Writing

The Council on Higher Education as a Strategic Asset (HESA) will complete their report in June 2024. How are their discussions and final recommendations likely to be informed by past commissions and councils? This article puts this latest group’s work in historic context by looking at the efforts and outcomes of the Truman Commission and the Spellings Commission.

In this op-ed, vice presidents for research at two major land-grant universities, David Rosowsky (Kansas State University) and Peter Dorhout (Iowa State University) discuss the Farm Bill and need for investment in our nation’s agriculture research infrastructure.

AGB Trusteeship magazine, Mar/Apr 2023

As we enter the fourth year of the pandemic or the second year of the post-pandemic era, depending on your perspective, here are four things to look for from higher education in 2023—a refreshed look at what continues to be a critical time with as yet unmet challenges and unrealized opportunities for colleges and universities.

Inside Higher Ed, Nov. 7, 2022

When it comes to communicating their value to the public, universities have not been shy. They have hired staff, redirected precious time and resources, and even taken out magazine ads and billboards to toot their horns and tout their feats in important markets. But is their message being heard?

Across partisan lines, citizens agree on one thing—how public universities should spend their money, David V. Rosowsky, E. Gordon Gee and Stephen M. Gavazzi write.

University Business, May 2022

The higher education industry has long been reproached for its slower pace of reform. The pandemic exacerbated this, with the world intently watching and assessing the industry’s ability to quickly pivot—and to not only reflect societal realities, but to drive systemic change going forward.

AGB Trusteeship magazine, Jan/Feb 2022

New strategies will be needed for higher education leaders to successfully respond to the types, magnitudes, and concurrent impacts and mutual amplification of crises they will face in the years ahead, the so-called post-pandemic era. This point was driven home in the 2020 and 2021 academic years as higher education institutions and their leaders faced multiple challenges rising to the level of crises. What made this period so challenging was not the global pandemic on its own (although this was perhaps the single greatest challenge U.S. colleges and universities have faced in history), but the concurrence of multiple crises, more than one of which might even be considered a pandemic.

AACRAO, College and University, Summer 2021

Challenges confronting higher education have led to outcomes-driven approaches such as performance-based funding, forced greater emphasis on student persistence and completion, and spurred campus-wide student success efforts. In examining ways to achieve integrated student success efforts across campus, this article explores issues related to structure and alignment, faculty versus student affairs culture, and risk points to address when implementing institution-wide strategies.

As I prepare to move, and button up chapters of our Vermont life and our time at UVM – with full confidence we will return often to visit our friends and “Vermont family” – I wanted to take the opportunity to write one final piece in the Across the Green series, a capstone to the series I started in 2013 as a new provost to regularly share thoughts, plans, and progress with the UVM academic community. The series continued after my six-year term with shorter ATG Brief essays on a broad range of higher education topics that I hoped might continue to be of interest to some of the regular readers of Across the Green over the years. I was always grateful for the feedback I received on these essays. In this final “capstone” essay, I have only two objectives: (1) to say thank you, and (2) to share my wishes for the UVM academic community I was so privileged to serve.

Structural Safety, January 2021

Little has been written about the value of professional mentorship in the field of civil engineering, yet most would argue its importance. New engineers, new faculty, and new professionals in nearly every field benefit disproportionately from effective, timely, and sustained mentoring. Their careers are launched on a positive trajectory, their careers develop, and they advance more quickly, they often find more professional satisfaction in their careers, and – not surprisingly – they often go on to become mentors in their own right. In this paper, the authors (both civil engineers and leaders, one in professional practice and one in academia) reflect on two important mentors they were fortunate enough to share. We wrote this paper for three purposes: (1) to highlight the importance of great mentors to one’s career, (2) to thank two individuals that had profound impacts on us both, and (3) to inspire others so seek out mentors, to commit to being a mentor, and to find as much joy in participating on both sides of the mentor–mentee relationship as we have found in our careers.