Getting Started

Lovers of higher education - those of us that care enough to want to see it changed for the better - have a lot of work to do if we want to restore trust in America's universities. Umatters.org will not be the first, last, nor only venue for rebuilding trust in higher education, but I am excited for the possibilities that this format can bring.

As I sit down to write this first article, mindful of our mission to build trust in higher education, I ask myself, "What kind of content is this newsletter calling for?" I am open to your ideas, but I do have a few hopes:

• I hope we will ask lots of candid questions about ways we can go about increasing everyone's confidence in higher education and explore possible answers to these questions. This includes sharing and exploring:

  • Practical tactics for increasing trust with a whole range of stakeholders.

  • High-level strategies for the short, medium, and long terms.

  • Frameworks developed by scholars who study the concepts of trust, institutional confidence, etc.

• I hope we will learn from and share our knowledge with:

  • Leaders in higher education. From individual faculty leaders, to presidents/chancellors, to governing boards, to organized labor, to professional association chairs, and everyone in between.

  • Politicians of all stripes and at all levels.

  • Social media influencers, newspaper editors, think-tank managers, and others who help shape and inform public opinion.

• I hope you (yes, you) will share your own experiences, opinions, and expertise with umatters.org as we work towards our shared goal of increasing public confidence in higher education. Both on "culture war" topics and on the less flashy (but still very important) day-to-day mechanics involved in the running of a university.

To that last point, I am not an expert on trust and confidence building - nor leadership, nor strategic planning, nor influence campaigns. But as a professor of computer science, I'd like to think that I do know a thing or two about computers. To get the ball rolling for this first newsletter I want to start out by posing a set of "questions to ponder around cybersecurity" that I wish every chancellor/president or every governing board asked of their CTO/IT leadership on a yearly or bi-yearly basis. Please enjoy early access to the first article.