Each year, NEBHE presents Regional Excellence Awards to individuals and organizations that have shown exceptional leadership on behalf of higher education and the advancement of educational opportunity, and State ...]]>

The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) named recipients of its 10th annual New England Higher Education Excellence Awards.

Each year, NEBHE presents Regional Excellence Awards to individuals and organizations that have shown exceptional leadership on behalf of higher education and the advancement of educational opportunity, and State Merit Awards to honor the innovative work of organizations, institutions or individuals in each New England state.

Regional awards:

• Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and former Gov. Donald Carcieri of Rhode Island (The Governor Walter R. Peterson Award for Leadership)
• Richard Gustafson, former Chancellor, Community College System of New Hampshire (The Eleanor M. McMahon Award for Lifetime Achievement)
• Bunker Hill Community College Learning Communities (The Robert J. McKenna Award for Program Achievement)
• Cornelius “Con” Hogan, Chair, Board of Trustees, Vermont College of Fine Arts (The David C. Knapp Award for Trusteeship)

State merit awards:

• Connecticut College of Technology (Connecticut Community College System) and Karen Wosczyna-Birch, Director (Connecticut State Merit Award)
• Early College for ME, Maine Community College System(Maine State Merit Award)
• Donald Smyth, Trustee, Bristol Community College(Massachusetts State Merit Award)
• Paul LeBlanc, President, Southern New Hampshire University (New Hampshire State Merit Award)
• Ron Machtley, President, Bryant University (Rhode Island State Merit Award)
• Vermont Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), University of Vermont (Vermont State Merit Award)

NEBHE will present the awards at its New England Higher Education Excellence Awards dinner on Friday, March 2, 2012, at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel in Boston.

Northeastern University Center for Labor Market Studies associate director Paul E. Harrington moved to Philadelphia-based Drexel University. Harrington has been a frequent contributor to NEJHE and to NEBHE events

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Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J., will also leave leave Boston for Philly, departing as dean of Boston College's Lynch School of Education to become ...]]>

Northeastern University Center for Labor Market Studies associate director Paul E. Harrington moved to Philadelphia-based Drexel University. Harrington has been a frequent contributor to NEJHE and to NEBHE events

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Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J., will also leave leave Boston for Philly, departing as dean of Boston College's Lynch School of Education to become the 27th president of Saint Joseph's University, starting May 18.

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Jamshed Bharucha, provost and senior vice president of Tufts University, was elected the 12th president of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, effective July 1, succeeding George Campell Jr.

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Bryant University hired Robert Shea as the college's director of faculty development. Shea previously served as director of the Office of Student Learning, Outcomes Assessment and Accreditation and assistant director of the Instructional Development Program at the University of Rhode Island.

It's an evolutionary fact of life in higher education. Good courses become programs. Worthy programs become schools. Schools become colleges, and colleges in some cases, become universities.

Yesterday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation that re-branded six state colleges—at Bridgewater, Fitchburg, Framingham, Salem, Worcester and Westfield—as state universities, effective Oct. 26. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, ...]]>

It's an evolutionary fact of life in higher education. Good courses become programs. Worthy programs become schools. Schools become colleges, and colleges in some cases, become universities.

Yesterday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation that re-branded six state colleges—at Bridgewater, Fitchburg, Framingham, Salem, Worcester and Westfield—as state universities, effective Oct. 26. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts will not change names, but will be part of the new state university system.

Some friends recently reckoned that after all these years writing about higher education, I would be able to clarify what distinguishes a college from a university. The best I could do was point them to the piece that Ken Lemanski wrote for the Fall 2007 issue of NEJHE.

Ken was writing about state colleges, which have their own set of regulations to deal with and their own reasons to change status. My friends were asking more broadly about why a wave of New England private institutions—Bentley, Bryant and Lesley, for examples—had all gone from college to university.

The answer to that is—you guessed it—marketing. Campus officials reason they'll get more students and more research dollars when they're known as universities, and their graduates will land better jobs. (Which makes you wonder why they don't go the whole nine yards and insert the phrase Harvard University into their new names.)

Check out the ceremony announcing the new Massachusetts names on Youtube.