Category: higher education

The rise and fall of Lawrence Summers

As expected, Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary who took the helm at Harvard University in 2001, has announced his resignation, effective at the end of this academic year.

Best known for his comments last year in which he suggested that gender differences between the sexes might explain why few women pursue studies in science and math, Summers was also under seige by the faculty. The Harvard faculty were expected to give Summers a vote of no-confidence next week — a vote that stemmed as much from his leadership style as from his comments about women in science.

The Boston Globe‘s coverage of Summers’ announcement points out that his management style may have helped elevate Harvard’s reputation in the eyes of many. As the Globe reports:

The boldness and bluntness that contributed to Lawrence H. Summers’s downfall as Harvard University’s president also enabled him to alter the course of an often self-satisfied institution, prodding it to make changes that were long overdue, said many of those who observed him up close.

When the Harvard Corporation chose Summers to lead Harvard in 2001, there was a sense among its members that the nation’s most prestigious university had become complacent. Summers was brought in to shake things up, and he didn’t disappoint.

Among other initiatives, he jump-started the university’s expansion into Allston and decided that the new 200-acre campus on the other side of the Charles River would focus largely on science. He called for a new emphasis on undergraduates and argued that their curriculum should focus more on actual knowledge and quantitative disciplines and less on ways of thinking. And he took bold steps to make a Harvard education more accessible to low-income families.

Summers was also outspoken in his belief that Harvard and its scholars should be players in the public arena, not just intellectuals in an ivory tower. That belief led him to step into thorny public debates such as divestment in Israel and a perceived lack of patriotism among university professors, but it also led him to push Harvard to elevate disciplines such as public health and education with a direct impact on people’s lives.

But, as Lawrence Summers found out, leadership in academia presents its own set of thorny issues.

Welcome, CASE ‘Currents’ readers

If you have any thoughts about my article on new media in the latest issue of CASE Currents, feel free to share your thoughts here.

I haven’t gotten my copy of the magazine yet, but I am assured it’s on the way.

Also, once the issue is online, I will post excerpts from it here.

UMR boards the blogtrain

Readers interested in science and technology — or the latest sci-tech news from my employer, the University of Missouri-Rolla — ought to take a look at Visions, UMR’s research blog, which debuts today. While this blog is brand new, the site has been around for 2 1/2 years. It began as a quarterly webzine focusing on UMR research and student scholarship. But last fall the UMR communications and marketing staff started planning to convert Visions to a more frequently updated blog site. On the Internet, quarterly publications just don’t cut it.

So, if you want to know what’s happening in the world of UMR research, be sure to add Visions to your blogroll or RSS feeds.

Technorati tags: blogs, blogging, engineering, science, technology, research, education, higher education, University of Missouri-Rolla, UMR, University of Missouri

Culture clash: corporate vs. academic PR

PR consultant Dick Jones discusses several of the differences between corporate and academic public relations in this article in the latest PIOnet newsletter. While more college and university campuses look outside the world of academe for PR expertise, those from the corporate side who make the shift to academic PR sometimes struggle with the culture shock.

As Jones explains:

Some fail to appreciate the difference in governance. In the corporate world, the hierarchies typically are simpler. The PR director may take marching orders only from his boss (the vice president) and her boss (the president). And there may be only one message: that Company Name is the undisputed leader in (fill in applicable adjective) technology.

A college or university, however, is more like a feudal kingdom. The president is still the PR director’s chief “client,” but other, additional constituents have real, and sometimes conflicting, PR needs. Continuing Education’s messages and needs differ from those of the College of Liberal Arts, for example.

Jones makes some terrific points in this article. It’s worth a read.