Author: Kenneth Soldink

Improving Faculty Advising

Over the past nine months, Academic Impressions has conducted several surveys of academic deans, department chairs, and directors of advising to investigate current trends in developing and assessing both faculty advisors and professional advisors. Among the key findings: Yet we also confirmed that over three-quarters of institutions surveyed rely heavily on faculty advisors (even if they also employ some professional advising staff). While there are many resources available for training and developing professional advising staff, faculty advisors often receive little or no training — yet they provide most of the advising services at colleges and universities in the US. Improving faculty advising is thus a critical and often neglected step toward improving student retention and supporting students’ academic success. This week, we asked Tom Grites, past president of NACADA and assistant to the provost at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, for his advice on the subject. Grites suggests: Establish Agreement on the Goals of Advising “The institution has to reach some level of agreement on what advising is. The smaller the campus, the easier it may be to establish an institution-wide definition. At a larger university, where different kinds of advising structures come into play, strive for consensus within […]

Planning and Budgeting: Critical Advice for the President and Cabinet

This week, we interviewed Pat Sanaghan, president of The Sanaghan Group, who has worked with dozens of institutions to coach them through a collaborative and effective strategic planning and budgeting process. We wanted to ask what advice he would most want college and university presidents and members of their cabinets to hear. This is what Sanaghan shared with us. Academic Impressions (AI): What is the one perspective you would most want to share with college and university leaders, related to strategic planning and budgeting? Pat Sanaghan: After 30 years, what I’ve found is that the level of trust in the system is the single most critical factor in the success of a planning and budgeting process. If the level of trust in the process is low, then the president and other leaders of the institution need to work intentionally to build a higher level of trust, or the plan won’t be implemented. You need other things — you need transparency, you need effective leadership, good data, an external, environmental scan — but the most critical thing is trust. If you have high trust, people across the institution are more willing to share both their aspirations and their fears. They will be more willing to […]

Innovations in Course Scheduling that Support Student Success

  This week, we interviewed Joe Murray, the director of academic advising and retention services at Miami University Hamilton Campus, about innovations in course scheduling that can help maximize the impact of early alert intervention and proactive or intrusive advising. A number of these approaches have been piloted at Miami University or soon will be. Murray shared the following models with us. Late-Start Courses for the Core Curriculum Institutions investing in early alert intervention or intrusive advising may identify students who are underprepared for a particular course and need to switch to a different one. The problem most students in this position face is that by the time they realize this, it is too late to secure a place in another course they need and get a successful start in that course. Murray recommends offering late-start course sections that begin several weeks into the term. Many institutions offer these for elective courses, but to leverage this model in a way that supports student success, you need to offer late-start courses for your core requirements. For example, consider a student who is registered for Algebra II, and realizes two or three weeks into the term that they will need to refresh […]

Taking a Proactive Approach to Advising for At-Risk Students

In this first of several articles, Academic Impressions is interviewing leading experts on proactive approaches to academic advising. Over the course of the series, we will look at interventions early on the academic calendar and innovations in course scheduling that support intervention with at-risk students. “By the time a student realizes they’re in trouble and asks an academic advisor for help, it’s usually too late for anything other than a conversation about dropping. The more you can front-load outreach into pre-term or start-of-term communications, the more options the advising office has to offer students.”Joe Murray, Miami University Joe Murray, the director of academic advising and retention services at Miami University Hamilton Campus, is acutely aware of the issue; his institution is open-enrollment, with many adult learners, first-generation students, and academically underprepared students. With a large number of students who could be designated “at risk,” Murray recognizes the critical importance of taking a proactive approach. Murray advocates an “intrusive advising” approach. Based on the research of Robert Glennen, intrusive advising focuses on early outreach and mandatory advising for at-risk students. When we interviewed Murray this week, his primary suggestion was that a one-on-one, personal connection early on the academic calendar will […]

Allocating Campus Space Strategically

“Space is a critical resource, just like your institution’s financial resources; it has to be managed effectively and used efficiently. It is an asset that you need to allocate in order to support short- and long-term priorities.” Frances Mueller, University of Michigan Institutions of higher education have a limited history of tracking and allocating their existing space effectively, but facing state budget cuts and/or rising enrollments, a handful of institutions have taken recent action to organize campus-wide space management initiatives to help reallocate prime “real estate” on campus in support of strategic priorities, looking for ways to optimize the space they already have. This is a critical step, and it involves: Acknowledging that your campus space is a strategic asset for your institution Building out a robust space database to allow for more sophisticated tracking of space utilization Taking steps to change the culture of space ownership on campus, shifting space from a departmental asset to an institutional asset Frances Mueller, project manager for the Space Utilization Initiative at the University of Michigan, and Phil Rouble, facilities planning specialist at Algonquin College, offer their advice about making this shift. Assessing Your Space Use For example, Mueller recommends assessing your use […]

