Author: Kenneth Soldink

7 Ways Advisors Can More Effectively Engage Online Students

by Sue Ohrablo, Ed.D.

Online students are at significant risk for attrition as they experience isolation and a sense of disconnect from the institution, as well as find themselves lacking resources and information. Advisors can greatly impact students’ perceptions of their online experience by providing ongoing support and information to students. Advising online students can be challenging, however, as academic advisors are responsible for providing quality advising to students they may never meet, relying on phone and electronic communication as an alternative to face-to-face advising. Advisors who have traditionally worked with students in a face-to-face environment may experience frustration, dissatisfaction, and a lack of connection with the students with whom they work. Advisors run the risk of eliminating critical, comprehensive developmental advising strategies as they attempt to manage a seemingly unmanageable amount of emails and phone calls. It’s important for advisors to remember that online is not a type of student, rather, it is a mode of delivery for academic coursework. Students study online for a variety of reasons, including geographical limitations, learning style, work, and personal commitments. The needs of these students are no different from those of any other students, although students in an online environment often perceive a sense of isolation, […]

Checklist: What You May Not Know About FERPA and Advancement

by Casey Hudson (Academic Impressions) Advancement professionals sometimes hear that FERPA does not apply to advancement records. However, as advancement services expert Alan Hejnal cautions in his online training on the topic, this is only somewhat true. According to FERPA regulations, “Records that only contain information about an individual after he or she is no longer a student at the agency or institution” are not subject to FERPA, but all other records are. To unpack this, Hejnal provides the following keys to determining whether your advancement shop is complying with FERPA regulations. Defining “Student” While there is nothing in the FERPA guidelines that specifically references alumni, advancement professionals need to be aware of how the FERPA definition of a “student” applies to their target audience. A student is defined as any individual who is or has been in attendance at an educational agency or institution and regarding whom the agency or institution maintains education records. Under FERPA’s definition, alumni are students. What Records Does FERPA Apply To? Because alumni can be defined as “students,” advancement professionals have to be cautious about which records do and do not fall under FERPA rules. Here is a handy list of common records for […]

5 Tips for Improving International Alumni Data

by Gretchen Dobson

Today, international alumni relations looks and feels: Successful programs require leadership support, designated staff management, volunteer engagement and resources such as budgets and updated data. With current databases, our efforts are only as good as the information we have — or the information we are getting today. How are we tracking international alumni? Does this area need a thorough review before we start outreach? Can we begin to track international students better? POLLING ALUMNI RELATIONS PROFESSIONALS In a recent online training with Academic Impressions increasing international alumni engagement, I asked participants what their greatest challenge was in engaging international alumni. More than 85% of responses agreed that incomplete, insufficient, old, and/or the lack of international alumni databases proved their most challenging obstacle. You can order that training here. As a follow up to it, I want to offer these five tips for improving international data management practices: 1. Know the depth of current data and create records for “non-traditional” alumni First, do the research needed to track when the first international students attended your institution and how the demographics have changed over time: 2. “Internationalize” current systems Output is only as good as input. The success of engaging international alumni […]

The Worth Claim: How to “Sell” Your College’s Value

by W. Kent Barnds

Whether we like it or not, admissions counselors are increasingly thought of as a college’s sales force. Yet I don’t completely understand why many of my colleagues in admissions bristle at the idea of being a “salesperson.” After all, we are charged with generating awareness, building and managing relationships, and “closing the deal” with interested students. Furthermore, we are regularly asked to introduce our college’s new programs, processes and ideas. Why should we run from this comparison? Why Being Seen as a Sales Force is an Opportunity In my experience, the involvement of the sales team often comes too late in the process of developing programs, resulting in less-than-optimal messaging and differentiations at the point of sale. Using the “sales force” comparison presents an opportunity to help other campus stakeholders understand what we need from them in order to be the best sales team we can be. I recommend: Redefine admissions as a “sales force.”Perhaps the reason so many of my colleagues resist being compared to salespersons is the assumption that, driven by their eagerness to sell, salespeople don’t always speak the truth. We need to redefine the admissions “sales force” as a group with the integrity and insight to […]

4 Lessons Learned from Campaign Volunteers at Gettysburg College

by Ashlyn W. Sowell

THE SUCCESS AT GETTYSBURG COLLEGE This article is the first in a series by Ashlyn Sowell, Gettysburg’s associate vice president and campaign director. Here, Sowell reviews 4 lessons about campaign communications and volunteer management that she and her team at Gettysburg learned — from their volunteers. “Leveraging these key lessons,” Sowell adds, “we have successfully engaged over 100 volunteers in the quiet or leadership phase of the campaign and are tracking ahead of our goal.  I believe with volunteers leading the way we will involve more Gettysburgians in the public phase of the campaign, exceed our goal, and groom the leaders needed to be successful in the next campaign for the college.” We hope you will find this article useful and share it with your colleagues. As we embarked on the largest campaign in our school’s history, our campaign consultant gave us some important advice. She said that our campaign must be owned by the president and by the volunteer leadership, not by the staff. We took her advice to heart. With our board chair, we carefully selected each volunteer that would help us during our planning phase. The board chair personally recruited each volunteer, and I believe that got […]

