Academic Transformation

Much of higher education was originally designed to meet the needs of full time 18-22 year-old students who enter directly from high school. However, the New Majority of our students are older, likely to swirl among institutions, and have significant adult responsibilities outside of the classroom. Academic Transformation: A Design Approach for the New Majority is a call to transform colleges and universities to meet the academic and student experience needs of New Majority students and for adult educators to become advocates, allies, and resources for needed reforms. Book contributors, including faculty, staff and administrators at public, private and community colleges, provide insights for this transformation. Taking a personalized approach based on a wide range of experiences, the contributors provide a framework for cross-campus conversations and collaborations to help stakeholders across the institution to understand New Majority learners’ strengths, needs and challenges within an increasingly competitive educational market. The text begins with a description of New Majority learners, explores enrollment management and student experience considerations, articulates a retention model and adapted high impact practices to support student success, navigates technology considerations, and addresses the impact of academic transformation for New Majority learners on higher education finance.

Malm and Weber's new book provides a much-needed focus on the "New Majority" of students in our colleges and Universities.  The authors include in the New Majority both adult students and the 18-22 year old with significant life responsibilities.  If you are a University administrator, faculty member or staff member, read this book and give it to your teams to read and discuss. It will help you adapt to the new reality of the students we serve., The adult learner is a significant part of our undergraduate populations today, and it is critical that colleges and universities recognize them and their distinct needs. This book provides some helpful perspectives on how colleges need to think about their programs to make sure that they are meeting the needs of a student population that is not coming to college right out of high school., This two-book series is a major step forward in addressing the demographic changes affecting post-secondary education. The series offers an innovative framework for rethinking who the traditional student is, as well as strategies to create institutional changes to establish effective learning environments for the “new majority” of adult learners. Drs. Malm and Weber have used their extensive experience in higher education to create this timely and important series. I strongly believe that faculty and administrators from across the university community will find this an invaluable resource for creating more inclusive environments for today’s diverse student body., In their new books Academic Transformation: A Design Approach For The New Majority and Serving the New Majority Student: Working from Within to Transform the Institution Malm, Weber, and colleagues make a compelling case for colleges and universities to pay increased attention to (and to redistribute resources toward) the students they characterize as the “new majority.” It shows how creative instructional design strategies can be adapted to meet the needs and take advantage of the strengths of new majority learners. As a faculty developer at a public university that serves a large number of new majority students, these books have challenged and extended my thinking about the nature of the professional enrichment opportunities we offer. I plan to integrate elements of Academic Transformation into my work with new faculty., The New Majority could not be more timely or necessary. The contributors to this visionary book propose strategies for meeting the learning needs of this changing population head-on. They emphasize the fact that solely catering to the needs of the traditional 18-22 year old, will leave behind our growing majority students of color, adult students, new citizens, and displaced workers, creating real concerns about how we will be able to meet the labor needs of the economy, while maintaining a workforce that reflects our society as a whole. This book proposes a new social contract and gives us a glimpse of exactly what it would take to prepare a more diverse people for working and maintaining the nation’s economic competitiveness.

Dr. Eric Malm is an Associate Professor of Economics and Business Management and Chair of the Business Department at Cabrini University in Radnor PA.As a faculty member and administrator, Dr. Marguerite Weber has more than 30 years of experience designing, implementing and assessing student success systems at universities and community colleges.