Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

  Current issues in educational leadership according to what is being discussed in this space this year: 1.      Equity and Inclusion : Promoting equity and inclusion remains a significant challenge in educational leadership. Disparities in access to resources, opportunities, and quality education persist across various demographics, including race, socioeconomic status, gender, and ability. Educational leaders must address these inequities and work toward creating more inclusive learning environments. 2.      Digital Transformation : The rapid advancement of technology has transformed the landscape of education, requiring educational leaders to navigate digital tools, online learning platforms, and data-driven decision-making processes. This includes ensuring access to technology for all students, training educators in digital pedagogy, and addressing concerns about privacy and digital citizenship. 3.      Teacher R...

Corinthians, ITT, and now Coleman. All oldish alternative institutions (same accreditor ironically), and the thing they also have in common is they are all closed. But guess who suffers? The student. The money the students spent they will never get back, and the time they spent was wasted. Promises made, but not kept. This is a failing of educators and administrators for not paying attention to what they teach in their own schools. There are case studies being taught on what has happened to these schools, by these very schools teachers!!! I have said it before and I will say it again: there needs to be a certification or training for those taking leadership potions in higher educational institutions. Seniority is no longer a valid reason to promote someone in today's educational environment. What is your institution doing to make sure your administrators are job ready? Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/corinthian-colleges-shu...

3 Approaches for Confronting Microaggressions Tyrone Fleurizard gives advice for reducing subtle yet discriminatory actions and comments in the classroom. By  Tyrone Fleurizard   July 20, 2018 20 COMMENTS   Phil Goodman -- a pseudonym -- has been teaching the psychology of prejudice for almost a decade. He has every lecture memorized and every punch line down. Throughout the semester, students explore the many ways prejudice manifests, interrogate prejudice research and, at the conclusion of the semester, develop ways to reduce prejudice in their own lives. Goodman’s favorite lecture is on stereotypes. His reading for this particular lecture includes an experimental study from Stanford University social psychologist and 2014 MacArthur “Genius” fellow  Jennifer Eberhardt  and her colleagues. They sought to determine how stereotypic associations influence visual processing and attention. To do that,...

" Certificate programs have become increasingly popular in the American education system, but is a certificate a smarter choice for you than a traditional college degree? Let's explore some questions you should ask yourself to make the right choice for you! What's the Difference? Generally speaking, certificates offer 'bite-sized' pieces of education that usually provide practical workplace skills in a short period of time. Meanwhile, college degrees provide a larger educational base and take a bit longer to complete. You are probably most familiar with associate's and bachelor's degrees, which generally take two and four years to earn, respectively. Certificates vary in length, too, but nearly all take less than two years and most last less than one year, according to the  Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce  (GCEW). Certificates are also more focused on occupational-specific training instead of the broader general education goals of trad...

Education is one of the most regulated industries in the United States, but I have always said that educators are big gossips, no matter what the level. People get judged on popularity, seniority, and by whispers. I recently attended what I thought was a professional conversation about teaching, and one of the opening statements was “well I heard …about you”. You heard?! We are supposed to be objective with our students, use rubrics, have learning goals, etc. How can we truly claim this if we cannot be objective with each other? Do you realize so many performance evaluations in education are based upon how the supervisor is feeling about you at that time, not about your performance for the year? Unfortunately, we often treat our students this way as well. We judge them based upon student records, but we do not look closely at the records, just the juicy gossip. The teachers lounge in K12 is often full of negative student gossip. Educators, we must do better if we a...

I would love to see this quote proved wrong but I will not hold my breath because nine years later this hasn't changed much...: ""The mistake of most traditional campus-based institutions was to see the potential if online learning in terms of access and serving more students instead of serving current students better" (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008)"

Let us look at this sentence: “I don’t like because of color”. If inserted into the wrong conversation in the right way, all of sudden you have an argument about racism. The whole sentence was really: “I don’t like this couch because the of the color” , a significant difference. When people alter, or omit words from sentences, it can have a profound effect on a conversation, when leaders do this, it can have a devastating effect in general. Leaders who consistently keep their employees in the dark are fostering a culture that thrives on rumors because we all know that information gap will be filled by something. It is even more sad when the information that was withheld was not even vital! If you want “buy-in" from your employees than you need to give them something to buy; if you want to have civil conversations then you need to check your sources before you quote. The standards of using references that are peer reviewed and reliable is not just for academia. A le...

