• What strategies can leaders utilize to harness the proliferation of emerging disciplines and new areas of inquiry?

• What creative pedagogies can educators use to meet the needs of learners?

• How will new regulatory structures and increasing public scrutiny change the way colleges and universities are run?

• Will the globalization of higher education reshape American institutions?

• How will increasing competition between institutions and the rising profile of proprietary higher education reshape higher education?

• These are just a few of the important and complex questions facing leaders in American higher education. The USC Institute will convene leaders in a series of three weekend sessions in the winter and spring of 2007. During these weekends participants will examine key challenges facing higher education and develop new strategies for leading their institutions.

The USC Higher Education Leadership Institute convenes a multi-weekend series of discussions devoted to examining the most pressing trends affecting higher education. These highly interactive sessions focus on immersive scenarios in which participants work collaboratively to develop innovative solutions to contemporary challenges in higher education. Each weekend of interactive sessions begins with a keynote address form a higher education luminary, and discussions throughout the Institute are led by an experienced team of university leaders.

Scenario planning exercises form the core of the Institutes. USC recently innovated the use of scenarios in higher education planning in collaboration with the RAND Corporation, which uses similar methodologies with its government and military clients. By adapting these methods to higher education USC created engaging ways of challenging leaders to work together to solve problems through immersive exercises. Each USC Institute weekend will begin with a keynote address by a leading thinker designed to set the stage for scenario exercises. Beyond these three intensive weekends of face-to-face work, participants collaborate between institutes to develop their own scenarios built around challenges they face in their own work.