Institutional cultures oriented toward enhancement through widely collaborative efforts exemplify and maintain excellence, according to Becoming Great Universities: Small Steps for Sustained Excellence by Light and Jegla. The authors share examples of recommended actions across campus landscapes that yielded significant improvement, many of which are simple and possible even where fiscal resources are limited. The authors, while emphasizing the benefit of these steps, urge readers to adapt them within their own contexts to move their institutions forward.

Interfaith engagement provokes discomfort and concern for many student affairs professionals who feel unprepared to facilitate constructive, interactive initiatives regarding the challenging area of religious and worldview diversity. Goodman, Giess, and Patel respond to these challenges with Education About Religious Diversity and Interfaith Engagement: A Handbook for Student Affairs, which they intend as a practical guidebook for practitioners to develop professionally and create effective programs that contribute to their diverse campus communities. Their edited work highlights a model of religious pluralism, inclusive of all religious, spiritual, and secular worldviews, and recommends numerous efforts to strive toward that ideal. Their work represents a valuable resource for student affairs professionals in addressing the complex dynamics inherent in interfaith work, an arena that needs substantial attention within the context of a divided and polarized American and global society.

Ethical challenges are clearly widespread on college campuses, according to the authors of Graduating with Honor, evident in the frightening statistical reports and news stories of alcohol and drug use, sexual assault, and large cheating scandals, and in more common and subtle ethical dilemmas students encounter in various relationships and decisions they make. The authors assert the need for leaders to invest comprehensively in the ethical education of students, who they find are often unprepared to reason through these dilemmas. Their work adopts a developmental approach, offering both broad guidance and specific recommendations for how higher education institutions of all sizes can facilitate the ethical maturation of students from their first interactions with the institution through completion of their degrees. Intended for administrators and faculty concerned about the ethical issues they see present on their campuses, Graduating with Honor offers readers a beneficial opportunity to reflect on how they and their colleagues can work effectively in this aspect of student development.

The authors of The Undergraduate Experience approach the need for change in higher education by highlighting six themes that enable institutions to focus on what is most important in undergraduate education. Their principles include focusing on student learning, structuring meaningful relationships for students, maintaining high expectations, fostering alignment of mission and resources, establishing a culture of improvement, and ensuring that leadership facilitates collaboration across campus. They offer numerous examples of best practices from diverse institutions to indicate the potential that all colleges and universities have to achieve excellent undergraduate education. By connecting their principles to representative cases, and adding questions to encourage reflection by readers, the authors provide a useful resource for higher education professionals to consider how their institutions can best educate undergraduates and meet their missions to develop individuals who are committed to and capable of contributing to the world they inhabit.

Collaboration among academic affairs and student affairs occupies significant space in the higher education literature and remains an important topic discussed at many professional meetings. Seeking to partner with faculty in support of students has been a longstanding principle among student affairs practitioners in particular. The editors of Academic and Student Affairs in Collaboration argue past partnerships have often been ineffective, however. They and the various authors of this volume share ways they believe that authentic collaboration can occur and how it can be assessed to ensure and enhance student success outcomes. They build on past literature to argue that success remains possible through a collective and singular goal of student success, which fosters authentic collaboration among diverse areas. Readers interested in student success outcomes, retention and graduation in particular but also in other vital areas such as civic engagement, intercultural understanding, and ethical and personal development, will likely find the work beneficial.

Abstract Generational analyses and discussions have become a common topic among many professionals, especially those who work with college students. Generation Z Goes to College adds to this research literature by focusing on a cohort born between 1995 and 2010, which is succeeding the Millennial/Generation Y cohort. The authors report group personality characteristics from their own relatively small-scale research, as well as information from an analysis of numerous other sources that examined Generation Z. The authors discuss their findings, which indicate the significant influence of technology on students, in particular, through the constant access to information, their peers, and the broader world, noting both advantages and challenges that have emerged in recent years. The authors offer suggestions for higher education institutions adapting to these traditional-aged students, as well. For practitioners in the field, the book creates a beneficial opportunity to reflect on working with today’s students.

Abstract Vijay Pendakur and his colleagues argue that higher education has largely failed underrepresented students by ignoring the particular challenges and needs associated with students’ diverse identities in their academic success and persistence programs. They call for an intersectional approach that builds these programs with identity consciousness, and they share numerous examples for how institutions can establish them. Faculty, student affairs professionals, institutional leaders, and policy makers with interest in these issues will find both thoughtful, stimulating material and beneficial practical guidance within this work.

AbstractJeffrey Selingo argues that the problems that plague contemporary American higher education are exacerbated by missed opportunities to plan strategically. He also outlines the development of numerous disruptive forces, including significant economic challenges and the emergence of educational technology, which fosters innovative means to provide education and related services. Of particular interest to higher education professionals may be Selingo’s minimal but meaningful attention to issues of developing the whole student, which he discusses primarily as a luxury in which primarily elite colleges can invest. The book calls for faculty, administrators, and others concerned about developing students to engage significantly in the contemporary conversation shaping the educational institutions of our future.

This essay reviews Nash and Jang’s (2015) recent publication, which asserts that the purpose of higher education needs to be reimagined as facilitating individuals’ journeys of making meaning in their lives. The authors critique the contemporary core focus of colleges and universities, and offer insights into the quest for meaning that they have identified in their work with students. They provide both narrative and analysis of various dimensions of this quest, along with approaches and strategies that diverse professionals can employ in fostering it.

The personal values and beliefs of leaders in higher education help to guide decision-making and behavior and sometimes conflict with institutional priorities and obligations.

How can colleges and universities, especially public institutions, affirm religious and spiritual pluralism and support expressions of particular faiths within their sacred spaces?

While news reports from today’s college and university campuses do not announce widespread sitins at administration buildings or large-scale demonstrations, student activism regarding numerous political and social causes remains evident in diverse forms.

In a number of recent reports, conservative students enrolled in college courses from various disciplines have complained about having their political views and values ridiculed by liberal professors. Some have even asserted that their grades have been lowered and their participation in academic programs hindered because of professors' political bias. These students have found a strong champion in conservative activists like David Horowitz and his organization "Students for Academic Freedom," which advocates that state legislatures should adopt an "Academic Bill of Rights" to protect students from biased academics. Opponents claim that these students and their supporters refuse to consider the validity of perspectives and ideas that differ from their own, and that their legislative proposals will restrict academic freedom and a classroom environment that fosters open and critical dialogue.

The challenge for all educational leaders is to determine how best to educate students, balancing the diverse and potentially contradictory needs and priorities that underlie their endeavors.

Web-based programs including Facebook have resulted in providing incoming students with the means to make strong early connections but this new technoglogy can also create headaches for student affairs professionals.

Chancellor Gordon Gee of Vanderbilt University emphasizes the essential role that coaches play in character development in this interview with JCC's David Eberhardt. Gee stresses that coaches must first live by the standards that they set for their studentathletes in guiding their moral decisions.

Whether or not institutions need to respond to academic dishonesty is certainly not an ethical dilemma, but the type of response deserves thoughtful consideration.

This article reports on the findings of the authors' research into the contemporary forms and patterns of college student spirituality and offers an analysis and discussion of the implications of these findings for colleges and universities.