Showing results by author "Jeffrey Buller" in All Categories

When the president and dean of a small private college conspire to assign all the “faculty troublemakers” to a new unit and then dissolve the unit, their plan unexpectedly backfires. The resulting “Department of Eminent Scholars” manages to recruit just enough students to remain viable, and the academic year begins. As the semester unfolds, the students in the new department begin to sense that all is not what it seems in Chudwell Hall, the site of their unusual program, and a decades-long mystery starts to unravel.

In this controversial new work, Jeffrey L. Buller, the author of Positive Academic Leadership and Change Leadership in Higher Education, argues that nearly every initiative undertaken to improve higher education in the last fifty years—merit pay systems, student course evaluations, faculty evaluation, outcomes assessment, program review, external college rankings, strategic planning, and the like—has actually had the opposite effect. In addition, he argues that current approaches to accreditation have failed, “administrative bloat” is not the leading cause of tuition increases at ...

Premeditated Spontaneity, the final volume in the trilogy The Secret Memoirs of Anton Krait, reveals how and why this unusual story came to be told. Krait, teaming up again with Raouf Awad and Ilse Voss, travels to Southeast Asia in order to play a final series of matches before the last existing Hollerith Machine is destroyed. But the sudden disappearance of Colonel Becker, the international commissioner for The Game, means that the threat posed by the Vril is far from over.

Based on ATLAS' popular workshop, Best Practices in Coaching and Mentoring, this guide provides academic leaders with the tools they need in order to provide effective guidance to faculty members and administrators. Preferring proven techniques to abstract theory, this guide explains what to do (and why) in a wide variety of coaching and mentoring situations. Filled with practical examples and hypothetical case studies based on scenarios in higher education, Best Practices in Coaching and Mentoring coaches you on how to be a better coach and mentors you so that you can be a better mentor. ...

Based on ATLAS’ popular workshop, Conflict Management for Academic Leaders, this guide explains the difference between constructive and destructive conflict and offers sound advice for how to minimize the harmful effects of destructive conflict. Conflict is inevitable in academic units, but it doesn’t have to be counterproductive. This valuable resource provides six field-tested approaches for dealing with negative forms of conflict and restoring a positive work environment. In addition, like all ATLAS guides, this book is specifically written for the higher education environment and ...

Based on ATLAS' highly acclaimed workshop, Effective Communication in Higher Education, this guide addresses general principles for how academic leaders can express themselves (and help others in their programs express themselves) with greater success. It addresses the three questions every administrator should ask before trying to communicate with anyone, individual strategies for oral and written communication, the concept of framing, communicating in order to persuade others, communicating in order to resolve conflict, and much more. This resource is designed for academic leaders to use ...

The University of Allemonde decides to sponsor an airshow for dirigibles at the same time as the duchy’s annual opera festival. The composer celebrated this year is Gioachino Rossini and, when a performer is killed onstage, the future of both the airshow and the opera festival are suddenly placed in doubt. Missing paintings, stolen identities, and a cast of the strangest characters this side of Figaro combine to make Chief Inspector D. T. Giovanni’s latest case a mystery on an operatic scale.

Yesterday’s Tomorrow, the first volume in The Secret Memoirs of Anton Krait, introduces a college professor whose pastime is a complex intellectual game. Drawn into the search for a missing woman, Anton Krait travels to Egypt and finds himself pursued by members of a strange religious cult. As Krait and several companions conduct their investigation, they learn the cult is on the verge of an act of terrorism that could cost millions of lives. Using only his wits, Krait must defeat a formidable enemy in order to save himself and protect the future of all humanity.

Accreditation. Merit salary systems. External rankings. Outcomes assessment. Program reviews. These strategies and many others were developed as ways of improving the quality of higher education. But as Jeffrey L. Buller—the author of such works as The Essential Department Chair, Positive Academic Leadership, and Change Leadership in Higher Education—argues in Reinventing College, they haven’t fulfilled their promise. At best, they’ve resulted in modest improvements that aren’t worth the time and cost they required. At worst, they harmed the quality of higher education by shifting...

In this prequel to Die, Meistersinger! and The Barbara Seville, the reader learns new details about how Detective D. T. Giovanni rose to become the chief inspector of the Allemonde Grand-Ducal Police. A rash of car thefts throughout Europe is threatening the cancelation of the Great Allemonde Autoshow and Race, a new initiative that happens to overlap with the duchy’s annual opera festival. As one mystery arises after another, Giovanni will need every bit of his deductive skill if he is to unravel the baffling secret of the Car Men.

It’s wedding bells for Chief Inspector D. T. Giovanni and Dr. Annalisa Canali. But tragedy strikes all too soon. Looking down into a huge vat of cake batter, the chief inspector recognizes a ring that he knows only too well. The bizarre murder begins a string of deaths that once again threatens to derail an opera festival in the tiny European duchy of Allemonde. Familiar characters return, and new characters are introduced, leading Giovanni to wonder whether it’s ever a good thing to meet your heroes.

Shocking deaths and equally shocking reappearances abound in the latest case that the Grand Duchy of Allemonde’s chief inspector, D. T. Giovanni, must solve. Allemonde’s grand duke decides that, in the aftermath of the global pandemic, what the world needs is a festival consisting exclusively of comic operas, operettas, and a few Broadway musicals. Meanwhile, a circus comes to town in an attempt to bring even greater merriment to the duchy. But, despite these efforts, the annual festival nearly comes to a crashing halt when, once again, murders begin to intrude on the gaiety.

When international politics cause a group of Russian basses to arrive in Allemonde just in time to assume roles for that summer’s opera festival, their intense competition seems to grow out of hand. But after one singer disappears and another is killed in a bizarre accident, Chief Inspector D. T. Giovanni concludes that at least one murderer is terrorizing the duchy and must be caught. Meanwhile, his relationship with Annalisa Canali is becoming strained when she wonders why the chief inspector won’t make their new status public.

In this sequel to Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Anton Krait suffers from the continued effects of the Thauma Project. Struggling to regain both his memory and his sense of self, he finds his task complicated when the International Police Congress (IPC) is forced to give him a new name and appearance. Unsure of who he is, Krait must then work to clear his name from false charges, even as he races against the clock to prevent another global catastrophe.

When a tenor is murdered only days before the annual opera festival begins in the tiny European duchy of Allemonde, it’s up to Chief Inspector D. T. Giovanni to find the culprit. Unfortunately for Giovanni, everyone seems to have a motive and no one believes he’s up to the challenge. This light-hearted adventure is full of so many twists and turns that it becomes a mystery on an operatic scale. NOTE: This thoroughly revised second edition contains an improved and corrected text.

To help promote tourism, the Grand Duchy of Allemonde begins offering a winter opera program in addition to its long-established summer festival. But when a young girl is murdered, and Wilfred Beck, the opera theatre’s set designer, is repeatedly threatened, it’s up to Chief Inspector D. T. Giovanni and his team to discover who’s causing the mayhem. A bewildering array of suspects, a fierce debate over gender identity, and not one, but two secret societies combine to make Giovanni's latest challenge a mystery on an operatic scale.

When the president and dean of a small private college conspire to assign all the “faculty troublemakers” to a new unit and then dissolve the unit, their plan unexpectedly backfires. The resulting “Department of Eminent Scholars” manages to recruit just enough students to remain viable, and the academic year begins. As the semester unfolds, the students in the new department begin to sense that all is not what it seems in Chudwell Hall, the site of their unusual program, and a decades-long mystery starts to unravel.