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While there is research that has explored how institutions have responded to various crises, these are usually locally or regionally situated. However, no event has impacted higher education globally like COVID-19 and it will certainly alter the way top administrators lead and how institutions move forward. Thus, this chapter will explore how to better understand how presidents and top administrators navigate the (inter)national geopolitics as they move the institution forward. In addition, clear and up-to-date communication has proven to be important in battling this crisis. Thus, how presidents at national universities have communicated with students, faculty, staff, and various off-campus communities members regarding COVID-19 and how they have achieved is important to explore. Our findings suggest that presidents and top administrators need to build support to help them navigate the political roadblocks they may encounter. Findings also suggest that communication is the main role they play as leaders on their campus. On/off-campus community members see the presidents as the face of the university and key communicator as relates to communicating what the institutions is doing and how they are addressing the crisis. This chapter helps in better understanding the roles presidents and top administrators play during a global crisis.

This chapter describes two courses in which university students were involved with community partners, in one case a local school system and in the other, a local nonformal educational institution. The authors begin with a discussion of the benefits of civic engagement through service learning in an academic setting and describe the integration of socio-scientific issues of local importance and a service-learning aspect into the courses. The authors follow with a discussion of the impacts the project has had on each of the partners involved in the collaboration. The authors conclude with lessons learned as a result of the project and future plans for the partnership.

This chapter quotes how St. John, Daun-Barnett, and Moronski-Chapman (2012) maintained ideological shifts in American culture and politics which are important to the study of higher education policy because of the influence on public finance, government regulation, and curriculum. From the Great Depression through the Cold War to the present, human capital theory has guided higher education (St. John et al., 2012). Veiled concepts of accessibility and equity were substantial during this era to mask more nefarious attempts to shift to the privatization away from the public good of American Higher Education (Astin & Oseguera, 2004). This chapter focuses on the role of accountability as a neoliberal ideology, and the impact of this ideology, as a form of corporatization on higher education. Furthermore, this focus on corporatization intersects specifically with the discourse pertaining to corporate social responsibility (CSR), which can be understood as transparent actions that guide an organization to benefit society, such as in funding and accessibility. In this chapter, the authors engage in a critical analysis of neoliberalism, and academic capitalism, as threats to the institution of higher education as a public good. The authors initially provide a framing of the public to private dichotomy of American higher education in explaining the various products produced and expected outcomes. A historical context for performance-based funding in American higher education is provided as an understanding of the nature and scope of the contemporary model. To understand the influence of public funding policies on American higher education, it is also necessary to comprehend the role of political ideology and how the business model of higher education has evolved. Thus, a general discussion of neoliberalism permeates the entirety of this discussion. This chapter concludes with the tertiary impacts of neoliberalism.

This chapter offers a contemporary overview of philanthropy in education as an emerging research field. Although the education sector has traditionally been a popular recipient of philanthropic investment, the scale and scope of funding and policy involvement on the part of philanthropy are growing. In addition, and potentially amplified by COVID-19, big- and in particular tech-philanthropies are emerging as increasingly influential players in national, regional, and global educational contexts. This chapter describes how most existing education research on philanthropy is mainly US- and higher education-focused which has resulted in a narrow geographic and thematic scope whereby contemporary developments remain either overlooked or under-researched. It discusses venture philanthropy inside and outside of the United States, a greater diversity of geographic perspectives, and an increasing dependence of academia on philanthropic funding as emerging research areas that bear great potential to being explored further.

In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?” Our tests ask whether brains can manage without bodies and without extracranial resources, whether they can manage in social isolation, and whether brains are the ultimate controllers of emotional and cognitive aspects of organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that, to accomplish work-related tasks in organizations, the brain relies on and closely interfaces with the body, interpersonal and social dynamics, and cognitive and emotional processes that are distributed across persons and artifacts. The results of this “thought experiment” suggest that the brain is more appropriately conceived as a regulatory organ that integrates top-down (i.e., social, artifactual and environmental) and bottom-up (i.e., neural) influences on organizational behavior, rather than the sole cause of that behavior. Drawing on a socially situated perspective, our analysis develops a framework that connects brain, body and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex emotional and cognitive organizational systems. We discuss the implications for the emerging field of organizational cognitive neuroscience and for conceptualizing the interaction between the brain, cognition and emotion in organizations.

Historically, library usage has increased during economic downturns. In the pre-Internet era, this meant increased usage of print materials and reference services. In the Internet era, however, the number of roles that public libraries can play in serving their communities has expanded greatly. This chapter provides insights into the ways in which American public libraries are using the Internet to meet patron, community, and government needs in this time of economic crisis. Drawing from the data and findings from the 2010–2011 Public Library Funding and Technology Access national survey, this chapter examines key issues at the intersection of public libraries, the Internet, and economic uncertainty and library/e-government partnerships that have resulted from the economic situation. In these difficult economic circumstances, US public libraries have been able to use the Internet to meet many vital patron and community needs, but they still face numerous economic difficulties in responding to these requests.