As AGB prepares to release Top Strategic Issues for Boards 2024–2025, a biennial update to our essential publication, it does so after a period of unexpected risks and challenges have buffeted higher education and its leadership
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The AGB Council of Board Chairs is a group of 25 to 30 leaders of member college and university boards of trustees from around the United States who meet quarterly to obtain information on pressing current topics and engage in an exchange of ideas with fellow board chairs.
Higher education is on the edge of change with more institutional closures and consolidations, and colleges and universities must continue to think strategically. Diversification of revenue streams is one such way to plan for the future. In this podcast, AGB’s Associate Vice President of Content Strategy Doug Goldenberg-Hart speaks with RNL Senior Vice President Todd Abbott and Brad Goan, PhD, the senior advisor for strategic innovation at the University of Montana and an associate consultant with RNL about the Strategic Enrollment Growth Matrix, with a special focus on diversification and how the board of trustees can support the institution in an enrollment planning process.
“Board Oversight of Institutional Performance” was the topic of the February 8 meeting of the AGB Council of Board Chairs. Few areas of focus could be more critical in terms of board governance practices and captures the sentiments with which AGB CEO Henry Stoever opened the zoom meeting.
The November meeting of AGB’s Council of Board Chairs focused on the challenges that the environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA)[1] present to effective and strategic shared governance of America’s colleges and universities. The session began with a presentation by Council Ambassador David Maxwell, PhD, proposing the essential institutional characteristics necessary to survive and thrive in a VUCA world:
The topic of the August session of the AGB Council of Board Chairs was “Anticipating Strained Board-Constituent Relations.” The primary question put to the group was: “Are You Ready?” In advance of the session, the following list of potential factors impacting the campus environment and its constituents was offered to give participants opportunities and challenges to consider. Council ambassadors David Maxwell and Jill Derby offered an overview of these topics while emphasizing the challenges institutional leaders and boards face in addressing these issues as they emerge in an environment that has changed (and continues to change) in significant ways. There is definitely consensus that new approaches and creative solutions are needed in this post-pandemic world—across all sectors of higher education.
AGB’s Council of Board Chairs had a vibrant discussion on accreditation, which included a preview of the forthcoming 2022 AGB-CHEA Joint Advisory Statement on Accreditation and Governing Boards.