Author: greta@academicimpressions.com

Survey Report (Part 2): What is Broadly Participative Planning?

In the first part of our report on Academic Impressions’ November 2010 survey of presidents, chief financial officers, and academic leaders, we noted that the foremost challenge cited by institutional leaders related to strategic planning and resource allocation is integrating the planning and budgeting processes. In this second part of our report, we want to draw attention to another of the findings. Key Finding: More than 50% of Strategic Planning Efforts Are Unlikely to Succeed What has especially caught our attention at Academic Impressions is that more than 50% of colleges that responded to the survey are not pursuing a “broadly participative” process. What this indicates is that more than half of the strategic planning efforts underway are being pursued in a manner that calls into question the likelihood of implementation. A participative process in which numerous and diverse stakeholders have input into the thinking at the start is a key to building trust in the plan’s direction and investment in its initiatives. In fact, the lower the level of trust within an institution, the more need for an inclusive and participatory process; only through collaborative planning and transparency can institutional leadership begin building the trust and buy-in needed. Broad […]

The College Store: Encouraging Customer Loyalty

As college bookstores face increased competition from chains such as Barnes & Noble, peer-to-peer sites, and popular online retailers such as Amazon and eBay, many stores are seeing fewer students come through their doors, meaning not only declines in revenue from textbook sales but also from sales of other items — apparel, electronics, and campus memorabilia. A feature in The Chronicle of Higher Education emphasized that bookstores at many colleges are responding to their changing industry with new services they hope will keep students coming: performance spaces for in-store concerts, multimedia stations for printing digital photos, and even dry cleaning. However, diversification of services can be an expensive investment, and many stores are neglecting their best opportunities for increasing customer loyalty around their core services. This week, we turned to Mark Mulder, past auxiliary services director at Pacific Lutheran University and a key planner for the Garfield Book Company, and Dennis Mekelburg, associate director of Arizona State University Bookstores, to learn some practical tips for encouraging customer loyalty for the college store. Positioning Your Campus Store in a Changing Industry Before leaping into adding new programs to strengthen your customer base, Mulder suggests beginning with key strategic questions: At the end of […]

When Student Behavior Becomes a Media Crisis: Mitigation and Recovery

As one news source put it, Duke University “keeps getting in the news for all the wrong reasons.” The barrage of negative media attention to what are in all probability isolated and exceptional incidents at the university (a recent alumnus detailing her intimate encounters with Duke athletes; an email from a Duke fraternity inviting female students to a Halloween party in crass terms; the shutting down of an outdoor student party) offers a cautionary tale about the “snowball effect” that an incident involving perceived student misconduct can have on media relations for an institution. Journalists and experts on media relations alike have suggested that since a rape allegation in 2006 against three Duke lacrosse players, the local media have been quick to perpetuate negative stereotypes of the Duke student (even though the lacrosse players were found not guilty). What this case demonstrates is the importance of ongoing image management and reputation recovery after a media crisis related to student behavior. If an institution does not take prompt action after a crisis — and indeed, proactive action prior to a crisis — to build a more positive image, the negative image can persist for years, as the case of Duke illustrates. This week, […]

Returning Adults: Four Keys to Academic Success and Retention

According to a recent report by the Workforce Strategy Center, by 2018, two-thirds of the jobs in the US economy will require a postsecondary credential, yet 80 million to 90 million adult workers have low basic skills and are not qualified for those jobs. These data suggest that over the next decade, colleges and universities will see steadily increasing demand for both certificate and degree programs from adult learners. The Workforce Strategy Center report shares recommendations for a review of policy at the federal, state, and local levels. To learn what practices at the institutional level have an impact on the academic success and persistence of adult learners, Academic Impressions interviewed Denise Hart, director of adult education and creator of the Success Program at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Kenneth Vehrkens, dean of the Petrocelli College of Continuing Studies and associate vice president for lifelong learning at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Hart and Vehrkens recommend four primary areas in which to focus investment: Rigorous prior learning assessment Adult-friendly advising Preparing adult-friendly faculty Establishing one point of contact for connecting adult learners with enrollment and support services Prior Learning Assessment “Providing credit for experiential learning often makes the bridge to the next degree […]

Five Website Tips for International Student Recruitment

Even as the demand in international markets for a US education continues to rise, more institutions are responding to budget pressures in part by stepping up recruitment of international students, who typically bring significantly more tuition revenue than domestic students. According to the Institute of International Education, in 2008-09, more than 26,000 Chinese students were enrolled in college in the United States, up from 8,000 students eight years earlier. The New York Times has playfully dubbed this “the China Boom.” US colleges continue to see rising enrollments from India and other nations, as well, with India’s top education officials seeking partnerships with US institutions for help in boosting college attainment rates. Even enrollment of international graduate students is rising after a recent lull, according to an annual report by the Council of Graduate Schools. However, if you are not an Ivy League school with a well-established reputation in your target countries, how can you ramp up your international recruiting efforts swiftly? PRIMERS ON KEY RECRUITING STRATEGIES Recruiting International Students: Getting Started (November 2009) Recruiting Chinese Students: What You Need to Know (May 2010) Web marketing guru Bob Johnson, president of Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC, notes that your website is the first […]

Research Consortiums: What Can Academic Libraries Do Today?

