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.	CNI SPRING 1999 TASK FORCE MEETING HANDOUT	.
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FRYE LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE A Project of the Council on Library and Information Resources

Thanks to a grant of $1.2 million in core funding from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, in collaboration with Emory University, has established the Billy E. Frye Leadership Institute. Named in honor of Billy. E. Frye, former Chancellor of Emory University and member of CLIR's Board of Directors, in recognition of his years of innovative leadership and support for academic libraries and information technology, the Institute's purpose is to effect fundamental change in the way universities manage their information resources in the digital era.

As more information becomes available in electronic format, organizational responsibilities on university campuses have become less distinct. Meanwhile, the instructional and scholarly uses of technology have begun to change teaching and research methodologies. Today, digital information and communications technologies are shaping new relationships among librarians, their information technology counterparts, and faculty members.

The mission of the Frye Institute will be to provide opportunities for continuing education to individuals who currently hold, or will one day assume, positions that make them responsible for leading scholarly information services in the higher education community. Over the next decade the Frye Institute will recruit some 600 - 700 professionals -- most likely to be in midcareer and drawn from library administrative staffs, computer centers, and faculties, who can lead during this vibrant period of change and transformation in the means of transmitting knowledge: a change that entails far-reaching implications for the way universities allocate financial resources and fulfill their educational mission.

The Frye Institute is expected to have an initial life of 10 years during which it will enroll 50 - 70 individuals each year. Participants will undergo a professional development experience that begins with a two-week seminar on the Emory University campus, proceeds through a subsequent year-long practicum at the individual's home campus, and concludes with a summary session that reunites the participants to evaluate what they have learned.

The Frye Institute's program is being designed to equip these future leaders with a sophisticated understanding of the characteristics of leadership in the academic environment. It is planned as a kind of living laboratory where problems facing academic institutions today can be considered by a class who, because of their experience and potential, may have as much to contribute to the sessions as the instructors. Indeed we anticipate the atmosphere of the Institute will prove so exhilarating as to erase the line between student and teacher more often than not!

The Frye Institute is intended for a dedicated core of individuals whose motivation for attending is directly tied to serving their institutions more knowledgeably and effectively. Planning for the Institute is just beginning. An Advisory Committee has been appointed to help establish the Institute's curriculum. CLIR staff, with the assistance of consultants and the Advisory Committee, will identify faculty and prepare application materials over the next several months. The first Frye Institute class is scheduled, appropriately enough, for the year 2000.

FORMULATING A CURRICULUM FOR THE FRYE INSTITUTE:

Following are examples of some of the issues that the Advisory Committee is considering in formulating the curriculum

1.  The Mission of higher education and current issues facing it: how can we foster a broader understanding of the issues and a change in perspective among our emerging leaders?
   • New Competition/, new marketplaces
     
   • Changing Demographics
     
   • Economics
     
   • Power Structures and Audiences
     Multiple Accountabilities
     Government Issues
     
   • How does a focus on institutional goals/plans change the leadership of information services?
     
   • How can individuals think about information services within the context of educational mission; think differently about their roles as information services leaders; think "out of the box"?
     
   • How might issues about tenure/faculty evaluation affect information services?
   • What new kinds of organizational structures might emerge?

2.  What is the role of knowledge in higher education, and how might emerging technologies changing both its role and how we manage it?
   • New processes of teaching, learning, and research
     What are new ways of creating knowledge/what is the research environment?
     What are new ways of conveying knowledge to learners?
     What do we know about how people learn?
     What is higher education's role in lifelong learning?
     
   • What is happening to scholarly communication?
   • What are new ways of managing knowledge?
   • How do national and international changes in information policy and the law affect the university?
   • What strategies might we use to lead in the hybrid world of print and digital information?

3.  What new ethical challenges are emerging?
   • Privacy:   how to protect it?
   • Access:   How to protect the free exchange of information and ideas?

4.   Leadership Skills Development: What competencies are needed?
   • Understanding institutional cultures
   • Collaboration
   • Facilitation
   • Mentoring
   • Building the capacity for "self-leadership"
   • Managing relationships
   • Project management
   • Managing Change

webmgr@cni.org