Land-grant colleges and universities have a storied past. This book looks at their future. Land-grant colleges and universities occupy a special place in the landscape of American higher education. Publicly funded agricultural and technical educational institutions were first founded in the mid-nineteenth century with the Morrill Act, which established land grants to support these schools. They include such prominent names as Cornell, Maryland, Michigan State, MIT, Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers, Texas A&M, West Virginia University, Wisconsin, and the University of California—in other words, four dozen of the largest and best public universities in America. Add to this a number of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges—in all, almost 300 institutions. Their mission is a democratic and pragmatic one: to bring science, technology, agriculture, and the arts to the American people. In this book, Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordon Gee discuss present challenges to and future opportunities for these institutions. Drawing on interviews with 27 college presidents and chancellors, Gavazzi and Gee explore the strengths and weaknesses of land-grant universities while examining the changing threats they face. Arguing that the land-grant university of the twenty-first century is responsible to a wide range of constituencies, the authors also pay specific attention to the ways these universities meet the needs of the communities they serve. Ultimately, the book suggests that leaders and supporters should become more fiercely land-grant in their orientation; that is, they should work to more vigorously uphold their community-focused missions through teaching, research, and service-oriented activities. Combining extensive research with Gee’s own decades of leadership experience, Land-Grant Universities for the Future argues that these schools are the engine of higher education in America—and perhaps democracy’s best hope. This book should be of great interest to faculty members and students, as well as those parents, legislators, policymakers, and other area stakeholders who have a vested interest in the well-being of America’s original public universities.

Tenure at a Crossroads, Again? goes beyond the explication of tenure to explore the contemporary challenges facing academia at the K–12 and higher education levels. This edited volume is unique in the sense that it grapples issues from multiple viewpoints—that of the university/college administrator and professor, to the K–12 educator. The book examines increased expectations and how existing policies have spilled over into institutions of higher learning once high school graduates enter this domain. Students’ educational expectations resonate with college administrators and policy makers forcing institutions to adapt to these needs. This moves professors to “dumb down” the curricula and teaching to avoid negative evaluations and protect themselves from unwarranted retaliation. This confluence of factors reverberates throughout the educational system, producing unintended effects that have collectively led to an alliance between the administration and students in higher education, much like those experienced by our K-12 colleagues yet now questions the rationale for tenure to re-examine dilemmas that have long dogged higher education. The most recent solution - the corporatization of institutions but to the detriment of a quality education. Weofferpracticalstrategies to mitigate this unilateral approach while incorporating innovative mechanisms for the system’s survival.

Shifts the narrative around the history of US higher education to examine its colonial past. Over the past several decades, higher education in the United States has been shaped by marketization and privatization. Efforts to critique these developments often rely on a contrast between a bleak present and a romanticized past. In Unsettling the University, Sharon Stein offers a different entry point—one informed by decolonial theories and practices—for addressing these issues. Stein describes the colonial violence underlying three of the most celebrated moments in US higher education history: the founding of the original colonial colleges, the creation of land-grant colleges and universities, and the post–World War II "Golden Age." Reconsidering these historical moments through a decolonial lens, Stein reveals how the central promises of higher education—the promises of continuous progress, a benevolent public good, and social mobility—are fundamentally based on racialized exploitation, expropriation, and ecological destruction. Unsettling the University invites readers to confront universities' historical and ongoing complicity in colonial violence; to reckon with how the past has shaped contemporary challenges at institutions of higher education; and to accept responsibility for redressing harm and repairing relationships in order to reimagine a future for higher education rooted in social and ecological accountability.

This volume explores the numerous and competing demands that face America’s public research universities and considers how institutions and their leaders can best navigate this challenge to ensure longevity, relevance, and success on the local, national, and global stage. Today’s public research universities have the unique challenge of responding to new societal pressures and policies, while remaining true to their core educational missions and values. Highlighting the multiple roles that universities must now fulfil – as institutions of higher learning, as research bodies, as institutions with global reputations, and as organizations that serve the public – the volume asks how they can best evolve in the rapidly changing education landscape. Tackling subjects such as faculty culture, the role of technology, financial sustainability, institutional identity, diversity, and organizational development, chapters identify innovative and transformative mechanisms for acclimatizing the public research university to current educational, academic, and societal needs. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in higher education, educational reform and policy, and the sociology of education more broadly.

