Category: Higher Education

Leaders of today’s tuition-driven colleges and universities are increasingly called to develop strategic positioning plans that tackle issues directly affecting their institutions. Key among those issues are declining student enrollment, growing public skepticism, and intensifying financial challenges. 

One way to accelerate the creation of such a plan without compromising the input that most leaders covet is to engage an embedded advisor. This is an experienced and credentialed leader who physically comes to campus for one or more extended periods of time to listen deeply, spark ideas, synthesize insights, triangulate input, and formulate a series of professional recommendations. The advisor’s recommendations should be shaped by what they hear on campus plus local and national data and best practices.

Lake Erie College utilized such an advisor to help them craft a high-impact academic and branding repositioning strategy. From the listening phase to the actionable recommendation phase the process took (only) three months. Review the step-by-step approach below to determine how this process could accelerate your institution’s trajectory as well.

1. Start with Context, Mission & Vision 

• The college president must begin by clearly addressing the “Why Now and How?” Is a repositioning plan in response to, in anticipation of, or a combination of both in response to challenges and opportunities such as these: financial strain, an enrollment decline, the addition of a new degree program, a recent merger or partnership, or a leadership transition?
• The college president must also reaffirm or call for the revision of the institution’s mission, vision, and values. All grounded initiatives must align with and cascade from the college’s core identity and purpose.
• Both the president and board of trustees should consider partnering with a seasoned embedded advisor. This is preferably an external expert with past leadership experience, perhaps as a college president or provost. Typically, a credentialed third-party expert provides a data-driven framing of the institution’s current landscape and future potential and is able to earn credibility early in the process.

At Lake Erie College, President Jennifer Schuller invited embedded advisor Dr. Lori Varlotta to guide that College’s repositioning plan. The repositioning efforts were launched shortly after a financial stabilization, creating a strategic foundation for forward-looking transformation.

2. Build a Cross-Campus Planning Team

• Senior leaders should assemble a diverse planning team that includes faculty, staff, students, administrators, board members, and alumni. From this broad group, identify a smaller, agile “core team” to work directly with the advisor in driving the planning forward.
• The college president must clearly define the roles, responsibilities, and expectations for each participant and committee. Setting clear, early parameters helps prevent scope creep and minimizes role confusion or overlap.
• The embedded advisor plays a pivotal role in facilitating collaboration across the team, not making decisions, but guiding discussions, surfacing insights, and helping stakeholders listen across perspectives. Their role ensures that differing viewpoints are heard, not dismissed, fostering an inclusive and solution-focused environment.

At Lake Erie College, embedded advisor Varlotta engaged with over 100 campus stakeholders through 25+ structured sessions during her first week+ visit to campus. She synthesized the conversations into a comprehensive, anonymized report. Without singling out individuals, she spotlighted both shared themes and distinct ideas. This approach strengthened trust, making it easy for college constituents across the institution to speak openly and freely during the process.

3. Customize and Triangulate

An effective embedded advisor should customize their approach based on the audience:

• With students, focus on their lived experiences both inside and outside the classroom, asking about what makes their journey meaningful or frustrating.
• With faculty, center conversations around teaching methods, pedagogy, and student learning outcomes.
• With staff, delve into topics like campus operations, workflow, and employee morale.
• With trustees, discuss institutional sustainability, growth strategies, and the college’s long-term vision.

Once all feedback is collected, the advisor should triangulate recurring themes, rather than lean on isolated anecdotes. The goal is to identify cross-campus patterns that reveal deeper, college-wide perspectives. This approach ensures the final plan reflects the full institutional ecosystem, not just siloed opinions. 

At Lake Erie College, ideas raised in one group—such as what the college’s academic differentiators should include, or how its general education program could double down on the liberal arts, or how the college might revise its outdated mission statement—were tested across multiple constituencies. This iterative validation process ensured that feedback was tested and integrated into a cohesive, evidence-based narrative.

4. Ground Decisions in Data and Local Culture

Every strategic or repositioning plan must be informed by both institution-specific data and an understanding of local campus culture. While national trends—such as increasing tuition costs, stagnant or decreasing average net tuition revenues, and increasing tuition discounts—provide essential context, this information must be interpreted in conjunction with the institution’s unique environment.

