On January 1, Ithaka S+R launched its new Educational Transformation program, which consolidates all of our higher education initiatives into a single, more impactful program. One of the first publications from the program, in conjunction with Princeton University Press, was Locus of Authority: the Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education, by William Bowen and Eugene Tobin. Addressing one of the most important issues in higher education, the authors discuss the evolution of the concept of shared governance and call for a reconceptualization that takes into account the fast pace of technological change and the extreme pressures on institutions to address cost-effective student success.

Locus is now available for purchase from Princeton University Press, and we encourage you to also listen to the authors discussing their work in this podcast from Inside Higher Ed. Alexandra Logue, professor at the Center for Advanced Study in Education in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, wrote a wonderful response to Locus in the Chronicle of Higher Education, placing the book in the context of her experience with developing the Pathways Project at CUNY.

Shared governance holds great interest for faculty and administrators alike, and is a topic we have considered in some of our other publications, particularly in Technology-Enhanced Education at Public Flagship Universities: Opportunities and Challenges and In Pursuit of Excellence and Inclusion: Managing Change at Arizona State University. It’s an area that we will continue to explore through our new case study series as we look for examples of innovative practices.  In a series of blog posts, we will be drawing out what we have learned about governance in the course of our research. We invite your perspective on this important issue and look forward to hearing from you.