Author: greta@academicimpressions.com

Building Strong Relationships with Young Alumni

In recent news, development officers at Claremont McKenna College are expanding their alumni engagement strategy by asking alumni volunteers to interview their peers about interest and affinity. The college’s commitment to investing in engaging young alumni has already seen returns: the institution’s 10-year average giving rate has increased 6% since 2008, despite a difficult economy. Now, more than ever, institutions need to ensure the long-term health of the annual fund by moving donors into the pipeline early, and young alumni are often an insufficiently tapped resource. Yet this year sees not only a continuing trend of volunteerism but also growing numbers of recent graduates seeking to reconnect with their alma mater for assistance with networking and career advancement opportunities in this economy. It is critical that alumni relations and annual fund professionals take advantage of a surge in interest from young alumni, through proactive and deliberate outreach. We asked Elise M. Betz, executive director of alumni relations at the University of Pennsylvania; Linda Williams Favero,  assistant director of the University of Oregon Career Center; and Elizabeth Allen, executive director of communications for THINK Global School, for tips on cultivating young alumni engagement. Focus on Services for Young Alumni First, Linda […]

Affordable, High-Impact Study Abroad

Among the findings from GLOSSARI, the Georgia Learning Outcomes of Students Studying Abroad Research Initiative: Students completing study abroad programs show improved academic performance in subsequent terms Study abroad students have higher graduation rates Study abroad improves academic performance for at-risk students However, as the Chronicle‘s article “7 Signs of Successful Study Abroad Programs” notes, as few as 1.5% of American college students study overseas each year. The cost of participation in study abroad programs remains a key barrier for students. We asked Wendy Williamson, director of study abroad at Eastern Illinois University, for a few strategies for keeping study abroad affordable without sacrificing the quality of the learning experience. Keeping Study Abroad Affordable for Students Williamson recommends: Seek out partnerships with your development office and look for opportunities to provide scholarships for students studying abroad Look for the most cost-effective partnerships as you develop your program Establish study abroad programs that are shorter in duration yet designed to maximize the learning experience and cultural integration “Some institutions only use third-party providers,” Williamson says. “Use these only when needed.” You may not need to use a more expensive third party if the host university has a well-established office to manage arrivals of […]

Strategic Planning: Engaging Faculty and Other Stakeholders Early

As July 2010 draws to a close, the news is full of reports of state budget shortfalls, belt-tightening initiatives to cope with the approaching demise of stimulus funding, and growing protests from faculty and staff as institutions make politically unpopular decisions in re-allocating increasingly scarce resources. In this environment, it is critical to engage as many stakeholders as possible as early as possible in the strategic planning process. By involving more stakeholders (faculty, students, staff, alumni, and representatives of the community) in the initial industry scan and identification of priority challenges for your institution, you can plan for resource allocation in a way that builds engagement and buy-in from the campus community (which will be critical as you move from planning to implementation) and enables you to harvest the knowledge and the brainpower of stakeholders across (and beyond) the campus. At a recent Academic Impressions conference, Larry Goldstein (president of Campus Strategies, LLC) and Pat Sanaghan (president of The Sanaghan Group) facilitated a future timeline exercise, in which a diverse group of senior leaders, including provosts, chief financial officers, and vice presidents from different institutions, collaboratively identified and prioritized trends and challenges facing higher education over the next decade. This future timeline exercise can be used to solicit input from a variety of […]

Testing Your Emergency Response Plan

by Greta Bell

Testing your campus’s crisis response plans frequently and rigorously is key to ensuring that you can protect campus resources and recover speedily following a crisis, and as of July 1, 2010, annual testing is mandated under the updated Clery Act. Nonetheless, annual testing represents a significant shift in practice for many institutions. Nearly a quarter of higher education administrators polled in an Academic Impressions survey in January 2010 reported their institutions had not tested their campus crisis response plan in over five years. Another 13% said their plans had not been tested within the past two years. “This finding indicates that a sizable subset of colleges and universities may be unaware of their crisis response plan’s actual ability to effectively address a modern campus emergency — a salient gamble in the wake of a series of high-profile campus crises.”Marla Whipple, Academic Impressions To help institutions that are preparing for annual testing of their emergency response plans, we turned to Hamilton College’s director of campus safety, Francis Manfredo, who shared with us lessons learned from his college’s recent drill. We also want to share strategies from Steve Charvat with the University of Washington, Cindy Lawson with the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Eugene […]

