American higher education currently faces "harsh realities" (Altbach, 1999). "It has been argued," according to Altbach, "that higher education's golden age - the period of strong enrollment growth, increasing research budgets, and general public support - is over" (p. 272). There is a wave of change on the horizon. "Never before have we experienced the kind of change currently rocking our society" (Zahorski & Cognard, 1999, p. 2). Preparing our academic institutions for this change "promises to be perhaps the greatest of the many challenges in the decades ahead" (p. 2). Some of the changes that currently challenge higher education include "fiscal austerity, downsizing, heavy faculty workloads, underprepared students, a growing cohort of nomadic adjunct faculty, a tenure system under fire, [and] a demand for greater accountability and productivity from a disenchanted public" (p. 2). Perhaps the greatest challenge at present is the changing face of American higher education due to the influx of new populations of students. In parts of the country, p eople of different nationalities, cultural identities, and races are sharing academic spaces creating hybrid identities, new languages, and new academic cultures (Association for the Study of Higher Education, 2006). Policies, institutional practices, teaching methods, methods of assessment, and leadership will all need to change to better serve constituents in these evolving academic communities.