Respond to the following discussion questions:
Discussion Questions should be at least 3-4 paragraphs long including citations
Discussion #1
In my experience, I have seen both effective and ineffective leaders. Effective leaders have a number of positive characteristics. The most important characteristics is passion. In order to be effective, one must display a passion in their role. Passion is essential in higher education. While decision making is a critical part of being a leader, it should be accompanied with passion. Passion helps leaders to strive for the best interest of those who would be affected. For example, at an institution I worked at, there was a struggle of power between the dean of students and other administrators. The dean was attempting to meet the needs of the students by utilizing the budget to upgrade the student center; however, administration saw the need to utilize funds for other means. The passion of the dean to serve the students is what provided fuel to fight for change. Passion isn't the only characteristic to be an effective leader of change. Good judgement and active listening are characteristics that an effective leader must also have. In order to strategically be effective, one must listen to the concerns of the stakeholders of the stakeholders and utilized good judgement in navigating the best interests of the institution.
Part 2
Historically Black Colleges and Universities provide plays a more significant role in student development that minorities at Predominantly White Institutions.
The key stakeholders to this issue are students, administration, and faculty. These stakeholders are relevant to this issue for several reasons. Minority students at Predominantly White Institutions deserves the same level of engagement as students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Minority Serving Institutions are the gold standard in terms of engagement. Administration are invested in this issue as well. Their mission is not only to develop students, but to provide a fair and comparable learning environment to those students as well. Faculty are also invested due to the fact that it is their role in the students' future. Educators, just like all parents, want their students to have the best educational experience as possible.
What is the benefit of attending a Predominantly White Institutions?
What accommodations are made for minority students at Predominantly White Institutions?
How do minority students fare at Historically Black Colleges and Universities?
What challenges does student face as being a part of a minority culture at an institution?
As educators, what is your emotional/psychological impact on students?
These responses to these questions are important to addressing the problem, because these questions will give insight to issues that all three stakeholders are facing. These questions will provide a prospective into what students experience as being among the minority population. Additionally, discovering why Minority Serving Institutions are successful and how PWI's can emulate these practices to become more effective in supporting minority students.
Discussion
Part 1
When it comes to change and the characteristics that a leader must possess, the core characteristic is the understanding that the group must be able to have a cohesiveness to be able to work together as a team to be able to complete an objective. As Quah and Sim (2015) stated that the knowledge and skill necessary to improve the performance of schools do belong to the system as a whole supports the notion of teamwork as an important part of innovation as the team members ‘provide interaction, conflict, critical thinking, reflection and constant dialogue' to attain quality. I feel it safe to say that the fore mentioned characteristics are all good attributes a good leader should have to be effective. Along with all the attributes mentioned it is important to have the ability to recognize personality traits, because interaction with one individual will not necessarily work with another, so being able to identify varying personalities will be invaluable. Another good trait that a leader must have is always willing to be malleable to any situation that comes along, and always keeping in mind that it is always for the good of the group.
Part 2
The stakeholders that I would like to zero in on are the educators because they are the ones that are working with the students and have to deal with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on a daily basis weather they are working or not. As I mentioned in the last discussion Irby (2016) K-12 is gravitated away from learning and is more about how the student feels and how much information he or she can recall. Thinking about who I will need approval from will be the administration and the students that I will be administering the surveys to, because there needs to be an overall opinion of student learning currently is. I do not see any risks of this but the benefits would be to obtain a better understanding of how to better fine tune CCSS to better accommodate students. I possible outcomes may chance the way that students just regurgitate information without really learning the material and will then start to encourage true learning.
References
Quah, C. S., & Sim, S. P. (2015, December). Making progress as leaders among university staff.
Universal Journal of Educational Research. 612-624 pp. 13
Irby, L. D. (2016, October 5). Leaders and Stakeholders' Perspectives [Online forum comment]. Retrieved
from: https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/discussionboard/.