Supporting Faculty in Adopting Emerging Learning Technologies

The 21st Century Report released by CDW-G confirms an increasing trend of rising student expectations for technology on campus: 63% of current college students indicate that campus technology was a critical factor in their college choice 93% of current high school students indicate that campus technology is a critical factor in their college choice, 95% expect to use technology in some or all of their classes, and 76% say they are using social media as an educational tool College students surveyed believe that the primary obstacle to further integration of emerging learning technologies into the classroom is that many faculty do not know how to use the technologies effectively Faculty list the same obstacle, ranking it as the second most important barrier (after lack of budget) In response to last year’s report from CDW-G (which also emphasized student dissatisfaction with faculty use of technology in the classroom), we gathered insights from Patricia McGee, associate professor of instructional technology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, on approaches to providing initial, tailored training for faculty in interactive learning technologies. For this article, we turned to Jerome Waldron, CIO at Salisbury University and the designer of a highly successful center for […]

Re-enrolling Stop-Outs: Overcoming the Barriers

In the news recently, the regents for the University of South Dakota system have focused attention on re-enrolling students who have “stopped out” and left their degree incomplete. This is in response to a recent report to the board that demonstrated that 1,889 students who had earned at least 90 semester credit hours had left the university system between 2003 and 2008. South Dakota is one of five states studying this population of students under grants from the Lumina Foundation for Education and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE). We asked Demaree Michelau, WICHE’s director of policy analysis, for her advice on the key barriers stop-outs face in returning to campus and how institutions can begin to address them. Barriers Stop-Outs Face in Re-enrolling Michelau notes that studies on this “ready adult” population underway in Nevada, Colorado, North and South Dakota, and Arkansas are identifying several principal barriers to re-enrollment: Competing “life” obligations Lack of familiarity with recent changes in campus processes (for example, registration may have moved from print to online since they were enrolled) Financial holds on registration “Most stop-outs left because life happened, not because they were failing out or doing badly,” Michelau notes. “If you […]

Integrating E-Portfolios into Your Assessment Strategy

by Greta Bell

Trent Batson, executive director of The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL), stirred some controversy this week with an article entitled “The Testing Straitjacket,” in which he advocates for privileging e-portfolios over legacy testing as a primary tool for assessing student learning, arguing that e-portfolios, which “encourage students to use their collection of evidence as a strong developmental practice, and fully recognize the value of student discovery,” are the more effective assessment tool to evaluate the type of learning needed in the twenty-first century. While many educators do not see such an either-or proposition, interest in the use of the electronic portfolio is growing. However, while older methods of testing have a set of attested practices, the e-portfolio is a much more recent innovation in learning assessment, and many institutions are less sure where to look for effective models and best practices. Tracy Penny Light, assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, a leading e-portfolio researcher and co-author (with Helen Chen at the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning) of the book Electronic Portfolios and Student Success, offers several steps for integrating e-portfolios into your assessment strategy. Ensure Your Assessment Strategy is Aligned with Your Outcomes “The problem we […]

Evaluating Part-Time Faculty

by Greta Bell

Traditionally, most institutions have not made significant investments in either training or rigorous evaluation for contingent faculty. However, given the rising percentages of part-time instructors, it is increasingly crucial that deans and department chairs give thought to implementing evaluation methods that will encourage continued improvement of the quality of instruction in their adjunct-taught courses. For this article, we asked Richard Lyons, senior consultant with Faculty Development Associates and editor of the book Best Practices for Supporting Adjunct Faculty (2007), for advice on how to provide effective evaluation for part-time instructors. Find Effective Ways to Share Student Evaluation Feedback “First, get usable feedback in as many adjuncts’ hands as possible and as quickly as possible, preferably before the next term begins.” Richard Lyons, Faculty Development Associates Lyons stresses the importance of feedback from student evaluations speedily at the close of the term, as well as the importance of sharing them with all instructors, not just in cases in which a red flag was raised. Whether you are sharing these through a spreadsheet, through your course management system, or through some other tool, make sure that the sharing of evaluation data is systematic and that you offer guidance on how to interpret the […]