Category Archives: Uncategorized

This past weekend the college hosted its annual fall meeting of the Board of Trustees, which reinforced to me how important—and unusual—shared governance is. Board meetings at Augustana involve dialogue, deep discussion and very careful consideration of input provided by … Continue reading →

A few weeks ago President Bahls forwarded a report from Moody’s, which is one of the bond rating agencies that focuses on institutions of higher education. Moody’s periodically releases reports and offers opinions about the financial health of colleges and other sectors … Continue reading →

Among the forward-thinking aspects of Affirm, Assure, Assess, Augustana’s new strategic plan, is the effort to shift our thinking from measuring what we have (i.e. student-to-faculty ratio, endowment per student, US News ranking, etc.) to what we do.  In our particular case, the … Continue reading →

Recently, I read another opinion piece, “Why Strategic Planning Fails,” describing why strategic planning in higher education fails. This time the author, Jerry Bishop, suggests on his blog The Higher Ed CIO, that most planning in higher education fails or … Continue reading →

Following my brief update to the faculty during the Faculty Retreat I was asked what risks were considered and how did we come up with the eight risks identified in Affirm, Assure and Assess? I thought it might be helpful to … Continue reading →

At the campus-wide convocation held on August 15 President Bahls highlighted a number of things about Affirm, Assure and Assess that are worth noting and emphasizing repeatedly. President Bahls reminded us that our plan calls for us to be true to … Continue reading →

I am not really crazy about the word brand and its use in higher education, but I thought including it in a blog post might get some people to tune in. It’s hard for me to imagine that a strategic … Continue reading →

Over the summer an op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Benjamin Ginsberg, titled “The Strategic Plan: Neither Strategy Nor Plan, but a Waste of Time” got me me worried about our Affirm, Assure and Assess (all you need to … Continue reading →

In an effort to maintain an ongoing narrative and discussion of the implementation of “the addendum” to Authentically Augustana, I have committed to maintain a blog to keep our community and other interested parties up-to-date on our progress. For me, … Continue reading →