Momentum: The Responsibility Paradigm and Virtuous Cycles of Change in Colleges and Universities

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Description

An era of accountability has swept over the higher education landscape. Everyone it seemslegislatures, think tanks, newspapers, magazines, books, and bloggerswants to hold colleges and universities accountable. They are attaching strings to budgets; producing reports that read like exposs; developing clever systems to rank and sort us; and writing books and articles that describe the end of college as we know it. According to them, we need to be reformed, reimagined, and rebooted. Momentum changes the conversation from how others are holding higher education accountable to why colleges and universities need to embrace the need to demonstrate their own responsibility. The responsibility paradigm that emerges fundamentally shifts the dialogue from fixing to preventing, from reacting to creating, from surviving to thriving. To implement this new paradigm, the dynamics of virtuous cycles are introduced and described. These upward spirals build on their own successes and result in growing confidencea sense of vitality and resilience. The future of these institutions isnt the result of outside pressure or reformers. The future is something that can and should be created by those who take responsibility for it.

Reviews

Seymour provides a realistic, effective framework for planning and executing major change in a college or university. It should be required reading for every institutional change-leadership team that intends to succeed. -- Ellen Chaffee, senior consultant, Association of Governing Boards
Seymour offers a thoughtful analysis of the opportunities facing higher education institutions today and urges a strategic call to action. -- Lori Gaskin, president, Santa Barbara City College
For decades as a university administrator I applied a simple operating principle: good enough is never good enough. Being content ensured a certain passivity which, in turn, interfered with the imperative to regularly assess the changing environment and continually transform the institution. Eventually, comfort catches up to you. I never realized that this basic idea could be developed into a framework for decision-making until I read Daniel Seymours Momentum: The Responsibility Paradigm and Virtuous Cycles of Change in Colleges and Universities (2016). The premise is that when the rate of change outside our institutions exceeds the rate of change inside, we either gain traction and evolve or lose ground and diminish. Standing pat is no longer an option. But exactly how do we gain momentum The virtuous cycle, or upward spiral, is introduced as a tool for colleges to create their own futures where each success becomes the platform for more successes. The core chapters describe a set of spiral dynamics that are at the heart of this relentlessly pragmatic exercise. My own discomfort with comfort has been affirmed in the pages of this book. -- Michael D. Young, PhD, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara

Author Bio

Daniel Seymour is a professor, administrator, and consultant to colleges and universities who has written 15 books in business and higher education including the best-selling Once Upon a Campus and Noble Ambitions.