President of Hiram College offers Lessons from Academic Redesign

Lori Varlotta, president of Hiram College in Ohio, authored an interesting and helpful post for Education Dive, "What I learned from an academic redesign." President Varlotta shares six lessons from a campus wide planning effort initiated during the 2017-2018 academic year. The process ultimately led to recommendations for repositioning, adding, or eliminating majors and loss of several faculty positions.

Hiram College was also the focus of a couple of earlier Education Dive articles:

• October 2019 by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, "Will tuition cuts and new perks keep this small liberal arts college alive? Hiram College in Ohio is banking on aggressive changes to help it thrive, but skeptics wonder if they will be enough."
• March 2019 by James Paterson, "To survive, small colleges are rethinking the liberal arts: As higher ed consolidates, these institutions are restructuring curriculum, campuses and even tuition to help them stand out. 

The institution was founded in 1850 as Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. The name changed to Hiram College in 1867.