Effective embedded advisors will immerse themselves in that unique environment. This includes attending student events, visiting signature academic and extracurricular programs, walking the campus, and interacting with stakeholders in their own spaces. The goal is to gather not just quantitative insights, but also qualitative stories that reflect the heart of the institution.

LEC’s advisor repeatedly called out the distinctive assets at that college. Key differentiators included, but were not limited to, its equestrian program, DII athletics, liberal arts general education, and geographic location (on the shores of Lake Erie and in the only college in Lake County).

5. Identify A Few Short- and Mid-Term Strategic Priorities & Investment Areas

To stay agile and relevant in today’s fast-evolving ecosystem, most colleges should focus on 3-5 high-impact strategic priorities that can be implemented within a short-to-mid-term timeframe. Planning for initiatives that won’t launch for another 3 to 5 years is often a waste of time in a period of rapid change.

Be intentional in ranking these priorities and tie each one to realistic budget projections and fundraising capacity. Stay optimistically grounded. Avoid inflating tuition revenue goals or fundraising forecasts that aren’t attainable.

An embedded advisor plays a crucial role in this phase, helping to evaluate and rank ideas objectively. Because they are neutral and unaffiliated, they can champion the boldest, most promising strategies without internal bias.

At Lake Erie College, this prioritization process resulted in targeting key initiatives for investment. These initiatives included:

• Expanding the Honors program and centering experiential activities within it.
• Creating a whole new School called STREAMS (Science, Technology, Research, Engineering, Animal and Medical Sciences).
• Partnering with local businesses to create paid internships and research opportunities
• Enhancing the liberal arts curriculum with place-based experiences in Cleveland’s music and arts scene, the Metroparks, and Lake Erie
• Leveraging the equestrian program and Division II athletics to boost institutional identity and philanthropic outreach.

6. Communicate Early, Often, and Openly

Ensure that the embedded advisor offers open office hours to the campus community, shares itineraries in advance so that stakeholders have an idea of the breadth and depth of engagement, and provides regular updates to key leaders. Expect the advisor to share drafts with those in authority before any decisions are made and to build buy-in, encouraging campus stakeholders to shape the work. Have the embedded advisor “report back” to all who participated.

At Lake Erie College, the advisor returned for a second week-long visit to re-engage stakeholders. During this time, participants reviewed their previous input and offered refinements and additional recommendations. This continual loop of communication not only validated community involvement but also sustained momentum throughout the process.

7. Implement, Monitor, and Adapt

Implementation is where strategy becomes reality. To ensure your strategic or repositioning plan drives real results, focus on three essential actions:

• Assign clear accountability: Each strategic priority must have a designated owner, a realistic timeline, and a performance dashboard to track progress.
• Create adaptive review cycles: Work with the embedded advisor to establish a rhythm of 6- to 12-month pulse checks, allowing the team to refine and recalibrate in response to emerging trends or institutional shifts.

Keep the plan front and center: Use visual roadmaps, progress trackers, and community-wide check-ins—even publicly posted ones—to maintain awareness and momentum. This keeps stakeholders engaged. And, it signals that activities are monitored, integrated, and ongoing; they are not a series of stand-alone or “one and done” tasks.

At Lake Erie College, the embedded advisor worked closely with the president to recommend campus leaders best suited to oversee key initiatives. She also provided a milestone-based timeline, ensuring clear checkpoints and sustained focus from planning to execution. 

Why the Embedded Advisor Model WorksThe embedded advisor model makes good sense (and cents) for today’s college and university. Why?

Speed + Trust ➡️ Charted Progress.

Internal teams can stall. An external voice can keep things moving without imposing too much.

Credibility + Neutrality ➡️ Objective Recommendations.

Advisors are not canvassing for their own unit or department. Since they don’t have a dog in the race, they can make recommendations that benefit the entire organization.

Honesty + Hands-On Experience ➡️ Minefield Map.

Confident and experienced advisors can draw directly from their own successes and failures, remembering what worked and didn’t work on their own campuses. Such an advisor can help others avoid landmines that may otherwise have exploded.·     

Collegial Spirit + Budget Awareness ➡️ Affordable Engagement.

