Becoming great universities : small steps for sustained excellence / Richard J. Light and Allison Jegla.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Encouraging continuous campus improvement : building a culture of systemic innovation -- Helping students from under-resourced high schools to succeed at a rigorous college -- Investing vs. harvesting : encouraging students to balance risks and talents -- How do we attract and support students who may not be considering our institution? -- Rural Americans as a case study -- Experimenting with teaching to improve student learning outcomes -- What are students actually learning? : how do we know? -- Acting on students' opinions, ideas, and advice -- Facilitating constructive interactions among students from differing backgrounds and experiences -- Building opportunities for lifelong learning and engagement -- Inspiring students to think globally -- Bringing it all together : suggestions for getting started.

"Becoming Great Universities arose from co-author Richard J. Light's visits over the past twenty years to more than 250 campuses and his conversations with presidents, administrators, faculty, and students. Light and co-author Allison Jegla have distilled the topics arising from these conversations into the ten chapters that frame their book, with emphasis on the prospect of promoting a culture of continuous innovation for creating value for students. This book is precisely about the university's teaching and student development mission-not research. The overwhelming evidence in the higher education literature asserts that it is on the teaching and education side that our colleges and universities are most challenged, and therefore that is where the greatest improvements can and must be made. Light and Jegla's message to higher education leaders is that improving performance depends to a great extent on their purposeful development of the institution's culture as a community, and on leveraging this culture through the encouragement of constructive working relationships across all sectors of campus, including administration, staff, faculty, and students. Their chapters cover the following topics: how to help students from under-resourced backgrounds; how to encourage students to invest their time and talents beneficially; how to attract students from non-traditional backgrounds to campus; how to improve learning outcomes through innovative teaching; how to assess learning; how to productively elicit student opinions, ideas, and advice; how to facilitate constructive interaction among students from differing backgrounds; how to build opportunities for lifelong learning; and how to inspire students to think globally. Throughout their book, Light and Jegla emphasize practical lessons for promoting measures of innovation on each front. With a broad spectrum of institutions in mind, the authors present dozens of no-cost or low-cost, actionable initiatives that faculty, university leaders, and even students can implement, always in the spirit of working toward their campus's sustained improvement over time"-- Provided by publisher.

"How campus communities of every kind can transform themselves from good to great Becoming Great Universities highlights ten core challenges that all colleges and universities face and offers practical steps that everyone on campus-from presidents to first-year undergraduates-can take to enhance student life and learning.This incisive book, written in a friendly and engaging style, draws on conversations with presidents, deans, and staff at hundreds of campuses across the country as well as scores of in-depth interviews with students and faculty. Providing suggestions that all members of a campus community can implement, Richard Light and Allison Jegla cover topics such as how to build a culture of innovation on campus, how to improve learning outcomes through experimentation, how to help students from under-resourced high schools succeed in college, and how to attract students from rural areas who may not be considering colleges far from their communities. They offer concrete ways to facilitate constructive interactions among students from different backgrounds, create opportunities for lifelong learning and engagement, and inspire students to think globally. Most of the ideas presented in this book can be implemented at little to no cost.Featuring a wealth of evidence-based examples, Becoming Great Universities offers actionable suggestions for everyone to have a positive impact on college life regardless of whether their campus is urban or rural, private or public, wealthy or not, large or small"-- Provided by publisher.