Achieving Success: Action Pays Dividends

Abstract

Should we stop thinking about the of education? Stop thinking about what makes us successful or not? Well, perhaps we think about it instead of focusing on the specifics of what constitutes success. We often approach our lives as educators and scholars with a sense of keeping the mystery alive instead of explicitly developing behaviors and abilities that will garner measurable successes for our institutions, our students, the public, and ourselves. We have tended to view and measure successes from an individual perspective: our personal research successes as measured by publications and grants; our personal practice successes as measured by how we are able to improve drug therapy of individual patients; our personal educational successes as measured by teaching evaluations and the individual successes of our students in finding jobs. Clearly these can be dramatic successes. But we've tended to be less attentive to the successes of the systems in which we function: organizations, colleges, and public health systems.