Winnebagos on Wednesdays: How Visionary Leadership Can Transform Higher Education (and Law Schools for that Matter)
Higher education is at a tipping point—voices questioning the value of a college education and proclaiming that American higher education is in crisis have been getting louder. Tulane University President Emeritus Scott Cowen will discuss the cynical narrative of higher education and share his insights on how colleges and universities can not only weather the storm but fulfill their great potential.
About the Speaker:
Scott Cowen is President Emeritus and Distinguished University Chair of Tulane University and served as Tulane’s 14th president from July 1998 through June 2014.
Named by Time Magazine as one of the nation’s Top 10 Best College Presidents, Cowen led Tulane through the most trying period of its history when, in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans, flooding 70 percent of Tulane’s uptown campus and all the buildings of its downtown health sciences campus. Tulane’s faculty, staff and students were dispersed around the country for an entire semester. Under Cowen’s leadership, the campus was repaired and in December 2005, the Board of Tulane approved his Renewal Plan, a sweeping effort that strengthened and focused the university’s academic mission while strategically addressing its current and future operations in the post-Katrina era. A remarkable 87 percent of Tulane undergraduate students returned for classes in January 2006, just months after the storm.
In 2010 Cowen was appointed by President Barack Obama to the White House Council for Community Solutions, which advised the President on ways to reconnect and empower young people who are neither employed nor in school. In 2012-2013 Cowen served as chair of the Association of American Universities, and in 2014 he received the TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education.
Prior to Tulane, Cowen spent 23 years as a professor at Case Western Reserve University, including 14 years as dean of the Weatherhead School of Management and the Weatherhead Professor of Management. Cowen’s areas of scholarship and teaching focus on strategic financial management systems, corporate governance and leadership. He has held leadership positions in national academic and professional associations and has consulted with and served on the boards of numerous companies, from startups to Fortune 100 companies.
He is the author of six books and more than 100 academic and professional articles, essays and reviews. His most recent book, Winnebagos on Wednesdays: How Visionary Leadership Can Transform Higher Education, was published by Princeton University Press in February 2018. He also is the author of The Inevitable City: The Resurgence of New Orleans and the Future of Urban America.
REGISTER HERE
BOOK SIGNING:
Copies of Dr. Cowen's book, Winnebagos on Wednesdays, How Visionary Leadership Can Transform Higher Education will be available for sale prior to and after the presentation.
Growing up in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood and later in East Cleveland, newly elected Ohio Supreme Court Justice Melody Stewart ’88 had big dreams of being a musician. A career in government, or even the law, never crossed her mind during those days and with good reason – it seemed unrealistic to her for an African-American woman to hold a high-ranking office.
Last spring, then-1L Cleveland-Marshall College of Law students Patrick Lipaj and Elliot Nash were looking for something that would peak their interest and allow them to get more involved with the C|M|LAW community.