The type of embedded consultant described here is neither a “consultant-in-the-tower” nor a member of a large consulting firm. Often, this keeps the work grounded and affordable.

Horace Mann, often revered as the father of American public education, laid a powerful foundation for what we now call transformative, inclusive education. In the mid-1800s, he championed the belief that universal access to quality education was not just a privilege but a public right, a cornerstone for sustaining a thriving democratic society. For Mann, education wasn’t merely about personal advancement; it was the essential fuel for an informed, engaged, and ethical citizenry.

The 19th Century Birth of Antioch College: A Manifestation of Mann’s Vision and Values

In 1853, when Horace Mann became the first president of Antioch College (which is now Antioch University), he set out to transform his educational philosophy into living practice. At a time when segregation and gender bias were the norm, Mann introduced one of the first nonsectarian, co-educational institutions in the United States. As an anomaly of the times, Antioch admitted students regardless of race and gender. Long before promoting racial integration in education and equitable access to higher learning became the broadly embraced aims of American higher education, Antioch College served as an exemplar of both.

Antioch University Today: Advancing Mann’s Educational Mission

Fast forward more than 170 years, and Antioch University remains steadfast in honoring Horace Mann’s legacy. The university now serves adult learners nationwide through a combination of online, onsite, and hybrid graduate programs across five national campuses. It also maintains the bachelor degree completion program which, decades ago, catalyzed its entry into graduate education.

Antioch’s commitment to “win victories for humanity” remains its guiding light. This enduring heritage drives a justice-centered, inclusive, and applied education that fuels social change.

Core Offerings Rooted in Social Impact

Today, Antioch’s academic programs reflect an evolved commitment to community engagement, experiential learning, and ethical leadership. Faculty ensure that students immerse themselves in real-world challenges, whether by leading local environmental justice initiatives, leveraging place-based pedagogy in local schools, or addressing social inequalities through counseling, psychology, and mental health advocacy.

These programs reflect the university’s emphasis on “education in action.” Antioch students don’t just study democracy, they live it. Courses are designed with a civic-minded, interdisciplinary approach that connects theory to practice. Business students explore the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. Education students work in local schools to enhance both the student experience and the school’s community influence. And students in a Leadership and Change PhD cohort address real-world ethical dilemmas via stakeholder-led change projects that drive action and solutions.

A Modern Response to Democracy’s Erosion

According to President-Elect Lori Varlotta, who takes the Antioch University helm in August 2025, this kind of action-oriented education serves as “an antidote to the erosion of democracy.” At a time when higher education faces the immense challenge of political polarization that can lead to the silencing of, and resistance to, “the other,” Antioch faculty can lead by example. They can spotlight how their participatory, student-centered teaching models instill a sense of civic responsibility that prompts students to co-create a common good in 21st-century communities marked by difference.

Antioch and the Coalition for the Common Good

To further that aim of education, Antioch University is now a co-founder of the Coalition for the Common Good, a new, values-aligned consortium of institutions working to expand equitable access to education. This initiative is more than just strategic collaboration; it’s a reaffirmation that Mann’s vision for public education is not only enduring but urgently relevant in today’s world.

Honoring a Legacy, Building the Future

In an era when many academic institutions chase prestige and rankings, Antioch stands apart. It continues to echo Horace Mann’s assertion that education is democracy’s strongest defense. His legacy lives on not as a relic of the past, but as a guiding force in the Antioch programs and student projects that continue to win victories for humanity.

With excitement and a sense of purpose, I am delighted to announce that I will be joining Antioch University as its new President. The position is a unique one as it is coupled with the Executive Vice Presidency for Coalition for the Common Good. This joint appointment charts the next leg of my personal and professional journey, and I am eager to embark on this new chapter.

Why Antioch University? A Vision for the Future

Antioch University has long been a place where progressive education thrives, and it is a privilege to contribute to its mission of advancing social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. With Antioch’s history of providing innovative and inclusive education, I see this as an extraordinary opportunity to further this mission and expand the university’s positive impact on society.

My professional journey has always been shaped by a deep commitment to ensuring that education is not just a tool for individual success, but a platform for societal change. Through my work at institutions such as California Lutheran University, Hiram College, and California State University, Sacramento, I have witnessed firsthand how education can serve as a catalyst for progress, healing, and growth.

