Issues in Higher Education

Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony R. Greenwald, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
In Blindspot, the authors reveal hidden biases based on their experience with the Implicit Association Test, a method that has revolutionized the way scientists learn about the human mind and that gives us a glimpse into what lies within the metaphoric blindspot. The title’s “good people” are those of us who strive to align our behavior with our intentions. The aim of Blindspot is to explain the science in plain enough language to help well-intentioned people achieve that alignment. By gaining awareness, we can adapt beliefs and behavior and “outsmart the machine” in our heads so we can be fairer to those around us. Venturing into this book is an invitation to understand our own minds.

Jerome Branche, John Mullennix, and Ellen R. Cohn, Diversity Across the Curriculum: A Guide for Faculty in Higher Education
In a collection of more than 50 vignettes, exceptional teachers from a wide range of academic disciplines—health sciences, humanities, sciences, and social sciences—describe how they actively incorporate diversity into their teaching. Different strategies discussed include a role-model approach, creating a safe space in the classroom, and the cultural competency model.

Robin DiAngelo, What Does it Mean to be White? Developing White Racial Literacy
Speaking as a white person to other white people, DiAngelo clearly and compellingly takes readers through an analysis of white socialization. Weaving research, analysis, stories, images, and familiar examples, she provides the framework needed to develop white racial literacy. Written as an accessible overview on white identity from an anti-racist framework, What Does It Mean to Be White? is an invaluable resource for members of diversity and anti-racism programs and study groups, and students of sociology, psychology, education, and other disciplines.

Temple Grandin, Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
What emerges in Thinking in Pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity.

Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González, and Angela P. Harris (Eds.), Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia
Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and concrete recommendations, and provide a window into the struggles of professional women in a racially stratified but increasingly multicultural America.

Michelle Harris, Sherrill L. Sellers, Orly Clerge, and Frederick W. Gooding, Jr., Stories from the Front of the Room: How Higher Education Faculty of Color Overcome Challenges and Thrive in the Academy
In an effort to circulate the experiences of faculty of color more widely to academic and non-academic audiences, this edited volume replaces conventional scholarly technical papers with unconventionally accessible letters. Stories from the Front of the Room focuses on the boundaries which faculty of color encounter in everyday experiences on campus and presents a more complete picture of life in the academy – one that documents how faculty of color are tested, but also how they can not only overcome, but thrive in their respective educational institutions.

Frances A. Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetrault, The Feminist Classroom: An Inside Look At How Professors And Students Are Transforming Higher Education For A Diverse Society
This book provides an intimate view of how feminist teachers are revolutionizing higher education.

Mica Pollock (Ed.), Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School
Which acts by educators are “racist” and which are “antiracist”? How can an educator constructively discuss complex issues of race with students and colleagues? In Everyday Antiracism, leading educators deal with the most challenging questions about race in school, offering invaluable and effective advice. Contributors including Beverly Daniel Tatum, Sonia Nieto, and Pedro Noguera describe concrete ways to analyze classroom interactions that may or may not be “racial,” deal with racial inequality and “diversity,” and teach to high standards across racial lines.

Howard J. Ross, Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives
Incorporating anecdotes from today’s headlines alongside case studies from over 30 years as a nationally prominent diversity consultant, Ross help readers understand how unconscious bias impacts our day-to-day lives and particularly our daily work lives. And he answers the question: “Is there anything we can do about it?” by providing examples of behaviors that the reader can engage in to disengage the impact of their own biases. With an added appendix that includes lessons for handling conflict and bias in the workplace, this book offers an invaluable resource for a broad audience, from individuals seeking to understand and confront their own biases to human resource professionals and business leaders determined to create more bias-conscious organizations in the belief that productivity, personal happiness, and social growth are possible if we first understand the widespread and powerful nature of the biases we don’t realize we have. 

Lisa Schirch and David Campt, The Little Book of Dialogue for Difficult Subjects: A Practical, Hands-On Guide
The word “dialogue” suffers from over-use, yet its practice is as transforming and as freshly hopeful as ever. Authors Schirch and Campt demonstrate dialogue’s life and possibilities in this clear and absorbing manual: “Dialogue allows people in conflict to listen to each other, affirm their common ground, and explore their differences in a safe environment.” Schirch has worked throughout the Southern hemisphere in peacebuilding projects. Campt has focused on racial and class reconciliation in American cities.

