Ac 2007-1172: Five Years Later: the Institutionalization and Sustainability of Advance

Most studies on higher education transformation tend to focus on the factors (e.g. leadership, resources, and “culture”), processes (e.g. initiation, implementation, management) and theories (e.g. teleological, social cognition, cultural) of organizational change. Relatively little attention has been paid to how and at what level externally funded initiatives, like the NSF ADVANCE program, are institutionalized and/or sustained within a higher education organization. The concepts of sustainability and institutionalization are interrelated but there are differences. Sustainability of a program can be achieved with external funding and no institutional support. Institutionalization is achieved when the university makes a “permanent” financial commitment (i.e. line item) to a project or some aspect thereof. Ideally, a college or university could and would fully fund and completely institutionalize a project like ADVANCE. However given budget constraints, it is most likely that a combination of sustainability and institutionalization is necessary for ADVANCE and projects like it to continue at the institutional level. In this preliminary study, the authors draw on conceptual frameworks of institutionalization and institutional theory to analyze issues of sustainability and institutionalization of ADVANCE among the seven of nine colleges and universities examined here that received the NSF grant in 2001. The authors use data from interviews with key persons at each institution to examine the factors and extent of institutionalization of ADVANCE. In addition, the authors explore the implications of externally funded projects for diversity within higher education and make recommendations.