Publisher's Synopsis
Although academe is deservedly reputed to be an exceptionally well regarded multi-billion dollar U.S. enterprise, it is rarely touted for its alacrity and fluidity in contending with fractious internal politics. America's higher education leaders are regularly asked how we can more effectively manage student life, meet faculty aspirations, improve enrollment dynamics, invigorate institutional advancement operations, refine financial oversight, and occasionally recommend cosmic fixes for the universe. In a rapidly changing world-wide environment, searches for adaptive remedies are on virtually every organizational agenda. Each industry gets to figure out not only what it should do to change policies, but also how it can better harmonize its particular governance processes. So, while the academy is certainly no exception to this practice, an extensive review of books, journals, and a variety of other literary sources within higher education trade publications, has caused this author to notice how surprisingly little has been done to spotlight useful ways of improving the undergirding political culture of every-day campus life. Flies Off The Wall offers a light treatise about the blended roles humor and a new academic form of cartooning can play in helping to elevate the mood of higher education. Flies Off The Wall makes its particular case for adding accommodative injections of respectful comicality into considerations of most options for initiating and sustaining educational progress. The aim of this book is to reach out to readers who care deeply about the quality of institution-wide camaraderie - especially folks who are open to considering how healthful patterns of comedic expression can provide an enjoyable catalytic means of reducing stress and lubricating more productive campus dialogue. The unique creation of a prototypical sample of a dozen Text/Toons, coupled with some pleasurable "how to" suggestions for implementing policy changes, is framed by drawing a figurative bridge designed to bring campus constituents into stronger modes of cross-sector collaboration within the cultural underbelly of higher education.