The Time is Now: Antioch will Meet and Define this Moment

What excites me most about my next move is its timing. I am joining Antioch University when its most defining and differentiating aims—the building of an informed and just democracy—are more important than ever. This is Antioch’s moment, and the University will not only meet it; it will define it. In defining these times, Antioch will double down on its commitment to having students participate in social justice programs, undertake community-based research, and participate in, rather than just read and talk about, democracy. As it continues to “make good” on these longtime commitments, Antioch serves as a constructive model for academic courage and concrete contribution. Rather than just “fight against” emerging policies, stances, and proposals, Antioch is poised to provide national leaders and elected officials with data-driven accounts of the impactful things that it—and other institutions of higher learning like it—are doing right now to improve our country and the world. As Antioch actualizes its mission in “winning victories for humanity” and showing how education works for democracy, it can showcase the concrete, irrefutable impact of our colleges and universities in making America great.

The Coalition for the Common Good: Changemakers and Collaborators

If all of the above isn’t exciting enough, Antioch has recently joined forces with Otterbein University in co-founding the Coalition for the Common Good, or the “CCG.”  The CCG is the country’s first higher education system that brings together universities that share a mission of educating students not only to advance their careers but to create and maintain a common good. The common good most coveted by members of this coalition is a pluralistic democracy marked by social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. Along with the excitement of being president-elect of Antioch University, I am thrilled that I will soon be working alongside Dr. John Comerford, President of both Otterbein University and the CCG in developing and expanding the Coalition. The CCG is a viably innovative model for higher education collaboration and impact.

The Values that Make us Decent Humans and Good Leaders

As I embark on the next leg of my personal and professional journey, I am reminded of the many conversations and activities that I engaged in with the Reverends Colleen Windham-Hughes, Mark Holmerud, and Scott and Melissa Maxwell Dougherty at Cal Lutheran. With those wonderful colleagues, I endeavored to use five values—grace, generosity, inclusion, diversity, and service to neighbor—to guide the many actions and decisions we were called to make. There were times when I fell short in my embodiment of them. That set of values, however, remains my North Star, and I expect it will guide me as I move forward.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me on this journey.

Lori Varlotta

Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with university leaders across the country—strategic thinkers and doers who are steering their institutions through today’s blustery headwinds. As these colleagues work to implement bold structural and cultural campus changes, they often ask a similar question:

“What can I, as a higher education leader, do to create meaningful change beyond my campus, especially at a time when the entire sector is at this pivotal crossroads?”

To answer that, I’ve started to assemble high-impact strategies that educational leaders can apply right now—on campus and beyond. Please join me in refining and building upon these and in sharing other actionable ideas.

1. Prioritize Inquiry Over Activism, Innovation Over Resistance

Why It Matters:
In an era of polarized and clashing ideologies, universities must recommit to the pursuit of truth. In the academy, this pursuit must be driven by curiosity, intellectual risk-taking, and continuous learning rather than resistance for its own sake.

Actionable Tactics:

• Foster environments that counter cancel culture and echo chambers by encouraging dialogue across differences.
• Support events where students bring in intellectually diverse speakers to address the same topic.
• Offer courses and workshops on media literacy, highlighting how algorithms shape and limit internet searches by using automated systems to present information that aligns with your past “platform behavior” (e.g., “likes,” saves, searches, etc.).
• Launch a “Rapid-Response Fellowship” for scholars studying current political or cultural shifts in real-time.

2. Combat ‘Truth Decay’ with Evidence-Based Discourse

What It Is:
Coined by RAND Corporation, “Truth Decay” refers to the present-day proclivities of giving opinions and personal experiences the same intellectual weight as facts. Such proclivities result in the rampant dissemination of misinformation and the public distrust of sources once known to be credible.

Why It Works:
Rebuilding intellectual rigor starts with teaching how to differentiate evidence from opinion and combat disinformation.

