss issues of leadership, management and innovation during times of fiscal constraint.
“It was an extraordinary, life-changing experience, made uniquely so by having an insider’s view of the massive budgetary stresses confronting our industry and the ideas that are surfacing in response,” Powers said.
Among a few of the many highlights from the yearlong fellowship was a dialogue with senior leaders at the NCAA on the challenges of easing the ever-upward pressure on athletics spending, engaging the founder, president and provost at the University of Phoenix on their model of higher education (460,000 enrolled students with bricks and mortar campuses in 40 states and growing), studying post-apartheid higher education in South Africa, and engaging in institutional branding, fiscal retrenchment and campus transformation simulations.
“Knowing that ISU is in the early phases of strategy implementation, I chose placements and travel activities where leaders and institutions have been especially successful in bringing about positive change through planning as well as where they have been able to adapt to external shocks like the current budget crisis” Powers said.
In these difficult times, colleges and universities need both administrative and faculty leadership and collaboration to ensure that what they provide students starts with the highest quality and uses limited resources wisely, he said.
“Furthermore, for places like ISU, to borrow two mantras from David Hopkins, ‘We are special because we define our excellence not by who we exclude, but by who we include’ and ‘it is truly amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit,’” Powers said.
