Author: greta@academicimpressions.com

Five Tips for Making Your Website Mobile-Friendly

June 23, 2011. Last June, Ball State University released a study showing that of college students owning phones, 49 percent owned smartphones; the number had doubled since 2009. In the year since, many colleges and universities have launched mobile marketing initiatives or mobile apps for students and alumni. Among those efforts that have seen early gains: Piloting targeted mobile apps (during the weekend of its launch, the University of Virginia’s application saw downloads from several thousand users). Inviting prospective students to opt in to text messaging or “mobile updates.” Look to St. Mary’s University for a leading-edge example; while St. Mary’s has seen few students opt in, the university has seen a high yield rate among those who do. However, very few institutions have taken smartphones into account in their Web design, which presents a significant risk as a growing number of prospective students access college websites from mobile devices. In an interview with Academic Impressions this week, Bob Johnson, president of Bob Johnson Consulting LLC, advised that the most immediate and pressing mobile marketing investment to make is to create a mobile-friendly version or section of your website. He offers the following tips. The Mobile-Friendly Website According to a 2010 survey of 1,000 college-bound high […]

Five Things Department Chairs Need to Know About Fundraising

According to a January 2010 Academic Impressions survey of department chairs, 64 percent of department chairs felt that they were not adequately prepared to assume the role when they first began chairing their department. And of the various duties and responsibilities of the academic chair, 43 percent felt least prepared to address advancement and fundraising initiatives. Yet by virtue of the chair’s position, not only are there many times when a department leader will need to be involved in the conversation between a potential donor and the institution, there are also many times when the chair may need to be the only official involved in the conversation. This is because the donor may want to hear from the academic leader in his or her field of interest, rather than from a professional fundraiser. And as more institutions, both private and public, look to ramp up fundraising efforts, the role of academic leaders will become increasingly vital. We turned to Jason McNeal, Ph.D., consultant with Gonser Gerber Tinker Stuhr LLP, for his advice on what those new to the department chair position most need to know in order to take an active and effective role in fundraising. He offers these five […]

Social Media: Targeting Your Content

June 16, 2011. In a recent interview with Academic Impressions, Brad Ward, CEO of BlueFuego Inc., cited his organization’s research into the impact of university Facebook pages. After a 25-month study of nearly 400,000 Facebook updates across more than 1,200 university Facebook pages, Ward concluded that most institutions offer too much content via social media channels, leading to declines in engagement as their audiences begin to “tune them out.” Ward warns that quality is far more important than quantity, because institutions compete with family and friends for time and social media “space” — in short, for the attention of students and alumni on channels that are already overcrowded with content. It’s critical that marketing and communications and alumni relations offices invest more in listening to their audience’s social media preferences and preferred content. Effective listening can empower your office to offer highly targeted content — whether on your website, on your Facebook page, or via a mobile app. To learn more, we turned to Linda Thomas Brooks, president of Ingenuity Media, The Martin Group and past member of the board of directors for the Ohio State University Alumni Association. With considerable expertise in setting up effective social media listening posts, Brooks offers the […]

Four Tips for Managing the Brand Launch

June 9, 2011. Competition for visibility continues to pressure institutions of higher education to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. In order to stay competitive, maintain enrollment levels, and meet advancement goals, your institution needs a unique brand strategy that carefully defines who you are in the minds of stakeholders. Often, though, marketing professionals and institutional leaders have questions concerning how to effectively roll out or communicate a change to the brand. Past examples of branding efforts gone wrong have taught us that a brand campaign carries considerable public relations risk. This week, we asked Bill Faust, senior partner and chief strategy officer for Ologie, for his advice; Faust offers these four tips for success in managing your brand launch. Decide Whether You Need a Hard or Soft Launch Faust suggests that a hard launch or “roll-out party” isn’t always necessary: “some launches are very soft and are rolled out over time, applied to specific areas of the institution at a time.” If your institution has been through a tumultuous time or needs to change its public image dramatically (the public thinks of you as X, but you need them to think of you as Y), then a hard launch may be […]

Make Your Alumni Board Effective

June 9, 2011. During a series of interviews with leaders in alumni relations earlier this year, Academic Impressions found that many alumni relations offices are struggling with their alumni boards or alumni association boards. While a working board can offer institutional leaders partners to aid in achieving institutional goals for engagement and giving, most boards are not filling this role. Among the common problems: Many boards remain too focused on specific tactics — such as reunion and homecoming Other boards have grown too large and unwieldy, preventing them from “getting down to business” Boards struggle to ensure that 100 percent of their members give to the institution and that their members model supportive relationships with administration To learn more about the characteristics of an effective “working board,” we turned to Gary Olsen, associate vice president of alumni relations and executive director of the alumni association at Villanova University, and Christine Tempesta, director of strategic initiatives with the MIT Alumni Association. Olsen and Tempesta shared their advice on the qualities to look for in board members and managing the board’s scope of responsibilities. Who’s on the Working Board? Olsen and Tempesta suggest these criteria for selecting board members who will be well-positioned to […]