Actionable Tactics:

• Be a highly discerning consumer of information and encourage others to be the same: investigate the source, identify the intended audience, look for and call out overly simplified conclusions and false dichotomies.
• Model what data-informed inquiry and investigation looks like: seek out reliable information from experts, gather multiple perspectives, differentiate peer-reviewed sources from blogs.
• Familiarize yourself and your students with known disinformation campaigns and look for the characteristics of such campaigns in information dissemination on new or less familiar topics.

3. Seek to Understand Not Persuade

Why It Works:
In the highly polarized world in which we now live, people are primed to hold their ground and write off others who think differently. Knowing that inclination, you can disarm those with whom you disagree by showing them you sincerely want to hear about and learn from their perspective in an effort to better understand a divergent point of view.

Actionable Tactics:

• Listen first—Do more listening than talking as it keeps the doors to constructive conversation (Deep Listening) open.
• Home in on whatever common ground emerges or can be built. Connecting with rather than correcting our ideological opponents puts us in a better place to see commonalities that are often obscured at first glance.
• Exchange resources across perspectives: ask someone to share a go-to article and reciprocate.

4. Use Experiential Learning to Practice Democracy

Why It Works:
Democracy must be practiced, not merely studied. Some of my writings show how service-learning and community-based research foster such practice.

Actionable Tactics:

• Incentivize service-learning projects in academic courses.
• Reward community-based research in tenure or promotion processes.
• Support university–community partnerships solving local challenges.

5. Elevate the Grassroot Efforts of Those Who Do their Homework

Why It Works:
In academe, grassroots organizing is often viewed as empowering, authentic, and impactful. Providing appropriate resources and expertise to students, faculty, and staff who have spent time and energy researching the issues helps to reinforce the values of sharing reliable information and co-creating knowledge. This, in turn, builds internal solidarity.

Actionable Tactics:

• Host research symposia where students and faculty offer poster presentations related to enduring questions or urgent challenges.
• Support student- and faculty-led symposia and teach-ins on timely topics such as immigration, tariffs and free market, community health.
• Sponsor a research fellowship for a new PhD recipient who is studying the impact of federal policies on American higher education.

6. Streamline Decision-Making for Agility and Adaptability

Why It Works:
To remain relevant, universities must act with urgency and flexibility. Neither bureaucracy nor the aim of complete unanimity should block innovation.

Actionable Tactics:

• Update governance documents to allow for expedited responses.
• Establish rapid-response teams to assess policy impacts within days.
• Use Values Impact Assessments (VIAs) to ensure strategic choices align with mission, vision, and values.

7. Diversify and Sustain Funding Sources

Why It Works:
Federal support for higher education is increasingly uncertain. Universities must build financial resilience through alternative revenue streams.

Actionable Tactics:

• Cultivate philanthropic support for programs and services related to academic freedom, diversity, civic engagement, and the like.
• Grow industry partnerships and contract research for mission‐aligned projects.
•  Explore grant opportunities with established vendors in the higher education space (e.g., retirement benefits organizations, dining service partners, maintenance and custodial companies). Many of them have long histories of collaborating with schools and colleges to bolster student support.

8. Build Inter-Institutional Coalitions

Why It Works:
There is strength in numbers. By partnering with peer institutions, accreditors, state systems, and national associations (e.g., AAC&U, APLU, ACE, CIC, NAICU), an individual university can amplify its voice, share its resources, and brainstorm with others facing similar challenges.

Actionable Tactics:

• Issue joint statements defending academic freedom, free inquiry, diversity initiatives, or Title IX protections. Be prepared to actualize the commitments such statements endorse. This could mean giving the stage (literally) to thought leaders who represent opposing sides of complex and nuanced issues.
• Coordinate multi-university letter‐writing campaigns to state and federal representatives.
• Host multi-campus webinars to share best practices and legal guidance.

9. Leverage the Legal System to Uphold Academic Freedoms

Why It Works:
The courts can check executive overreach. Compared to small private colleges, university systems and academic consortia typically have well-staffed offices of general counsel. Such offices are equipped to address legally suspect directives coming from the federal administration right now.

Actionable Tactics:

• Bring together General Counsel attorneys from multiple institutions to review policy proposals, Dear Colleague Letters, etc. for constitutional or statutory infirmities.
• Ask the General Counsel cadre if it makes sense for them to file amicus briefs in key lawsuits concerning First Amendment, Title IX, or rule‐making processes.
• Assert, when appropriate, state‐level protections—some states have stronger academic‐freedom statutes than those associated with federal guidelines.

