Practice, not just reading. Knowing what a good intervention looks like is different from making one when a meeting starts to slide. In each session you’ll test strategies on realistic governance situations and on challenges you bring from your own department, committee or senate.

“It’s like any other human behavior: practice makes perfect… I like that it is not just a one-day workshop. I like that it’s an extended period of time, that things are repeated and you do practice.”

Learn alongside colleagues. Your peer group becomes a sounding board: people who understand academic culture, see situations differently than you do, and will tell you what they’d try. Colleagues who go through the program together amplify the benefits, so consider enrolling with someone from your department or committee.

“This shared experience helps us pick up on each other’s cues and try to lead the rest of the group into a consensus.”

Guided by someone who knows academia. Your facilitator understands both the research behind this curriculum and how shared governance actually works: the hierarchies, the disciplinary cultures, the unwritten rules. They’ll connect the concepts to your situation, notice dynamics as they unfold, and model the skills you’re learning. Kardia Group has worked with faculty and academic leaders from across academia for more than 20 years.

“[Our facilitator] created a safe environment, was agile in dealing with emerging situations and concepts, was adept at meaning-making, and kept us moving forward together.”

Built for momentum. Sessions are spaced across 15 weeks, so each one gives you a reason to finish the coursework, try something new and come back to talk about how it went.

• Six 1-hour facilitated sessions with a small peer group, spaced across 15 weeks

• All seven online courses from the Shared Governance Certificate, completed on your own schedule between sessions. You’ll learn:

  • how to plan a productive discussion and recover one that’s going off track
  • where reactivity comes from and how to slow it down
  • how to bring your full perspective while drawing out others’ expertise

  • how to use conflict constructively

• Self-assessments, including the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, to see which conflict habits you over- or underuse

• Designation as a Game Changer Shared Governance Fellow and a shareable certificate of completion

Before and after the NSF version of this program, participants rated their confidence in their ability to improve 16 common discussion breakdowns.

• Average confidence rose from 46% to 77% across all 16 scenarios.
• When colleagues act as gatekeepers? 35% → 81%
• When people dig in and won’t reconsider their positions? 32% → 73%
• When one loud voice shoots down every idea outside their agenda? 41% → 82%

Six months later, 83% of graduates were applying these skills in faculty meetings, and 96% said they were better able to recognize and shift their own habitual responses to conflict.

NSF participants rated the program 4.7 out of 5 stars, and every cohort rated its likelihood to recommend above 9 (on a 1-10 scale, where 10 means they’ve already recommended it).

“As a graduate director…I’ve been leading…a revision of my Department’s graduate curriculum. What I learned…truly helped me with making the process more inclusive and effective, which eventually was reflected in the number of unanimous faculty votes on potentially controversial issues.”

“I wish I had taken such a course 25 years back when I started my academic career.”

“Honestly, I don’t even like workshops that much and was going out on a limb for this one, and I really thought it was engaging.”

“During the past year, my career path has suddenly changed and put me into the role of interim department head. The skills that I learned in Game Changer Academies have already been instrumental in helping me to work toward being an effective leader.”