In 1969, teenaged heiress Kimberly Martin enters a seedy Georgia bar, desperate to end her haunting dreams of alien abduction--but she instinctively knows they are more than just dreams. Aliens are preparing her womb for an implanted hybrid and she has a plan she hopes will stop them, but Kim has no idea that her act of defiance is about to unleash a stream of events that will catapult her and others to the precipice of a plot to take over the world. Kimberly's brother, Benny, learns that Kimberly is a candidate for insemination and he must shepherd Earth's people to a new dawn. Sarah Matheson is visited by what she thinks is an angel who performs a strange procedure on her. In Illinois, Chris Altenbrook walks away from a potentially lucrative athletic career to enter the priesthood without any idea of what lies ahead. Precipice is a fast-paced adventure of attempted murder, Vatican intrigue, world domination, and cosmic conspiracies as three families uncover the powerful truths that await this generation.

Have you ever wondered about the quality of your life? Have you ever quested for the purpose of your life? Given the fact that you learn about your calling in life, and do you know how to get started or deal with your calling? Are you called to serve something bigger than yourself? If you have had these questions, you are not alone in the journey of this life. Do you feel your experiences are complicated and the problems you face are challenging? Life today is quite different, and recovering from setbacks is not always easy. The ability to find direction and purpose is equally difficult. You cant choose where and when you will be born and what kind of family you will have. However, you can choose your attitude and lifestyle to carry on with your life. We live in a time in which traditional beliefs have been attenuated, ridiculed, and mocked. Dealing with obstacles is stressful and overcoming diversity can be fearful, but not impossible. It is imperative that you are willing to move forward before you see how detrimental your life can become. Life would be better if you learn to listen to your inner voice and the Holy Spirit. When you follow your own heart, you can find passion and dream to redefine your purpose in life.

A WORLD ON THE BRINK OF WAR. AN AFFAIR ON THE EDGE OF SCANDAL. FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR ‘A riveting tale of politics, war and erotic obsession’ Sunday Times ‘His most enthralling yet . . . a slam dunk of a plot . . . extraordinary’ Nicholas Coleridge, Independent ‘Gripping . . . Harris also has the John le Carré gift for showing how meetings can become a form of blood sport’ Jake Kerridge, Telegraph 'Splendid' Max Hastings, Sunday Times Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe. In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley – aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless – is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top secret documents – and suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that will alter the course of political history. Seamlessly weaving fact and fiction in a way that no writer does better, Precipice is the thrilling new novel from Robert Harris. 'The king of the page-turning thriller' i Paper 'Harris's cleverness, judgment and eye for detail are second to none' Sunday Times 'Harris writes with a skill and ingenuity that few other novelists can match' Financial Times 'Harris is a master of historical fiction, a compelling author who brings to life the recent and ancient past' TLS Robert Harris, Sunday Times bestseller, May 2024

In this riveting new novel from Edgar finalist Paul Doiron, Bowditch joins a desperate search for two missing hikers as Maine wildlife officials deal with a frightening rash of coyote attacks. When two female hikers disappear in the Hundred Mile Wilderness-the most remote stretch along the entire Appalachian Trail-Maine game warden Mike Bowditch joins the desperate search to find them. Hope turns to despair after two unidentified corpses are discovered-their bones picked clean by coyotes. Do the bodies belong to the missing hikers? And were they killed by the increasingly aggressive wild dogs? Soon, all of Maine is gripped with the fear of killer coyotes. But Bowditch has his doubts. His new girlfriend, wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens, insists the scavengers are being wrongly blamed. She believes a murderer may be hiding in the offbeat community of hikers, hippies, and woodsmen at the edge of the Hundred Mile Wilderness. When Stacey herself disappears along the AT, the hunt for answers becomes personal. Can Mike Bowditch find the woman he loves before the most dangerous animal in the North Woods strikes again?

An essential guide to renewing American leadership in a turbulent, polarized, and postdominant world Is America fated to decline as a great power? Can it recover? With absorbing insight and fresh perspective, foreign policy expert Andrew Imbrie provides a road map for bolstering American leadership in an era of turbulence abroad and deepening polarization at home. This is a book about choices: the tough policy trade-offs that political leaders need to make to reinvigorate American money, might, and clout. In the conventional telling, the United States is either destined for continued dominance or doomed to irreversible decline. Imbrie argues instead that the United States must adapt to changing global dynamics and compete more wisely. Drawing on the author’s own experience as an adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as on interviews and comparative studies of the rise and fall of nations, this book offers a sharp look at American statecraft and the United States’ place in the world today.