Locally Sourced Foods on Campus: Thinking Outside the Box

June 2, 2011. The University of Winnipeg has been praised in the media lately for a dramatic turnaround in the quality and profitability of their food services operation; Macleans’ 2009 University Rankings had taken the university to task for poor food and poor service, and the institution’s dining operation was seeing attrition in its student customers. In the two years since, not only has the University of Winnipeg recovered, but its food services operation — which now focuses on organic, locally sourced food — is the most requested caterer in the local community, its head chef has won an Iron Chef Award, and the return on investment has been so high that the university is preparing to expand its operation by launching an off-campus restaurant. This week, we spoke with the University of Winnipeg’s president, Lloyd Axworthy, to ask what other institutions in the US and Canada could learn from the success of his institution’s transition to locally sourced foods. He offered several key takeaways worth noting: Conduct thorough research into student demand Consider public-private partnerships that can help manage costs and mitigate risk Recognize that your purchasing program can actually impact the market in ways that will allow you to negotiate lower prices […]

Planning Online Programs: Making Sure There’s a Market

As they look to improve student access and increase degree completion rates, more institutions are considering launching or scaling up existing online initiatives. At Academic Impressions, we’re responding to the trend with a series of articles interviewing leading experts on planning online programs, and by offering an upcoming conference that leverages collaborative information sharing and case studies to guide institutions in developing a working plan. It’s becoming more widely recognized that online programming entails far more than just providing electronic correspondence courses; with the new mode of course delivery come new demands on instructional design, technological infrastructure and student support services, staff and faculty training, and new challenges for your marketing and recruiting efforts. The investment required demands that institutions adopt a deliberate approach to developing online programs. The potential for increased tuition revenue and increased access to higher education is significant — but to see success, you have to look before you leap. Joel Hartman, vice provost for information technologies and resources and chief information officer at the University of Central Florida, suggests that those initiatives that have failed in the past share some or all of these characteristics: “Conceptualized by administrators who made the assumption that there was a market […]

Four Tips for Increasing First-Gen Student Yield

A new report from the Pell Institute (pdf link) suggests that without more students from low-income and working-class families earning bachelor’s degrees, the United States will be unable to meet the Obama administration’s college-completion goal. As demand for college education rises among lower-income families amid a troubled economy, and as the pressure mounts on completion rates, more institutions are beginning to assess their strategies for recruiting and retaining first-gen students. We addressed the issue in Higher Ed Impact recently, interviewing Mary Ontiveros, Colorado State University’s vice president for diversity, who suggested four tips for boosting application rates for lower-income, first-gen students. This week, we turned to Thom Golden, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Vanderbilt University, for four additional tips — this time for boosting yield. What Keeps First-Gen Admits From Enrolling? When asked why first-generation admits opt not to enroll, Golden several barriers: Concerns over affordability Lack of clarity about financial aid (how it’s applied for and when; what the award amount means, etc.) Lack of clarity around aid eligibility The American Council of Education has released several studies indicating that over 1.8 million low-income and middle-income families who would have qualified for college aid failed to apply. Golden […]

Planning Online Programs: Involving Faculty Early

A May 6, 2011 open letter addressed to the University of California chancellor Mark Yudof by the faculty senate expressed concerns over how the system’s pilot effort for online programming would be evaluated, as well as (implied) concern over how faculty would be involved in the ongoing planning process. The issues raised at the University of California are just one example of an obstacle that several high-profile online initiatives have encountered over the past decade. “If you look closely at those initiatives that have failed to succeed,” suggests John Ebersole, current president of Excelsior College and responsible in past years for creating Boston University’s successful online program, “the common missing piece in all of them was that faculty were not at the table during the early planning. Their concerns were not addressed at the outset, and in fact it was perceived that it was the intent of the organization to go around them. This led to intensified skepticism and the eventual ire of the faculty.” Ebersole also cites other common issues — most significantly, insufficient market research to determine the student demand for a program and the lack of a systemic, institution-wide plan for growing online programming. Focusing on the issue of faculty […]

Connecting Your Humanities Graduates with Careers

Published in May 2011. Recent studies confirm that some of the graduates having the most difficulty finding fulfilling employment are those with majors in the humanities and social sciences. This week, we interviewed Andrew Ceperley, director of the University of California, San Diego’s highly effective career services center. Ceperley suggests that to help graduates in the humanities connect with desirable careers, college career centers need to invest in programming and services that: Provide self-assessment tools to help humanities majors define their career path Connect students with industry experts who also studied in the humanities, and who can serve as mentors and role models Educate students on the power of professional networking Defining the Pipeline “It’s too easy to just focus on strengthening services to majors who have an easy and direct pipeline to careers (chemical engineering, accounting). Students in the humanities have marketable skills, but they have to define their own pipeline.” Andrew Ceperley, UCSD Ceperley suggests identifying high-yield opportunities for exposing students to self-assessment tools that can help them better understand their skills, values, and personality traits, and to educational programming that can help them translate those skills and traits into a variety of career options. For example: Offer […]