Frye Leadership Institute

For ten years, the Frye Leadership Institute has been preparing and developing the next generation of leaders in libraries, information services, and higher education. But much has changed in a decade.
 
When the Frye Institute began, there were no million-volume scanning projects under way; Google, Inc. was less than a year old; cyberinfrastructure was a term used only among a small group of researchers; cloud computing had not been invented; and mobile technology was roughly the equivalent of a simple cell phone.
 
In the last ten years, complex and rigorous approaches to understanding, analyzing, and reconstituting data and information have emerged. These include large-scale embedded sensing networks and an array of statistical methods of modeling those data; multivariate data analysis; and the use of mobile devices to capture and classify images, audio, text, and location-based information.
 
The digital environment has emerged as a "place" for social interaction and community exchange. Scholarship that is born digital raises new possibilities and questions. Advances in technology influence how a library is defined, information technology services are organized, and the college and university are conceptualized.
 
We believe a new academic ecology is emerging that has powerful implications for the organization, discovery, and communication of knowledge. This emerging academic ecology should be reflected in both the substance and the process of the Frye Leadership Institute. Following its tenth anniversary, the Institute will take a year's hiatus so that we can assemble experts to articulate a vigorous new program for Frye that addresses higher education's leadership needs in an era of unprecedented change.
 
This hiatus will allow us to launch an even stronger program in 2011. Over the next year, we will be consulting and seeking suggestions for the best way to position the Institute for its second decade.
 
The Institute was initiated through a generous grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation and is named in honor of Billy E. Frye, now retired, who has served as the chancellor and provost of Emory University, a member of the board of the Council on Library and Information Resources, and a distinguished leader in higher education.

For more information on the Frye Leadership Institute, visit www.fryeinstitute.org.