A report from the Association of Research Libraries (pdf) offers four scenarios for predicting the research needs that faculty, students, and other researchers will have in the year 2030, and offers strategic objectives for academic research libraries who will need to build capacity and collections to meet those needs. One of those objectives involves building capacity through consortiums and other cooperative efforts between research libraries: “Collaborative capacities serving groups of research libraries or the full community of research libraries allows for increasing opportunities to develop a strategy for maintaining and sharing open and rich general collections. Opportunities for cross-pollinating research activities and the potential for shared endeavors are also viable strategies.” From The ARL 2030 Scenarios: A User’s Guide to Research Libraries Paul Gandel, professor of information studies at Syracuse University and a thought leader on this issue, points out that research libraries are caught in a Catch-22, in two ways. First, academic libraries need to share resources in order to build capacity, but that sharing has competitive implications. “Most universities have invested in their collections as a competitive advantage,” Gandel notes. “To open up those resources to everyone has political implications, because the institution has made a significant investment […]

Recruiting for the Humanities

With philanthropic monies flowing to the sciences, and sharp declines in the number of students declaring majors in the humanities (8% of US undergraduates in 2007, down from 17% in 1996, according to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences) as students increasingly look for disciplines linked to specific career outcomes, there is a growing sense in higher education that the future of studies in the humanities — though the humanities are nominally core to a liberal arts curriculum — is threatened. “Within the general college-bound public, the understanding of the liberal arts is fuzzy at best and distorted at worst. Despite our best intentions, noblest desires, and most sincere efforts, the higher education community has been unable to educate the public about what the liberal arts represents.”W. Kent Barnds, Augustana College Without underplaying the importance of enrolling and graduating more students in STEM fields, many university presidents have recently begun promoting the humanities in their speeches on campus and abroad, and some — at institutions such as Cornell, Dartmouth, and Harvard — are pledging to boost their efforts to fundraise for their literature and arts disciplines. There is still a critical question to address — how can institutions recruit more students to […]

Retaining and Rewarding High-Performing Faculty

The news is filled with accounts of extended pay freezes and tightened departmental budgets. More than ever, it is crucial to identify creative, meaningful, and low-cost ways to reward and retain high-performing faculty. Mary Coussons-Read, professor of psychology and acting chair of the department of physics at the University of Colorado Denver, reviews low-cost practices that can make a difference. Rethink Performance Rewards “Don’t get so caught up in the trees that you don’t see the forest,” Coussons-Read warns. “The forest is the need to help your faculty feel good about the work they do. There are many trees you can shake besides the salary adjustment tree.” While rewarding performance will rarely be free of cost, you can consider a variety of low-cost and one-time expenses that allow you to appreciate faculty. The difficulty of a salary increase is that it is a permanent addition to the ongoing budget.  There are many options for rewarding performance for which that is not the case. Look for one-time expenses. Beyond salary increases, you can recognize faculty achievements and, at the same time, use those achievements to encourage a high-performing faculty culture by: Making the most of your faculty awards competition Inviting high-performing […]

Key Strategies for Retaining Men

This week, the Washington Post highlighted the efforts many smaller colleges are making to add football programs as a strategy to recruit more men — one of several strategies colleges are currently employing to enroll more men (other efforts include adding academic majors that commonly appeal to men). However, recruitment is only the first part of the solution — colleges also need to address the growing gender gap in student retention. We interviewed W. Kent Barnds, vice president for enrollment, communication, and planning at Augustana College, who recently facilitated an Academic Impressions workshop on the issue, to learn more about where colleges have opportunities to engage male underclassmen. Barnds directs attention to the research collected in Why Boys Fail by Richard Whitmire and Teaching the Male Brain by Abigail Norfleet James, and then offers the following tips for applying the findings to practical strategies an institution can undertake to improve retention of men. Engage Men with Career-Oriented Experiences “Take a step back. Adding sports to attract young men is a good step, but beyond that, are you asking the critical questions to learn if your academic environment and your academic support environment will help you keep them?” W. Kent Barnds, […]

Piloting Mobile Learning

The Urgency of Going Mobile Several recent reports have highlighted a rising rate of adoption for mobile devices: Gartner, this week, released a projection that tablet devices such as Apple’s iPad will see more than 19 million units sold worldwide this year, most of them in the US; Gartner also anticipates that this figure will grow to more than 200 million units in 2014 In September, International Data Corp. (IDC) upgraded its forecast for sales of smartphones, suggesting that the end of 2010 would see a 55.4% increase since 2009 In short, though most universities in the US are only in the earliest stages of implementing mobile marketing initiatives, and though few universities are actively piloting mobile learning, there is growing urgency in the need to do so. “In a short period of time, much of what you do will need to be available on mobile devices. Don’t think of this as just an experiment to try. The majority of your students, even your returning adult students, are using mobile devices to manage a large part of their communication and to access information. So your most critical educational activities and resources need to be delivered on mobile devices.” Lynne O’Brien, […]