I had the opportunity to attend a conference in October called Transforming Institutions: 21st Century STEM Education. There were many good ideas that I took away from this conference but one that continues to resonate with me is that for many of us in higher education, we influence student success by helping to make faculty successful. When faculty succeed in the teaching and learning mission we can help students succeed as well.

In order to establish this culture of success, we need to first understand who we are as a university. Many of our institutions have a culture that was formed many years ago and hasn’t changed even though our students have changed. We base are strategic plans, activities and events around assumptions. As those who want to change this culture we need to be deliberate and systematic about analytics. Spending time studying our data will help us understand who we are and where we are. We must never stop taking risks as it is through these risks, and sometimes failures, that we can learn the most.

We can make a difference and the way that our universities were in the past doesn’t mean they must be that way in the future. We can be agents for change. We must always strive for success and realize that when we have success in one area we should not consider it final. We should push for a culture that accepts nothing less than continued success.