There is a humorous video I show in the first part of one of my HR classes called “when Barry Met Sammy- A Funny View of HR and KM”, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9QWojx8qE While it is funny, it underscores a serious problem companies have, and industries have (including the higher education industry): leadership often does not show that they value their employees, in fact the reward for good work is often more work. What is the difficulty with acknowledging the work your employees do on a regular basis and rewarding them for it? I have said a million times before and I will say it again: YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSETS! This is a simple lesson to learn, and in theory it should be simple to practice; there is data that proves this. But the data is not being looked at, or at least not until it is too late. We teach this stuff in our universities, but why oh why, can we not learn it ourselves?! Education and specifically higher educa...

Retaliation is a real thing, it is an unfortunate thing, and it happens more often then we like in higher education. How does it happen? I am glad you asked. As an adjunct faculty, it is easy for a supervisor to do this, and sometimes they might not even realize they are doing it. Perhaps the supervisor med a scheduling error, and it caused a professor to lose a class. While we know there are no guarantees for adjuncts; it is still a loss. What happens is when the adjunct complains the supervisor leaves them off the list for the next term classes; and keeps them off. People often leave an institution because of a boss or because the culture supports a toxic environment; and when a person mentions this in an exit interview, often times, they are blamed instead of the issue being investigated. I have often written about how educators sometimes are the most indiscreet and inconsistent employers out there, and it is an unfortunate truth. Why is it that as higher educat...

Leaders all make mistakes, but hopefully we learn from our mistakes, especially when it comes to our businesses. What mistakes did you make in 2016? Have you corrected them or is it business as usual? Will we be having this same conversation five years from now? ·          Did you let those employees know they were valued? ·          Did you take the time to do one-on-ones with your employees so they can have a real performance review? ·          Did you give credit where credit was due? ·          Etc If it can be documented (your word is not enough) that you did all these things, congratulations! If this is not part of your normal practice, why isn’t it? Do you realize the message you are communicating to your staff by not doing these simple things? 2017 could be just another year of many, or you can ma...

If you have worked in education long enough, you will quickly learn that educators are full of flaws. ·          The industry is highly indiscreet, despite FERPA (FAMILY EDUCATION RIGHTS PRIVACY ACT) ·          People often work in silos without collaboration ·          We do not admit when we are wrong soon enough ·          ETC Do not get me wrong, I love my industry and our hearts are in the right place, but real change is really scary for most, and often we do not embrace the change until it is forced upon us. Issues with accreditation did not just happen overnight, this had to have taken years to build up. Accounting and solvency issues did not just suddenly appear, mistakes are going to happen when people get promoted into positions that does not necessarily suit them. Online technology has been grow...

Not an easy question to answer and many institutions are trying to answer this. Emory University : “Casually ask faculty members at Emory how they define faculty governance, and two themes emerge. First, most seem to focus on faculty governance at the departmental or the school/college level, in which their appointment is housed. Second, they view faculty governance as a mechanism to oversee the curriculum and guide decisions about the promotion, and if applicable, tenure of a colleague. From our perspective, the need for engaged faculty governance at the university level deserves at least as much consideration, though. Such attention is especially essential during this era of the rapidly shifting landscape in higher education”  http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/issues/2014/Spring/stories/sterkwagner/index.html NEA: Faculty Governance in Higher Education: “ Faculty members in higher education should have primary responsibility to: 1.    ...

