Undergraduate Education, Best Practices, Leadership, University of Southern California

Michael L. Jackson

University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education from Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley

Abstract: The University of Southern California (USC) transformed its undergraduate education program by making it a top priority in its strategic plans for the last two decades. The undergraduate experience was thoroughly studied and findings were used to determine what needed to be changed to improve the educational experience for students in and outside of the classroom. The institution has spent over $1.5B to hire new faculty to teach undergraduates, construct new residential colleges and renovate older ones (all led by tenured faculty), and build a new health center, campus center, and spaces in the USC College and professional schools dedicated to undergraduate academic programs, support services, and co-curricular programs. The key to the transformation was leadership provided by its late President Steven B. Sample and the university leaders he recruited to take on this big challenge. The team was focused and empowered to make administrative and academic changes, in concert with deans and faculty leaders, and given resources to turn thoughts, dreams and hopes into reality. The results are clear and demonstrate that institutions can improve undergraduate education by making it a high priority, allocating resources to recruit and hire outstanding faculty, and expand and improve programs, activities and facilities that directly serve undergraduates.

Keywords: Education; Undergraduate Education; Best Practices; Leadership; University of Southern California (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7f36s666.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt7f36s666

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education from Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().