As an executive coaches with Carnegie Math Pathways at WestEd, we’ve been part of a team that delved into the practices of leaders who effectively managed change required to scale a successful pilot like a Math Pathways implementation. Over a six-year period, supported by a National Science Foundation grant, we studied institutions and their approaches to change, including the unprecedented disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we share seven practices we observed among leaders who successfully implemented change and actionable ways to incorporate these practices into your leadership toolbox.
Beyond the Credential Factory: Why Higher Education Must Shift from Management to Flourishing
For decades, higher education leadership has obsessed over “student success” as a purely operational metric. We track retention and graduation rates and postgraduation outcomes with the same linear precision that
Yoshitaka Iwasaki
August 3, 2026