The days of pounding pavement, going to an office and filling out an application are done, for better or worse electronic applications are the norm. There is a certain convenience to them obviously, especially not having to decipher peoples’ handwriting, and being able to electronically store applications. However, it is my belief that a little of the humanity has gone out of the job search, which in term causes great frustration for applicants.  Here are some of the issues I have identified: ·          Applications are being pre-screened by computers, and while there are many so-called experts out there who are willing to give you advice on how to “write a winning resume” (for a nominal fee of course), there are no guarantees that good and qualified candidates resumes are ever going to be seen by the decision makes. The “blackhole” effect, can cause qualified people to stop looking for jobs. ·     ...

Can you answer a strong yes to these questions? ·          Do you have a robust and supportive onboarding process for your part-time faculty? ·          Does your part-time faculty get the administrative, technological, and general support it needs on time? ·          Do you regularly let your part-time faculty know you appreciate them? ·          Do the part-time faculty have a voice in changes that affect them? ·          When was the last time you had meaningful conversations with the part-time faculty that work for you? Do you know who works for you? I am sure a lot of people answered yes because that is what you believe; that is what you know. However, would your part-time faculty agree with you? Can you answer that question? If you cannot answer a strong unequ...

So, one of big items in Higher Education is that an accreditor is in crisis: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-22/education-department-strips-authority-of-acics-the-largest-for-profit-college-accreditor?src=usn_li (not fan of this title but it is detailed) There are approximately 600,000 students who attend schools within this body, and not all are for-profit schools by the way, and even if that was the case For-Profit is not and should not be a curse word because that is unprofessional. Anyway, back to the question at hand: what is the plan to help all those students? Students have taken out loans, made sacrifices, and expect to get a degree: how are you going to help them accomplish this with causing more hardship in their lives? Community Colleges will not be able to help those on the tail end of a four-year degree, and how about all the loans that are going to come due because the students no longer have an in-school deferment? Too often, when large even...

“Former ITT Tech employees file lawsuit against dissolved institution” http://www.educationdive.com/news/former-itt-tech-employees-file-lawsuit-against-dissolved-institution/426005/ There is an interesting part of this article which all universities need to pay attention too, because the same conditions are capable of being re-created in non-profit private universities: “Though for-profits are specifically under attack by the federal government, there are other lessons for nonprofit institutions as well, particularly for terminating non-union or adjunct positions in the face of budget cuts, lowered enrollment, or   other factors   which may impact revenue or employment” Nobody is perfect and we all can be doing better Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

By  Danielle Douglas-Gabriel   September 8 at 6:20 PM   The closure of ITT Technical Institutes, a national chain of career schools with a 50-year legacy, is fueling a debate over the federal government’s aggressive policing of for-profit higher education and whether it could destroy the industry Read for yourself, interesting article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/is-the-federal-government-trying-to-take-down-the-for-profit-college-industry/2016/09/08/effb7ffe-75dd-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_story.html

I have learned and been given lots of good advice over the years about employees in the education industry, and there are many great quotes out there such as: ·          "Put your staff first, customers second, and shareholders third" ·          “treat employees not just the way you want to be treated, but the way they want to be treated”, ·          “People choose a school because of great faculty” These are all things I have heard being used in the education industry and they make sense to almost everyone. Why then does the education industry often fall far short of these great goals? A great many educational institutions now rely upon part-time or adjunct faculty. This pool of faculty tends to be very versatile, quick on their feet, and tend to work in the industry they are teaching. They are a wonderful resource so why do we not value them the way we...

This post has nothing to do with religion, but religion will be touched upon; it does have everything to do with the perceived priorities of many people. Definition of Religion according to Merriam-Webster: ·     the belief in a god or in a group of gods ·     an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods ·     an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group Definition of a god according to Merriam-Webster: ·     the perfect and all-powerful spirit or being that is worshipped especially by Christians, Jews, and Muslims as the one who created and rules the universe ·     a spirit or being that has great power, strength, knowledge, etc., and that can affect nature and the lives of people: one of various spirits or beings worshipped in some religions ·     a person and especially a man who i...