Considering Our Legacy: Doing Work that Really Matters

In this presidential address, the author challenges readers as a community of scholars to seriously consider the types of legacies that we leave with the scholarly work that we do. Specifically, he addresses the question of what it will take for us to finally heed the call of many previous ASHE presidents to do work that really matters—to do work that informs and improves educational policy and practice. Several obstacles to achieving this goal are presented and examples of work that had some success in doing this are offered as well as the lessons that were learned in this process.