In a major speech last week, Dr. Matthew Goldstein urged senior academic leaders of state colleges and universities around the country to “elevate the importance of good teaching” in their plans to improve student success.
“With effective instruction, college students learn more, develop important life skills, and complete their degrees,” Goldstein said in the speech, delivered at the 2016 Academic Affairs Winter Meeting in Austin, Texas.
Goldstein is credited with reviving the City University of New York (CUNY) during his 14 years as chancellor, the longest tenure ever for a leader of the city’s public college system. During that time, Goldstein oversaw an expansion that added more than 2,000 full-time faculty positions, boosted enrollment to 490,000 students, and laid the groundwork for an innovative new community college that aims to better serve students who enter college unprepared.
Goldstein, chairman of ACUE’s Board of Advisors, has remained a leading voice in higher education. Under guidance from Goldstein and other nationally-recognized higher education leaders, ACUE has developed a Course in Effective Teaching Practices, which was successfully piloted in the Fall 2015 Semester. The Course is the first of its kind to feature the nation’s leading experts in college instruction and showcase authentic footage of exemplary instruction by award-winning professors.
Goldstein is also set to publish Change We Must: Deciding the Future of Higher Education. This book, which he edited with a colleague, George Otte, includes a series of essays offering innovative and practical solutions to help institutions address challenges facing higher education.
At the event on Thursday, hosted by the American Association of State Colleges & Universities, Goldstein said higher education institutions, now more than ever, were needed to support faculty with “serious opportunities during graduate study to sharpen the instructional craft. . . . We know less about this component of our workforce than we do of traditional tenure track faculty—all the more reason to sharpen our focus on good teaching.”
