Opportunities to Engage With Change Leadership Group (CLG) Experts
Contact us to discuss details and pricing.
Colleges and universities are navigating an era of compounding challenges: enrollment pressures, constrained budgets, shifting federal and state policy landscapes, growing demands for institutional accountability, and changing demographics and student demands. Leaders who are charged with responding to these challenges are often working without the time or resources to lead strategically through these challenges.
The Change Leadership Group usesan evidence-based approach,based on the Change Leadership Toolkit (CLT) and other resourcesalong with more than a decade of experience leading and facilitating systemic change on campuses across the country. Our work is grounded in a rigorous, contextually grounded, research-based process of sensemaking, strategy development, and leadership capacity building – from faculty and staff leaders to department chairs, deans, provosts, presidents, and governing boards. that is customized to meet campus goals to move from problem identification to durable, lasting change.
The Toolkit has been downloaded by nearly 3,000 higher education practitioners at 900 institutions, associations, and systems in the United States and across the world.
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.
Clients
We have worked with hundreds of colleges and universities within the US, Canada and abroad across the spectrum of institutional types: community colleges, regional comprehensive universities, technical colleges, liberal arts and faith-based colleges, research and land grant universities, and minority-serving institutions in the public and private sectors. In addition, we have worked with dozens of national associations, such as AAAS, AAU, AASCU, AAVMC, APLU, BHEF, CCA, UIIN, and accreditors, including HLC, NWCCU, and WASC, to bring the resources of change leadership to their members. Our work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Gates Foundation.
Client details available upon request.
Who We Are
-
Susan Elrod is a nationally recognized scholar, educator, and practitioner whose work converges at the intersection of higher education leadership, systemic change, and shared governance. As a consultant and thought partner, she brings a career of higher education leadership that reflects her experiences as a faculty member, administrator, national leader, and scholar.
Elrod’s scholarly contributions include more than 30 peer-reviewed publications and books on topics ranging from genetics and undergraduate STEM education to systemic change and shared leadership. She is co-author of the Change Leadership Toolkit (2025), an evidence-based framework and step-by-step guide for leading systemic change in higher education, and co-author of Shared Leadership in Higher Education (2021). Her work has appeared in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, The Review of Higher Education, Academic Leader, and other leading publications. She serves on the editorial board of Change magazine and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a distinction recognizing her sustained contributions to STEM higher education. She and her colleagues have secured more than $10 million in federal and philanthropic funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, among others.
Her administrative career reflects the same commitment to evidence-based, systemic, and collaborative approaches. She served as the sixth Chancellor of Indiana University South Bend, as Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, as Interim Provost at California State University, Chico, and as Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at California State University, Fresno where she led initiatives resulting in strategic transformation, student success, fiscal sustainability, and community partnerships using a shared leadership approach across institutions of varying size, mission, and context. Earlier in her career, she was an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow at Colorado College and served as Executive Director of Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) at the Association of American Colleges & Universities, where she led multi-campus national initiatives in undergraduate STEM education reform funded by the U.S. Department of Education and major foundations. She is a co-founder of CRUSE, the Coalition for Reform in Undergraduate STEM Education, a consortium of national associations and societies. She served on the board of HERS and is now on the board of Campus Compact.
Elrod holds a PhD in Genetics from the University of California, Davis and a BS in Biological Sciences from California State University, Chico where she also served as President of the Associated Students, Inc. (ASI). She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Novozymes, Inc. in Davis, CA.