Derald Wing Sue, Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation
Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation is a first-of-its-kind guide on the subject of microaggressions, insightfully examining the various kinds of microaggressions and their psychological effects on both perpetrators and their targets. Thought provoking and timely, this book suggests realistic and optimistic guidance for combating—and ending—microaggressions in our society.

Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race (20^th anniversary edition)
Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see black, white, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.

Trudy W. Banta, Elizabeth A. Jones, and Karen E. Black, Designing Effective Assessment: Principles and Profiles of Good Practice
Banta, Jones, and Black offer 49 detailed current examples of good practice in planning, implementing, and sustaining assessment that are practical and ready to apply in new settings. This important resource can help educators put in place an effective process for determining what works and which improvements will have the most impact in improving curriculum, methods of instruction, and student services on college and university campuses.

Eileen Carnell, Jacqui MacDonald and Susan Askew, Coaching and Mentoring in Higher Education: A Learning-Centred Approach
This handbook sets out a clear organizational rationale of coaching and/or mentoring and provides structured activities for self-reflection or groups. In addition to offering a number of definitions of coaching and mentoring, this handbook examines how these practices have explicit links with models of learning. A case study of a successfully piloted learning-centered model illustrates these links in practice.

Constance E. Cook and Matthew Kaplan, Advancing the Culture of Teaching on Campus: How a Teaching Center Can Make a Difference
Written by the director and staff of the first, and one of the largest, teaching centers in American higher education–the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT)–this book offers a unique perspective on the strategies for making a teaching center integral to an institution’s education mission. It presents a comprehensive vision for running a wide range of related programs, and provides faculty developers elsewhere with ideas and materials to prompt reflection on the management and practices of their centers–whatever their size–and on how best to create a culture of teaching on their campuses.

Robert M. Diamond, Aligning Faculty Rewards with Institutional Mission: Statements, Policies, and Guidelines
This book provides guidelines for developing a coherent faculty rewards system, starting with the articulation of institutional priorities and following the process through the development of department guidelines and union contracts.

Lion F. Gardiner, Redesigning Higher Education: Producing Dramatic Gains in Student Learning
This study focuses on the theoretically grounded links between critique and prescription. Within the context of contemporary theory on student development, Gardner examines the growing body of knowledge about student learning, college outcomes and the effectiveness of various options for instruction and assessment as the basis for identifying an empirically grounded set of practices that lead to better learning for students.

Kay Herr Gillespie, The Impact of Technology on Faculty Development, Life, and Work
This sourcebook treats issues of technology’s impact on faculty development, life, and work within the context of our changing epistemologies and a conception of faculty development as adult learning.

Connie Schroeder, Coming in from the Margins: Faculty Development’s Emerging Organizational Development Role in Institutional Change
The book provides evidence-based research into what directors of faculty development centers are currently doing as organizational developers, and how they shape, influence, and plan institutional initiatives that intersect with teaching and learning. The strategies in each chapter provide a practical resource and guide for re-examining the mission and structure of existing centers, designing new centers of teaching and learning and, most importantly, developing their role as change agents.

Darla J. Twale and Barbara M. DeLuca, Faculty Incivility: The Rise of the Academic Bully Culture and What to Do About It
This important book addresses the prevalence of faculty incivility, camouflaged aggression, and the rise of an academic bully culture in higher education. The authors show how to recognize a bully culture that may form as a result of institutional norms, organizational structure, academic culture, and systemic changes. Filled with real-life examples, the book offers research-based suggestions for dealing with this disruptive and negative behavior in the academic workplace.

Jonathan Zimmerman, The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America
Drawing upon a wide range of previously unexamined sources, The Amateur Hour shows how generations of undergraduates indicted the weak instruction they received. But Zimmerman also chronicles institutional efforts to improve it, especially by making teaching more “personal.” As higher education grew into a gigantic industry, he writes, American colleges and universities introduced small-group activities and other reforms designed to counter the anonymity of mass instruction. They also experimented with new technologies like television and computers, which promised to “personalize” teaching by tailoring it to the individual interests and abilities of each student. But, Zimmerman reveals, the emphasis on the personal inhibited the professionalization of college teaching, which remains, ultimately, an amateur enterprise. The more that Americans treated teaching as a highly personal endeavor, dependent on the idiosyncrasies of the instructor, the less they could develop shared standards for it. Nor have they rigorously documented college instruction, a highly public activity which has taken place mostly in private. Pushing open the classroom door, The Amateur Hour illuminates American college teaching and frames a fresh case for restoring intimate learning communities, especially for America’s least privileged students. Anyone who wants to change college teaching will have to start here.

