Reviewing the strategic influence of governance professionals in UK colleges: Acting as the translator of the conduct of conduct

This article considers the contribution of the governance professional to the governing of further education colleges in the United Kingdom and arises from a wider study of the ways in which college boards develop and implement college strategy. This is the first observational study to focus on what the governance professional does within the college governance space. From observation and other forms of evidence, the governance professional performs a significant, challenging and expert role in the processes and practices of governing colleges. The governance professional is instrumental as a governance sense-maker and, at a higher level, as translator of governing deliberations and decision making. The governance professional role in practice can vary depending upon a range of personal, local institutional and national factors. However, in essence the governance professional exists to legitimise college governance through the structures, processes and reporting of governing interactions. The article considers the extent to which the governance professional is pivotal to the governing of colleges and analyses the implications for college governing. Our research identifies some barriers to gaining greater impact from the college governance professional.

Locating Value in the Study of Religion

Religious studies courses frequently justify their existence with the rhetoric of “value.” While appeasing the socio-economic concerns of college boards, this undermines the work of more critical approaches under the field’s big tent. The following paper responds to this disconcerting trend by casting religious studies as an analytical discipline that takes “evaluation” as its object of study. It details a way of navigating the critical turn using Michel de Certeau’s notion of “scriptural economy” as a pedagogical framework for three lower-level, undergraduate classes: REL-101Signifying Religion: An African American Worldview, REL-226Introduction to the New Testament, and REL-293Introduction to Islam. Students theorize religion as a heuristic for studying how bodies are conscribed, prescribed, described, and inscribed in relation to evaluative systems.