10. Don’t Just “Poke the Bear” and Run— Join Forces in Taking Strategic, Sequential, and Ongoing Steps

Why It Works:
Thoughtful, sequential, and multifaceted public engagement can shift narratives and inform policymakers.

Actionable Tactics:

• Coordinate a series of op‐eds, podcasts, and data‐driven infographics that highlight the challenges and opportunities that American higher education is facing.
• Create testimony toolkits for leaders speaking before legislative bodies.
• Partner with local media to showcase student success and community impact.

Final Thoughts: Leading Beyond the Lecture Hall

These ten strategies are not prescriptions; they’re invitations to collectively chart and clear the path that higher education leaders should pave right now. The paving will be accelerated by the hearts, heads, and hands of leaders working together.

Let’s not only meet this moment but help define it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main challenges facing higher education today?

According to insights shared by Lori E. Varlotta, today’s colleges and universities are grappling with several critical issues. Key ones include the following: a decline in public trust, the increasing politicization of both the curricula and co-curricula, and an unsustainable funding model. To successfully address these challenges, Varlotta shares strategies that help academic leaders model the fundamental aim of education: a calling in (not a calling out) in the rigorous pursuit of truth.

What does it mean to “Lead with Inquiry, Not Ideology”?

Institutions that lead with inquiry are incubators for open dialogue and critical thinking. Conversely, institutions driven by a set ideology are prone to curtail (consciously or unconsciously) the exchange of diverse ideas and genuine inquiry. Ideology-based environments make it difficult for members of the community to ask necessary but uncomfortable questions and to challenge ideas without censorship. In academe, curiosity should be valued over conformity.

How can higher education institutions rebuild trust?

A key element in rebuilding trust, as highlighted by the Lori Varlotta, is through evidence-based discourse. In an era of “Truth Decay” (as coined by RAND), universities must actively teach students to discern data from opinion, vet sources, recognize propaganda, and think critically. Such teaching not only strengthens academic rigor but also develops the types of skills that foster informed civic and democratic participation.

Why is understanding important in a polarized environment?

The U.S. has become increasingly polarized over the last decade. If classmates, neighbors, citizens, and co-workers want to have functional relationships with each other, we must seek to understand rather than aim to persuade. According to Varlotta, the basis of such relationships includes empathetic listening and a demonstration of openness. Understanding doesn’t necessitate agreement. It does, however, lay the foundation for the types of constructive engagement that are essential to democratic institutions and societies.

How can universities cultivate civic engagement in their students?

Beyond theoretical learning, Lori suggests that democracy should be practiced, not just taught. This involves embedding into the curriculum experiential learning opportunities such as community-based research and service-learning projects. These hands-on experiences allow students to actively participate in civic life, becoming theoretically- and practically-informed citizens who advocate, organize, and lead, not just vote.

What is the significance of empowering grassroots leaders within an institution?

Authentic change often originates from those directly involved with the issues. Universities that aim to facilitate social change should support students, faculty, and staff who conduct rigorous research in areas that connect personal interest to a campus or community need. Empowering grassroots leaders, who “do the homework,” is one way to bolster individual agency and develop policies, practices, and norms that improve the institution’s and the larger community’s wellbeing.

How can institutions address challenges related to bureaucracy and funding?

Lori Varlotta advocates for streamlining decision-making processes to foster innovation. She suggests that practical solutions like rapid-response teams and Values Impact Assessments (VIAs) can enable universities to make nimble and principled decisions. Regarding funding, sustainable universities must look beyond traditional sources like tuition revenue to support their mission. Today’s universities must diversify funding through philanthropic partnerships, industry collaborations, and long-term grants.

What is the importance of strategic alliances and legal action for higher education?

While competition has historically been the norm, Varlotta explains why collaboration is key to industry reform. Forging strategic alliances with other institutions, through joint statements or shared advocacy, strengthens the collective voice of higher education. Furthermore, in an environment where academic freedom is under threat, Varlotta encourages academic leaders to pull legal levers: file amicus briefs and assert state-level protections in the defense of core academic principles.