Robert Birnbaum, How Colleges Work: The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership
In this publication of the National Center for Postsecondary Governance and Finance, Robert Birnbaum provides a new way of thinking about the leadership of colleges and universities.

Jeffrey L. Buller, The Essential Academic Dean: A Practical Guide to College Leadership
This book is about the “how” of academic leadership. Based on a series of workshops given by the author on college administration and management, each topic deals concisely with the most important information deans need at their fingertips when faced with a particular challenge or opportunity. Written both as a comprehensive guide to the academic deanship and as a ready reference to be consulted when needed, this book emphasizes proven solutions over untested theories and stresses what deans need to know now in order to be most successful as academic leaders.

Don Chu, The Department Chair Primer
Research has shown that most chairs receive little or no training to prepare them for the demands of their new roles. The Department Chair Primer provides the practical information that chairs need to do their jobs well. Many of the book’s ideas come from practicing chairs and are proven strategies for dealing with a variety of issues. Each chapter details a particular problem chairs face, includes a brief introduction to the topic, provides tips on how to deal with the situation, and concludes with study questions.

Walter H. Gmelch and Val D. Miskin, Chairing an Academic Department, 2nd ed.
Although chairs come to leadership positions for varied reasons, few come with any specific leadership training. Once in the position, they are critiqued, judged, and evaluated by both their faculty and administrators, groups which frequently have conflicting criteria. Based upon their extensive study of the demands on and needs of department chairs, the authors have distilled their findings into a practical and accessible volume to guide chairs in their growth.

Irene W. D. Hecht et al., The Department Chair as Academic Leader
This important new work will help department chairs, faculty, and administrators understand and address the increasing complexity of relationships within higher education, as well as the growing influence of external factors. The Department Chair as Academic Leader is a completely updated revision of Allan Tucker’s seminal contribution, Chairing the Academic Department, last published in 1992. This work reflects the approach used in the ACE Workshops for Division and Department Chairs and Deans.

Mary Lou Higgerson and Susan S. Rehwaldt, Complexities of Higher Education Administration: Case Studies & Issues
Based on extensive experience in administration, in teaching, and in running workshops for administrators, the authors have assembled a collection of cases focused on topics common to academic administrators.

Susan A. Holton, Mending the Cracks in the Ivory Tower: Strategies for Conflict Management in Higher Education
With a particular focus on department chairs and deans, this book helps analyze the many kinds of personal and institutional conflicts most commonly faced in higher education and provides the necessary tools and methods for conflict management and resolution.

Deryl R. Leaming, Academic Leadership: A Practical Guide to Chairing the Department, 2nd ed.
Organized into six parts, this second edition contains best practices and ideas from some of today’s leading scholars as well as information on some of the newer challenges and responsibilities for department chairpersons, including: developing a departmental vision, working with constituents, retaining students, conflict management, mentoring faculty, and post-tenure review.

Cynthia D. McCauley and Ellen Van Velsor, eds. The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development, 2^nd ed.
For more than three decades, CCL has studied and trained hundreds of thousands of executives and worked with them to create practical models, tools, and publications for the development of effective leaders and leadership. This second edition of The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development brings together the wealth of practical knowledge that CCL has gained from this experience. It explores the essence of leadership development, reveals how individuals can effectively enhance their leadership skills, and demonstrates what organizations can do to help build leaders and leadership capacity.

Steven B. Sample, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership
In this offbeat approach to leadership, college president Sample–the man who turned the University of Southern California into one of the most respected universities in the country–challenges many conventional teachings on the subject.

Robert I. Sutton, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t
This groundbreaking book sheds light on how social friction among colleagues ruins morale, lowers productivity, and can truly devastate a company’s (or, by extension, a university’s) culture. Sutton not only confronts this issue directly, but also provides extensive strategies and insights into how you can pinpoint and eliminate this problem.

Daniel W. Wheeler et al., The Academic Chair’s Handbook, 2^nd ed.
This edition provides a current, comprehensive, and practical guide for academic department chairs and division heads at both two- and four-year institutions. This essential resource includes new material on a variety of topics such as technology, funding and resources, department climate and quality, assessment, and accreditation, and describes several strategies department chairs can use to build a positive work environment that fosters professional growth of both faculty and chairs.