Creating a Housing Master Plan

As more students look to housing as a key factor in college choice, and as more research points to the impact of on-campus accommodations on retention and academic success for undergraduate students, it is increasingly important that investments in student housing not be ad hoc or merely reactive. Recently, a growing number of colleges have been considering whether to take the step of developing a housing master plan to guide expenditures in construction, renovation, and replacement of residential facilities. To learn more, we’ve turned to David Jones, the associate vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at Minnesota State University Mankato. An early adopter of master planning for university housing, Jones offers his advice about the critical steps to take when developing a housing master plan. Conduct a Facility Audit “Like any plan, the housing master plan must be based on data, and you need to have good data.” David Jones, Minnesota State University, Mankato Jones advocates beginning with a “total audit” of your space: “You need to know what you have and how you’re using it. Don’t assume that old data you have about that space is still accurate.” When the University of Alabama (Jones’ previous institution) undertook […]

Taking a Proactive Approach to Energy Savings and Deferred Maintenance

“You have to be clear on the distinction between deferred maintenance and ignored maintenance, and ensure that your institution’s leadership is clear on this. Intentionally deferring needed maintenance after a careful assessment of your facilities condition is a strategy. Ignoring maintenance is a problem.”Faramarz Vakili, Associate Director of the Physical Plant, University of Wisconsin-Madison In January – February 2012, Academic Impressions conducted a benchmarking survey of facilities managers at more than 75 institutions of higher education. The results were indicative. For example, the survey confirmed that addressing deferred maintenance has moved from a worry to a priority at the majority of institutions: When we dug deeper, we found facilities managers at a variety of stages in addressing the issue — but they all feel the pressure. Some are making presentations to the board; some are proposing five-year or three-year plans for reducing the maintenance backlog. Some have succeeded in allocating a small annual budget for the purpose, and are now working to prioritize a campus’s worth of maintenance needs. It’s critical to develop a sustainable model for funding facilities replacement and renewal. To learn from successful models currently in place at two very different institutions, we turned to Faramarz Vakili, […]

Funding Facilities and Facilities Improvements in the Current Market

In recent years, more institutions have looked for innovative, outside-the-box methods of funding their investments in the physical campus — including an array of models for public-private partnerships, mixed-use facilities, and (in a few cases) fundraising for renewal and maintenance. We asked Pete Isaac, senior project manager with Brailsford & Dunlavey, to offer his insights on trends in the lending market and what institutional leaders need to rethink in order to achieve their capital planning goals. We also invited Kambiz Khalili, assistant vice chancellor for student affairs and executive director of housing and dining services for the University of Colorado at Boulder, to share his lessons learned from CU-Boulder’s innovative approach to leveraging rate increases to avoid the bond market or having to rely entirely on private developers. Whether you turn to a public-private partnership or develop an innovative plan to leverage rate increases, the key is intentional and pro-active planning for investment in the physical campus. Public-Private Partnerships DRIVING THE PROCESS “It is critical that the institution drives the planning and development process.  This approach will yield the best return and the best results for both the institution and the institution’s potential partners.”Pete Isaac, Brailsford & Dunlavey Isaac recommends […]

The Physical Campus: A Critical Asset, a Key Opportunity

In this Report: Improvement and stewardship of the physical campus is key to your institution’s competitiveness. Given deferred maintenance backlogs and changes in student expectations for the campus, it is critical to treat your physical campus as a resource, and manage it effectively and efficiently. With more intentional management of your facilities, you can: Yet too often, institutions make ad hoc and reactive decisions around space allocation; renewal, replacement, and construction of student housing; and deferral of maintenance needs. And just as often, critical decisions are made without all of the key voices at the table — from academic leaders to the registrar, student housing, and facilities management. For this issue, we’ve interviewed officials from across the college campus who have shown proven success in fostering cross-campus planning and buy-in around investments in physical facilities. These experts from the trenches bring outside-the-box thinking and a strategic, proactive perspective. We hope their advice will be useful to you. Read the report. See Upcoming Facilities Events

Training Peer Mentors for First-Year Students: What’s Missing

Peer educators can serve as an effective front line in the student development and academic success of first-year students, and employing peer mentors (either as employees or as volunteers) can save on costs. Yet many institutions provide only the most cursory training and orientation for their peer mentors. This week, we turned to Sarah Whitley, the forward-thinking director of first-year experience and family programs with Longwood University. We asked her what critical efforts are often missing from peer mentor training. Here are three items she drew our attention to. Introduce Student Development Theory “One thing that I have found incredibly useful and successful, and that many universities aren’t doing, is to actually provide a training session on student development theory. I know that probably seems a bit “heavy” for undergraduates. It seems like more of a graduate school topic. But offer a basic overview to kick off your training program, because it’s really important for the peer mentors to understand the developmental level of new students coming into the institution.”Sarah Whitley, Longwood University Whitley suggests that a basic overview of Chickering and Perry and brief discussions of student development vectors, how students are trying to make decisions, and how students […]