CASE Honors Professor Richard Chait at Annual Assembly

Professor Richard Chait was honored with a 2005 Research Writing Award at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education's (CASE) Annual Assembly, held July 15-17 in Miami, Florida.

Chait received a John Grenzebach Award for Outstanding Research in Philanthropy for Educational Advancement for his book Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards, co-written with William Ryan and Barbara Taylor, who were also honored. The book highlights theories that have transformed the practice of organizational leadership and offers a new framework for governance within nonprofit organizations.

"While working with my colleagues on this book, I learned that three heads are better than one. Bill added complexity and Barbara practicality--and between all of us, we struck just the right balance," says Chait. "We learned how to push the concept of governance to new levels of insight and action without discarding all the work others--and we--had done to that point in time."

Governance as Leadership grew out of Chait's research on the roles, responsibilities, and performance of corporate boards. His work also focuses on the terms and conditions of faculty employment, an area that Chait will continue to explore in depth as co-director of the Ed School's Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education initiative. This project, which was established in 2002 and called The Study of New Scholars in its pilot phase, examines the pressures that confront academic institutions and their faculty members as they try to reinvent academic careers, reformulate academic appointments and broaden the spectrum of employment arrangements.

"Though I've turned to a very different topic for my next stage of research, receiving this award was gratifying," says Chait. "The book has reached 10,000 sales in less than a year, which is very unusual in this field."

The John Grenzebach Awards for Outstanding Research in Philanthropy are named for John Grenzebach, founder of Grenzebach Glier & Associates, a philanthropic management consulting firm, and are co-sponsored by the American Association of Fund-Raising Council Trust for Philanthropy.

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education is the largest international association of education institutions, serving more than 3,000 universities, colleges, schools, and related organizations in 46 countries. For more information on the awards and the ceremony, please visit the CASE website.