What is the Forum ?
The Forum for Excellence in Higher Education brings together a select group of fourteen outstanding colleges and universities – some of the best in the nation. Each is committed to ongoing efforts to strengthen their undergraduates’ experience, and American higher education more broadly, in new ways. Participants meet repeatedly at a series of two-day intensive sessions called “Executive Sessions.” The goal is for each campus to explore how to help their students to maximize the quality and value of their precious time at college. To accomplish this goal, each college currently is developing two focused, new initiatives for students. A special feature of this Forum is that working collegially, each college rigorously assesses and evaluates the impact of their initiatives. The ultimate goal is to build innovations with measurably successful outcomes into the fabric campus life. In the end, the main point is the obvious one: that each campus’s students will benefit.

The Forum as a Vehicle to Facilitate Colleges as “Learning Organizations.”
The words “learning organization” increasingly are used to describe this process of innovation and evaluation. One way to think about this Forum is as a vehicle to help a group of campuses that are already extraordinarily outstanding, including the host campus, to become even more effective “learning organizations.” A critical feature for our Forum is its emphasis on an evidenced-based search for ways to implement continuing improvements in learning and engagement for students. At the Executive Sessions, Forum members interact vigorously across campuses. They exchange ideas and share plans for new initiatives. They hear about empirical findings from senior leaders at other campuses. They learn from one another. The campuses participate because they share a thirst for systemic and evidence-based ways to innovate, to enhance students’ learning and growth, and to build on their existing strengths.

What are Key Topics and Who is Sponsoring this Forum
Forum members are initiating and sharing new ideas that explore an enormous variety of questions about students’ experiences on campuses. What are especially effective ways to teach certain topics? What are constructive ways to capitalize on “outside of class” experiences, whether in the arts or athletics or public service? Are there new ways to strengthen student advising? Several campuses are actively exploring the impact of changes in core curriculum. Others are exploring ways of building a new world of “globalization” into their students’ academic and personal lives. Still others are experimenting with new ways of using technology. Altogether the participants have initiated and are rigorously evaluating 28 varied projects. The Forum meets at Harvard University where all the participating campuses share their ideas. This five year Forum is sponsored by a grant from The Spencer Foundation. In addition to sponsoring the Executive Sessions, The Spencer Foundation has awarded grants to each campus to implement two innovations, to rigorously evaluate their impact on students, and to share what they are learning with the other participating campuses. The Executive Sessions will meet at Harvard University, one of the participating campuses. They will be led both by Professor Richard Light at Harvard, and by Dr. Michael McPherson, President of The Spencer Foundation and former president of Macalester College. Selected speakers and guests will join our Executive Sessions over our several years of meetings.

Who are the participants
The Forum has invited three senior participants from each of fourteen campuses:

The emphasis of all the Forum’s work is on strengthening undergraduate education. Yet the obvious diversity among “types of institutions” is intentional. Notice that participants include four major research universities, eight distinguished liberal arts colleges, and uniquely, two relative “start-ups.” By including different kinds and sizes of institutions among the participants, and choosing fourteen that have already demonstrated a commitment to excellence for undergraduates at the highest level, we believe the robustness of findings from this group will be enhanced.

Who benefits from this program
There are at least two beneficiaries. First are the fourteen participating institutions. Each has an opportunity to engage with other campuses in an ongoing search for constantly better ways to enhance learning, and the overall campus experiences of their students. Rigor of evaluations will be a hallmark of The Forum. A second beneficiary, now that the Forum is underway and progressing vigorously, will be many other colleges and universities who will learn about more than two dozen findings from our participants’ initiatives. These other campuses, even though they are not regular Forum participants, should find many appealing ideas from the results of the Forum. Indeed, many campuses may be stimulated to try entirely different ideas from those initiated and evaluated in our Forum. We view this as a wonderfully positive and refreshing outcome for all of American higher education.