Why Honor Rolls of Donors are a Waste of Time

by Lynne Wester

In her new book The 4 Pillars of Donor Relations, Lynne Wester of Donor Relations Guru® helps you rethink donor relations practices and offers specific tips for more powerful acknowledgements, stewardship and impact reporting, recognition, and donor engagement. Get this comprehensive guide to donor relations for your shop today, and transform the way you steward, recognize, and engage your donors. The article that follows is an excerpt from Lynne’s book. In all my time in donor relations, I have never heard of a donor who gave an organization a million dollar gift because their name was in a textual list of donors. Yet I must get asked at least once a week what I think of honor rolls and their place in donor recognition and stewardship. I think they have no useful purpose, they provide opportunities to make costly mistakes, they are a huge waste of human resources, time, money, and they are otherwise foolish. Why Honor Rolls Don’t Provide Any Benefit Time and time again, we have asked donors what they want and how they want to be recognized, and the three things that appear most often in their answers are: Donors want handwritten notes from students. They want to meet those that […]

How One Institution Ensured its Crisis Management Plan Didn’t Just Sit on the Shelf

by Daniel Fusch

The University of Wyoming’s emergency preparedness plan has become a template for plans at other Wyoming institutions and state agencies—including Casper College, which used emergency protocols based on the University of Wyoming’s in responding to a tragic crossbow shooting incident on campus in December 2012. In a recent conversation with Academic Impressions, Mark Collins, the University of Wyoming’s associate vice president for administrative operations, shared with us some of the story behind how he and his colleagues developed the institution’s emergency management protocols—and why their plan didn’t just sit on the shelf. He also offered some practical takeaways for other institutions—see below. The Challenge: From Draft to Effective Protocols “In 2010, we had put together a draft of an emergency response plan for the university,” Collins recalls, “and it had already gone through a number of iterations. But it never felt done, it never felt like something we had full confidence in implementing.” For the University of Wyoming, a 2010 Academic Impressions conference on emergency management held in Chicago, IL, proved the catalyst for moving from draft to actual protocols that would be implemented, communicated, and drilled. Collins attended the event with three colleagues, from university communications, student affairs, and […]

The 5 Forms of Support Your Adjunct Faculty Need

by Private: Caleb Tegtmeier

According to the Pullias Center for Higher Education, roughly half of higher education faculty are part-time employees. Increased reliance on contingent faculty has led many institutions to internally audit the level of support and the faculty development opportunities they offer to adjuncts. In a recent online training from Academic Impressions — “Supporting and Developing Adjunct Faculty” — Jennifer Strickland of Mesa Community College elaborated on the importance of effectively supporting this growing population of instructors. During the training, Strickland also shared a list of the highest priority faculty development needs for adjunct faculty, those areas where intentional support can make a difference in engaging, developing, and retaining your adjunct faculty. Strickland recommends: How does your institution match up in each of these 5 areas? 1. A Thorough and Engaging Orientation This is the first point of contact with your adjunct faculty, and it is important to make it count.  While finding ways to engage your audience is critical, it is imperative to also cover policy essentials. Aspects such as ADA policies, course syllabus requirements, and grading procedures must be included in this type of environment. 2. Needs-Based Training However, just offering an annual orientation by itself will not be enough to […]

Innovative Practices in Higher-Ed Leadership Development

The external search is engrained in the culture of higher education, but this is already beginning to change as an aging workforce forces institutional leaders to address issues of succession planning and leadership development. Across the country institutions are starting or increasing their investments in in-house leadership development programs. This paper reviews 3 innovative practices that institutions can learn from to make their programs more effective in cultivating high-potential leaders: In this paper, you can review a national snapshot of investments in leadership development programming, and hear from select institutions that have launched effective in-house leadership development programs. Read the paper

The Best Questions Gift Officers Can Ask to Move Prospects Toward Solicitation

by Jim M. Langley

Knowing how to turn a discussion with a prospect toward a specific gift commitment requires intuition and skill. It is a matter of timing that requires us to know where each prospect is in the philanthropic decision-making cycle. This we know: From the time we begin the philanthropic dialogue with a prospect until she or he makes a significant commitment takes, on average, 21 months and involves nine interactions. The following advice, therefore, assumes that the prospects you’ve selected have given previously to your institution for years or have given elsewhere for an extended period of time.  It further assumes that you have had at least three or four earlier interactions in which you have determined that your prospect: Engaging the Prospect Early If all of the above are true, you can begin to turn the dialogue toward investment by saying that you would like your prospect to become more deeply engaged in the direction-setting of the institution or in the realization of important goals. Then, ask any of the following: These questions are designed to prompt early-stage engagement and to give the prospect a voice in the development of the project, which demonstrates that you value their time and […]