Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

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...

This is a real message sent out to employees in regards to a holiday party: “Please RSVP by COB Friday, December 9th. Holiday Party RSVP The Coleman University Holiday Party will take place on Friday, December 16th in Hopper Hall from 6-10pm. The event will include games, raffles, and a dance floor. The cost to attend is $5 per employee and you can bring one guest at no cost. Please pay at the front desk and RSVP by COB Friday, December 9th . We ask employees to provide a dessert item, employees bringing dessert will get one raffle ticket (only one).” Never mind the grammar issues in the message, never mind the acronyms that are not necessarily clear: you are charging your hardworking employees for a Christmas party! If money is an issue, perhaps just have a potluck, or maybe no party at all? The little things are what matter, it is the little things that get noticed, and these little things...

As employer and as a leader, you are going to get negative emails from employees from time to time because life happens. How you respond to those emails can be the difference between solving a problem and creating new one. By the way, not responding at all is a negative way of responding because every person wants to know that their point has been heard. Try and see the issue from the point of view of the employee, if you cannot, ask questions, and ask the employee what they would like to see happen. You might be able to fulfill their wish, but maybe all they wanted to do was vent; venting can be cathartic for people. There are too many people in authority who feel they must defend and counter every argument, rather than listen, understand, and try and help a person get through the issue. Leadership often means you must put the needs of your employees ahead of your own ego. So before you hit that delete button, before you decide to ignore that person, ask you...

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.    ...

Whatever political party you belong to, whichever label you put on yourself, all sensible people know that our criminal justice system is far from perfect. We have left the “correctional and rehabilitation” parts out and focused on the “punishment” thereby creating issues that should not exist. The system changes with the political winds (should not happen), and industries whose CEOs names we do not know, are making huge profits from it. Inflated phone calls for prisoners, expensive commissaries, prison labor, the bail bond system, debtors prison (still exists just not called that), fining communities into poverty for minor offenses, etc. Private prisons can only make a profit if there are prisoners, and we have seen judges go to jail recently for jailing kids and adults for a healthy kick-back. We have police officers, through no fault of their own, that are inadequately trained to handle a lot of situations and there is no training in sight. We have communities tha...

For the last 16 years, I have watched a steady decline in political discourse, and have seen an increase in political fighting and trolling; especially with the rise of social media. The vitriol is currently at an all-time high, and it is so bad that nobody’s message is getting through; and I mean the real message. Let me also so say that this is not a political message, I am not connected to any political party. I do not believe in labels and I do not fit into any category specifically. In 2000, when George W Bush was elected President, there were several people who I knew running around shouting, “he is going to be the anti-Christ”, there was crying, anger, etc. During one particular tirade I remember, when I routinely declined to let people know who I voted for (I got accused of all kinds of stuff because I was not agreeing with these folks), I asked a simple question: “what specifically are your issues with him”? Note the word specific… Fast forward to the electio...