Advancing Systemic Change

The Change Leadership Group offers systemic change leadership expertise and services to higher education and other industries.

Opportunities to Engage With GLG Experts

Workshops and Webinars

Who: Customized interactive outcomes-focused workshops on various components of building a comprehensive change leadership plan to more effectively achieve systemic change outcomes.

What: Campus leaders and teams, organization-wide programs, multi-campus grant-funded initiatives.

How: 60-90 minutes, 3 hours, full-day or multiple engagements over a 6-12 month timeframe, in-person or virtual.

Presentations

Consultations

Change Leader Coaching

Scholarship Our Work is Based Upon

Elrod, S.L., Lawson, A., Salomone, S. (in press) Leading Systemic Change: A How To Guide for Long-lasting Results, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning.

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

We have worked with dozens of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada across the spectrum of institutional types: community colleges, regional comprehensive universities, liberal arts and faith-based colleges, research universities, and minority-serving institutions in the public and private sectors. We have also worked with dozens of national associations and their members. Client details available on request.

Who We Are

Susan Elrod, PhD

Susan Elrod is chancellor at Indiana University South Bend, the largest regional campus of Indiana University (IU). She is an experienced biology professor, university administrator, and national leader in STEM and systemic change leadership in higher education. She has also served as a dean and provost at universities in two other systems of higher education, the California State University (CSU) system and the University of Wisconsin (UW) system. In 2006-7, she was an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow. As a campus leader she has lead change efforts related to enrollment management, sustainable finance, student access and success, and institutional leadership and organization.

She also served as the executive director of Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) at the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC where she worked with over 50 campuses across the country on funded national initiatives focused on systemic change in undergraduate STEM program. 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 leading to improved student access and 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).

She has over 30 publications on topics ranging from undergraduate research to systemic change and leadership, as well as several scientific publications and patents. She is co-author of the Change Leadership Toolkit (2023) and Shared Leadership in Higher Education (2021). Her work has 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. She serves on the HERS Board of Directors and on the editorial board of Change Magazine. 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). After completing her PhD, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at Novozymes, Inc. in Davis, California.

Change Leadership in Practice Notes from the Field

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June 14, 2024

What is systemic change?

Higher education leadership these days is change leadership. And the buzz about change is just getting louder, especially after the pandemic and the social justice movements that resulted from events during that time as well as the encroaching demographic cliff, AI, and recent global events. But, What are we really talking about when we use the word “change” in higher education? Are we just tinkering around the edges or disrupting the status quo? This post describes different types of change but specifically defines the elements of systemic change efforts, which are those that are transformative, disruptive and result in changes to the systems in which we are operating.