This dimension of Registry Advisory Services offers assessment and recommendations aimed at optimizing the effectiveness of Board of Trustee practices and the governance role in working with the President to insure effective and symbiotic productivity.
The Board’s role in setting policy and evaluating executive execution of institutional master plans, along with fiduciary accountability, can be a complicated and fragile undertaking. As only 6% of all American college and university trustees have had executive experience in higher education, most Boards can benefit from an analysis of their standard practices. Sometimes Boards have too many committees that can be mutually exclusive and thereby limit the involvement and awareness of Trustees in many of the core essential facets of the institution’s vital signs. RAS can recommend modifications, if appropriate, using models that have been proven to best contribute to institutional productivity and optimum Trustee engagement and involvement.
RAS can also help insure that the essential By-Laws along with the constitution, faculty handbook, mission and strategic plan are in good order and are working in the best interests of the institution.
Also critical is the operational relationship between the Board, the President and the senior officers. Setting a balanced interactivity that insures Board oversight and executive accountability can be fragile and sometimes less than ideally productive. RAS can assess and advise, making recommendations for modifications that have been proven to work in the best interests of both the Trustees and the Executive team, and, therefore, the institution.
What College Trustees Need To Know
What College Trustees Need to Know is available for purchase at most online book retailers including Amazon.com. RAS is pleased to offer complimentary copies, upon request, to college and university Board Chairs. Contact us today.
Practice Leader
Dr. Norman R. Smith is President Emeritus of both Wagner College (NY) and of Elmira College (NY). He has also served as President of Richmond The American International University in London (UK) and of Suffolk University Boston (MA). On behalf of the Registry, he has served other institutions on an interim or consultancy basis. In Egypt, he worked as Founding Chancellor on a planned American international university being built on the Mediterranean which was terminated by the Arab Spring revolution. Earlier in his career, he was Assistant Dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and an inaugural Assistant Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He earned his doctorate at Harvard and was a Fellow of Harvard’s Philosophy of Education Research Center. His BS and MBA were earned at Drexel University (PA).
In 2018, he received the American Association of University Administrators’ Trachtenberg Award for Leadership in Higher Education. Among other leadership awards he has received are the New York University President’s Medal and the Drexel University Service to the Higher Education Profession award. Philadelphia University (now Thomas Jefferson U), Elmira College and Wagner College have awarded honorary doctorates to him. He is the author of a number of books on higher education including WHAT COLLEGE TRUSTEES NEED TO KNOW, which he co-wrote with the Registry’s George Matthews, Chairman Emeritus of Northeastern University, along with Registry President Bryan Carlson and Registry Advisory Services President Kevin Matthews. Another recent book is TOP PROBLEMS FACING COLLEGES. His book TOP TIER chronicles his 14 year tenure as President of Wagner College, when the College went from near bankruptcy and closure to becoming one of the top tier regional colleges of the Northeastern US.
* Denotes required field.