Facing the Post Pandemic Era

There has been a lot of soul-searching and prognostication of late about how higher ed will move into the post-pandemic era.
 
According to a recent McKinsey report, “Leadership comes in two parts. There’s the vision, and there’s managing the change to bring that vision to fruition. For leaders, understanding what has changed will be as important as knowing what to change.”
 
Recently, I moderated a virtual roundtable on the extraordinary new challenges colleges and universities are facing as the impact of the pandemic continues to unfold and questions of sustainability and new paths forward remain unclear. In this webinar, Lessons in Leadership: From Crisis to Recovery in Higher Education, convened by Marcum LLP, one of the largest independent public accounting and advisory services firms in the country, I posed this and other questions to a stellar group of thinkers and educators.

Yves Salomon-Fernandez, former President of Greenfield Community College, spoke candidly about being a college president on the front lines of steering her institution through the last year and how those challenges have shaped planning going forward.
 
Alexander Kafka, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s senior editor, discussed a question he recently posed —  can higher education be saved?
 
David Rosowsky, former provost and senior vice president at The University of Vermont, expressed optimism that the ”transformational adaptation” caused by “seismic shifts” across the sector will produce real, sustainable change, change that is already underway.
 
Roger Sametz, CEO and Founder of Sametz Blackstone Associates, looked at how the impact of the pandemic underscores the central importance of an institution’s brand and why, as the sector moves toward recovery, colleges and universities must deliver on their “promise” and reputation.
 
You can watch the webinar in its entirety here.