Advancing Systemic Change in Higher Education

Helping campuses build leadership capacity to achieve more strategic and sustainable change.

Opportunities to Engage With Change Leadership Group (CLG) Experts

Get expert guidance in navigating the complexities of systemic and transformational change. At the root of the permacrisis facing higher education lie the systemic elements of change; that is, campuses are faced with reorganizing structures, revising policies, practices, and programs and creating new cultures, attitudes and values. The Change Leadership Group offers a comprehensive and customizable program that is based on the resources of the Change Leadership Toolkit and other scholarly resources.

By engaging campus leaders, from faculty and staff to deans, provosts and presidents, in this program, campuses will be better positioned to lead systemic change by:
Building an understanding of the nature of systemic change in their organization

Clarifying goals and outcomes of change efforts prior to implementation planning

Engaging a team and build change leadership capacity to lead change

Developing a common language and framework for leading change across the organization

Identifying key elements of their change context, such as opportunities to use, challenges to overcome, and levers that will accelerate change progress

Connecting context to strategic actions leaders can take to leverage opportunities and overcome challenges

Establishing a comprehensive change leadership plan with metrics for evaluation and assessment of progress

Creating a transition management plan that will help leaders manage the human elements of change over time

Campuses are using this approach to reach transformational goals, such as:
Address structural budget deficits

Streamline operations to improve efficiencies

Reach improved student success outcomes

Respond to external policy shifts and pressures

Build innovative curricula and credentials

Create a continuous improvement culture

Implement transformational aspects of a campus strategic plan

Establish deeper goals for accreditation activities

Enhance partnerships with community or industry partners

The process begins with small group meetings, workshops or retreats to develop an understanding of the challenges facing the institution, the desired change vision and goals, and the important contexts that influence their ability to reach those goals. This lays the foundation for the development of a broader and more comprehensive plan for leading change. Worksheets, discussion guides, and planning templates are provided to facilitate the work of campus change teams and leaders in creating and implementing their plans. Thought partnership coaching with key leaders builds change leadership capacity, effective team dynamics, and institutional success. Additional resources regarding transition management are then used to ensure the institution can transition from the old ways to the new as the campus moves into a more productive continuous improvement environment.

Holcombe, E., Kezar, A., Elrod, S.L., and Ramaley, J. (Eds) (2021)

Scholarship Our Work is Based Upon

Elrod, S.L., Lawson, A., Salomone, S. (2024)Leading Systemic Change: A How To Guide for Long-lasting Results. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. 58(3): 46-52. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00091383.2024.2349460

Elrod, S. (April 1, 2024) Five Reasons Change Initiatives Fail. Academic Leader. Available at: https://www.academic-leader.com/topics/leadership/five-reasons-change-initiatives-fail/

González, A., Holcombe, E., Elrod, S.L., Kezar, A., (2023) Transforming Higher Education Through an Ecosystem Model of Systemic Change Leadership. Academic Leader. Available at: https://www.academic-leader.com/topics/leadership/transforming-higher-education-through-an-ecosystem-model-of-systemic-change-leadership/

Elrod, S.L. Kezar, A., González, A., (2023) Change Leadership Toolkit: A Guide for Advancing Systemic Change in Higher Education. Available on the University of Southern California Pullias Center for Education website at: https://pullias.usc.edu/project/the-change-leadership-toolkit-for-advancing-systemic-change/

Holcombe, E., Kezar, A., Elrod, S.L., and Ramaley, J. (Eds) (2021) Shared Leadership in Higher Education: Framework and Models for Responding to a Changing World, Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Kezar, Adrianna, Elizabeth Holcombe, Darsella Vigil, and Jude Paul Mathias Dizon. Shared Equity Leadership: Making Equity Everyone’s Work. Washington, DC: American Council on Education; Los Angeles: University of Southern California, Pullias Center for Higher Education.

Elrod, S.L., and J. Ramaley (June 5, 2020) Shared Leadership as a Strategy for Leading in a Time of Crisis and Beyond. Posted at Higher Education Today, a blog by ACE. Available at: https://www.higheredtoday.org/2020/06/05/shared-leadership-strategy-leading-time-crisis-beyond/

Elrod, S.L. and Kezar, A. (2017) Increasing Student Success in STEM: Summary of a Guide to Systemic Institutional Change. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. 49(4):26-34.

Elrod, S.L. and Kezar, A. (2016) Increasing Student Success in STEM: A Guide to Systemic Institutional Change. Washington, DC: AAC&U. Click here for PDF.

Kezar, A., Gehrke, S., and Elrod, S. L, (2015) Implicit Theories of Change as a Barrier to Change on College Campuses: An Examination of STEM Reform. The Review of Higher Education. 38(4): 479-506.

Clients

Our list of Higher Education clients includes dozens of colleges and universities within the US, Canada and abroad across the spectrum of institutional types: community colleges, regional comprehensive universities, liberal arts and faith-based colleges, research and land grant universities, and minority-serving institutions in the public and private sectors. In addition to our extensive engagement with colleges and universities, we have worked with multiple national associations and their members.

Client details available upon request.

Who We Are

Susan Elrod, PhD

Dr. Elrod is an experienced biology professor, university administrator, and nationally recognized expert in higher education change leadership.She is co-author of the Change Leadership Toolkit (2023) and Shared Leadership in Higher Education (2021).Over the past decade, she has used this and other scholarship to engage teams of diverse audiences through various elements of the change leadership program, including faculty and staff leaders, academic program directors, professional development leaders, student life professionals, institutional researchers, budget managers, department chairs, associate deans, deans, and executive leaders. She has also led programs with leaders from every unit on campus, including academic affairs, student affairs, budget and finance, and community and government relations. And, she has engaged leaders at a wide range of institutions, including major public research universities, private liberal arts colleges, regional institutions, community colleges in the US and abroad.

Throughout her career, she has used an entrepreneurial mindset and a shared leadership approach to achieve goals that result in meaningful progress and lasting change. She has served as a leader at universities in three university systems in the United States: the California State University (CSU) system, the University of Wisconsin (UW) system, and Indiana University. She served as a faculty member and campus leader, assistant chair, associate dean, and director of a STEM education center at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; as dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at California State University, Fresno; and as interim provost at California State University, Chico. She then served as provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. She recently completed 5 ½ years of service as the 6th chancellor of Indiana University South Bend. In these roles, she led efforts that resulted in enrollment gains, curricular innovations, greater achievement of diversity outcomes, improved fiscal sustainability, organizational realignment with strategic priorities, improved community engagement and fundraising success.During 2006-7, she was an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow at Colorado College.

She also served as the executive director of Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) at the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC, 2010-2013. In this position, she led multi-campus national initiatives focused on improving undergraduate STEM education and national faculty leadership programs with funding from the United States Department of Education and several philanthropic foundations. She is also a co-founder of CRUSE, the Coalition for Reform in Undergraduate STEM Education, which is a consortium of seven national associations focused on fostering national collaborations for student success in STEM. For her work in STEM higher education, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Her scholarship has resulted in over 30 publications on topics ranging from undergraduate research to systemic change and leadership, as well as several scientific publications and patents. She and her colleagues have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and others. She has raised over $10 million in federal and private funds to support research and educational initiatives. She regularly leads workshops, webinars, and keynote addresses on systemic change and leadership to campuses, associations, state systems, and at national conferences (for a sample listing, see below).

Elrod holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis and an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from California State University, Chico where she also served as President of the Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) and was inducted into the Omicron Theta Epsilon Biological Sciences Honor Society. After completing her PhD, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at Novozymes, Inc. in Davis, California.