Category: Blog

Share This Advice with Your First Generation College Students

The first generation college student often feels alone in navigating the processes and procedures of higher education. Here is some advice from staff at Academic Impressions who were first generation themselves. Share this with the students on your campus! by the Staff at Academic Impressions “My interest in higher education is a deeply personal one,” our president at Academic Impressions, Amit Mrig, relates. “My family is here in this country because my father had an opportunity many years ago to come to this country and be afforded a scholarship. He didn’t have any money, any resources to warrant that opportunity other than his intelligence and his hard work. In my mind, that is what the American dream is. Anyone who has the determination, the drive, and the intelligence should have an opportunity to move up the social ladder. The engine that drives that is higher education.” Today, November 8, is #CelebrateFirstGen Day. One of the amazing things about higher education in the U.S. is the doors it opens for families who have never been to college; our hope is that higher education will remain the engine of social mobility in this country. In that spirit, our team shares the following stories […]

College Student Mental Health Statistics and What They Really Mean

by Sarah Seigle Peatman

There has been a lot of media attention to college student mental health statistics and to the upsurge in demand for mental health services. But does the data really suggest a mental health “crisis”? What does the upsurge actually mean for postsecondary institutions? Where do we need to shift the conversation, and what do we need to do next? Learn more in the infographic and article below. What the Upsurge in Demand for Mental Health Services Means (and Doesn’t Mean) The first thing I want to underscore is that institutions are facing an unprecedented level of demand from students seeking help and support for mental health issues. Counseling centers are not new on campus–and mental health services are certainly not new–but the upsurge in volume from students accessing these services is. The two main presenting issues we’re seeing in students are anxiety and depression. The other issue institutions are concerned about but that is statistically much less frequent is suicidality. If you read the press on this topic, there are a lot of articles that emphasize the number of college students committing suicide. That’s obviously a horrible mental health outcome and something institutions are investing prevention and education efforts around, […]

What is the Blockchain and How Can It Transform Higher Education?

by Alicia Miranda, M.S.

What is blockchain? As academic leaders, you want to stay on top of what’s coming next. And the blockchain could transform how colleges and universities operate in 5 critical ways. What is the Blockchain? The blockchain has been described as the new internet, the next generation of data and information. As a digital ledger that allows data to be dispersed across different users and user systems via cryptography, the blockchain allows for “trustless commerce in a trusted way,” according to one leading blockchain expert. That means you do not have to know the person on the other end of a transaction in order to know the transaction is secure and permanent. The technology takes care of that for you. Most people who have heard about the blockchain know of it because they’ve heard of cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin or Ether. Blockchain is the technology that enables cryptocurrencies, but it has potential uses far beyond just Bitcoin. Leading expert Michael L. Mathews, vice president of innovation and technology at Oral Roberts University, suggests that the basic concept of blockchain technology has already been proven by the US Library of Congress’ use of MARC codes. These codes ensure that each item exists as […]

Research Grants: Which Colleges are Getting Them?

Research grants are increasingly competitive, and our analysis shows that just the top 50 colleges and universities account for nearly two thirds of research expenditures in the U.S. by Sasha Egorova, Research Analyst, Academic Impressions A Disparity in Research Grants More higher ed institutions, including predominantly teaching universities, are facing a push to increase their research activity. Higher research expenditures mean prestige and contributions to economic development and innovation. However, breaking into this highly competitive space is a challenging endeavor. The current research environment in the US is as competitive as ever. Federal funding rates have been consistently declining over the past decades. For example, the NIH funding success rate has decreased from 31% in 1998 to 19% in 2017. The NSF funding rate has been hovering around 23% in the past couple of years. The increase in competition has been caused and amplified by multiple factors, including flat federal research budgets. Other key factors, though, include: Taken all together, this means that 1 in 4 federal proposals gets funded, and the winning proposal is most likely to have come from a top 50 research university. In Canada the competition for funding is not as fierce, with the government making […]

Retaining Your Major Gift Officers—From Day One

by Dr. Joshua Jacobs

Retaining major gift officers begins on day one—with how you onboard them and connect them with key networks across the institution. A formal process for major gift officer training is one of the key factors in their success that is also within your control. In my article “Recruiting the Right Major Gift Officers,” I encouraged managers to define the specific skills they are hiring for—and seek non-traditional candidates for major gift officers. Now I would like to encourage you to rethink how you onboard and support your major gift officers in ways that encourage their success and retention from day one. Major gift officers, due to their sporadic attendance in the office, need as much clarity as possible, and this is especially true if you are hiring non-traditional candidates who are new to both the work and the institution. This means more than just ensuring that you have a formalized onboarding and training process (one that communicates the unit philosophy, establishes a common foundation of expectations, and outlines options for potential professional development) and clear performance expectations for both input metrics (e.g., contacts, substantive visits, number and value of asks made, and office attitude/collegiality) and output metrics (e.g., dollars raised, […]

Are We Measuring the Impact of Advising the Right Way?

by Sue Ohrablo, Ed.D.

