CHEA Board Member Dr. Javier Cevallos named American Academic Leadership Institute President and other news.

February 24, 2023

HEADLINES

Dr. Javier Cevallos Recently Appointed President of the American Academic Leadership Institute (Diverse, February 15, 2023) Dr. Javier Cevallos was recently appointed president of the American Academic Leadership Institute (AALI). Dr.  Cevallos is currently president-in-residence of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Previously, he was president of Framingham State University, president of Kutztown University; and vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Massachusetts; chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UMass; and faculty adviser to the provost at UMass. Cevallos was also commissioner for New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) and board member for a number of organizations, including the AASCU Board, the Millennium Leadership Initiative Board, the NCAA DII and DIII Council of Presidents, the Climate Leadership Steering Committee, the Second Nature Board, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation Board, and the Campus Compact Board.

Mistakes Online Students Make: Online students should research program credentials and stay connected with their peers and professors. (US News & World Report, February 8, 2023) It's not uncommon for online learners, just like other college students, to experience a few hiccups along the way because of misunderstandings about their program's structure, expectations or other factors. "There are incredible opportunities today for students to earn a degree at any age or life stage, thanks to online learning pathways," says Evangeline Tsibris Cummings, senior assistant provost and director of UF Online at the University of Florida. "Great opportunity also comes with a lot of important questions that students should be asking themselves about what their motivations are to enroll online and how they are going to be successful." Having no accreditation is one warning sign the program may not be legitimate. Check a program's website for its accreditation credentials and verify they are recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation or the U.S. Department of Education.

Oversight Coming for Online Program Providers (Inside Higher Education, February 16, 2023)
The Education Department is planning to increase oversight of the outside contractors that colleges and universities use to help run online programs. The online program management companies, or OPMs, have grown in the last decade, but critics have accused the industry of engaging in aggressive recruiting practices and questioned the legality of the OPMs’ business practices. Supporters of the companies say they have helped expand online offerings in higher education at a time when institutions lacked the capacity to create programs and that further regulation would dampen innovation.

UNC’s Board Comes Under Scrutiny After Surprise Plan for ‘Civic Life’ School (Chronicle of Education, February 16, 2023) The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees has been loudly promoting its plan to build a new School of Civic Life and Leadership to media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. But faculty members at the university say they’ve been left in the dark, and now the institution’s accreditor has promised to determine if the board has overstepped its appropriate role.