The Chief Academic Officer is uniquely positioned to offer leadership and innovation. However, most chief academic officers are not formally prepared to launch innovations nor do they have a peer group to explore ideas. The continuing challenges of the pandemic, changing demographics, and decreasing enrollments have only exacerbated the need for Chief Academic Officers to drive innovation.
Chief Academic Officers who are leading organizational change
Experienced or new Chief Academic Officers who want to focus on their professional development
Chief Academic Officers who would like to use improvement science in driving innovation and change at their institution.
Meeting monthly with a cohort of your peers through a virtual year-long engagement
Improving your understanding of theories and practices of higher education innovation and change—and resistance to this
Developing a plan for significant innovation and implementation
Learning from the field-tested and refined content from three previous cohorts.
Gaining a better understanding of what you encounter as you pursue educational innovation.
Receive guidance, peer collaboration, and access to resources all designed to address the changing needs of institutional leadership.
The Community is designed to with both a virtual and in-person components to help create a community of peers to support each other through this work.
Meet your cohort in the Asheville, NC area spending two days focusing on your personal and professional development. Dates will be determined by cohort.
Learn from facilitators, peers, and past participants as you build your network and deepen your understanding of improvement science and change leadership.
Structured opportunities for participants to turn theory into practice by refining their meaning of innovation and developing ideas for their own institution.
Projects have included such topics as:
$9,250 (excludes costs for travel and lodging for two in-person meetings in the beautiful Asheville, N.C. area).
Fees for The Chief Academic Officers Innovation Community may be paid over two fiscal years.
The Gardner Institute offers a discount to CAOs from under-resourced and under-represented institutions. To see if your institution qualifies, please email info@gardnerinstitute.org.
Email Info@gardnerinstitute.org for more information.
"As a new provost, in a new institution and a new city, I was concerned about spending even the modest amount of time needed to participate in the CAO innovation group. A year later, every minute was worth the investment. The change management tools we learned and practiced were effective on my home campus, and produced positive results for this fall. The time spent in our monthly meetings developed me as a new provost and always left me with encouragement. Time at the Gardner institute was a welcome respite as their hospitality surrounded great programming and delightful company. Listening to and talking with the other CAOs was invaluable."
Robin Rylaarsdam
Provost and Executive Vice President, Bethel University
“The Curricular Analytics Community tools helped us to look deeply into the various systems that affect our students, to identify causes of delays and unintended obstacles, and to consider why systems were designed in certain ways. More than that, these tools led us from those analyses to action plans that we can implement immediately.”
Sarah L. Peters, Ph.D.
Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies, East Central University
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