Here are three commonly used academic advising metrics that fail to measure the impact of advising, and three qualitative measures that DO matter. Advising administrators are challenged with recruiting, training, and retaining effective advisors. They are tasked with positively impacting student success and retention, and are often held accountable for student persistence, academic performance, and graduation rates. Additionally, advising administrators must develop measures to evaluate advisor performance to ensure that they are successfully meeting student needs. Because of these demands, administrators may use quantitative measures to evaluate student success and advisor performance. However, the use of these measures may be a source of frustration and dissatisfaction for advisors and may unjustly place the burden of student success on their shoulders. As a result, advisors may experience burnout that can lead to poor performance and possible departure. 3 Academic Advising Metrics That Fail to Accurately Measure the Impact 1. Number of Contacts an Advisor Makes The logic is sound. Research has shown that the more engaged a student is with an institution and its personnel, the more likely he or she is to persist. By encouraging advisors to reach out to their students, administrators are hoping to build connections to promote […]

Success Coaching: How to Turn Training into Action

by Steven Riccio, Ed.D., SPHR, PCC

How do you make sure that what you bring back from a conference gets followed up on and leads to action? How do you get more return on that investment and really build your capacity? Often the missing step is to pair training with success coaching. Here’s what that can look like. Take a moment to think back to the last time you researched a conference or workshop that you wanted to attend. If you are like most, it was probably an exciting experience, an opportunity to get “off campus” and meet new colleagues who are more than likely experiencing the same challenges you are. As you reviewed the content of the offering, you considered the changes you could implement when you returned from the training. After you registered and then attended, that feeling increased to the point where you could almost envision the changes already made and how those changes would impact you, your team, and maybe the entire institution. Having spent much of my career managing and facilitating training and development programs, there have been countless times when I would feel a high level of satisfaction observing participants’ energy and enthusiasm as each program concluded. In most instances, […]

Hiring Non-Traditional Candidates for Your MGO Team: Navigating the Opportunity and the Risk

by Dr. Joshua Jacobs

To find your talented next major gift officer, look beyond your borders and deepen your candidate pool by searching for non-traditional candidates who have the right combination of skills and personality traits to succeed. But also recognize that candidates who are new to university advancement or to higher education will need onboarding and support. The recruitment and retention of our best talent in higher education is fraught with challenge. In institutional advancement, the average tenure of an MGO, by some estimates, is just above 18 months, levying a high cost on the institution in repeated searches, lost philanthropic momentum, and severed relationships. Not only is the length of tenure brief, the search costs to replace MGOs are high. Because the central pillar of successful fundraising is the relationship with the donor, and because each representative of the institution must establish credibility and trust with the donor before the best gift can be secured, replacing one MGO with another is not a simple plug-and-play process. It’s a position — like many in higher education — that requires specific talent, and the competition for that talent is fierce. Recently, I recommended that leaders in advancement boost their odds of finding the right talent […]

Title IX Update: What You Need to Know

by Bev Baligad, J.D., Rabia Khan Harvey, M.Ed., MSHR

The New York Times recently reported that Betsy DeVos is preparing “new rules” on Title IX policy that would bolster the rights of students accused of assault, reduce liability for institutions, and encourage schools to provide more support for survivors. Two Title IX experts discuss: At this point, what do we know, what don’t we know, and what should we be doing? Rabia Khan Harvey. Bev, thanks for joining me for this conversation! Of course we’re all thinking a lot about the recent article in The New York Times about the coming changes to Title IX policy. Some of the points highlighted here could drastically impact the way institutions conduct Title IX investigations. I wanted to ask you: What was your own first reaction when you heard of the proposed new Title IX rule? Bev Baligad. When I learned of the NY Times article which suggested that new proposed rules where forthcoming, several questions went through my mind: To tell you truth, I’m not surprised. I believe there are many people out there that aren’t surprised that there may be changes made to the regs in the future. Even before DeVos became the Secretary of Education, we saw some indications that the pendulum […]

Athletic Department Strategic Planning: The Power of Defining Objectives, Not Just Tactics

by Ken Halpin

At Winthrop, we had never undertaken true, multi-year athletic department strategic planning. Here’s what we learned when we transitioned from annual work plans to defining annual objectives. by Ken Halpin and L. Jeffrey Perez, Winthrop University Those of us in higher education are sick and tired of hearing we face an unprecedented set of challenges: fiscal restraints, demography, technology, and heightened competition, to name a few.  Constantly confronted by these daunting circumstances we may be tempted to just get by – to manage for the next department review or board meeting. But institutions that don’t plan strategically over a number of years and instead adopt a hand-to-mouth approach to planning will face failure in its harshest terms. This is true not only for institutions as a whole but for divisions within the college or university — not the least of which are athletics departments, which face the same set of imperatives as the instiution itself. Athletic departments must maintain academic standards and provide life preparation to the student athletes, who are recruited as aggressively as any other prospects.  They must provide for efficient and cost-effective operations, which are often dependent on fundraising and other sources of revenue. Athletic departments must maintain […]