Category: Blog

Survey Report: Where Your Institution May be Missing Opportunities to Improve Academic Advising

by Sue Ohrablo, Ed.D.

In November 2011, Academic Impressions surveyed colleges and universities on their practices in assessing academic advisors. 73 institutions responded, and of those who responded, 57 percent employ both faculty and professional advisors, 24 percent use only faculty advisors, and 19 percent use only professional advisors. The aggregated results from the survey reveal some significant issues. When asked what methods they were using to assess the effectiveness of academic advising, respondents indicated: Note that 21 percent – over one fifth – of respondents have no system in place for assessing advising. And though 63 percent are collecting student evaluations, a far smaller percentage are using the data they collect to provide training or other concrete efforts to improve the quality of academic advising: Most institutions are collecting some evaluative data, but few institutions are using that data to improve advising programs and practices. In fact, 61% of institutions surveyed do not use assessment data to reward and recognize effective advising, and nearly half do not use it to inform training for academic or faculty advisors. Lisa Wexler, conference director with Academic Impressions, notes that this disparity in results suggests that what data is being collected is likely not being used to […]

Expelling Students: Cautionary Advice from Allan Shackelford

In two recent, tragic examples, a student who was expelled from a postsecondary institution for apparent behavioral issues later shot, killed, and injured other people. In one case, Jared Loughner, expelled from Pima Community College (Tucson, AZ) attacked citizens who were not associated with the institution. Pima Community College then came under considerable scrutiny as public representatives, legislators, and the press debated whether the college should have done more to alert and protect the community when expelling a person who had evidenced behavioral problems. In the other, more recent case, a student expelled from Oikos University (Oakland, CA) returned to campus, apparently enraged by a dispute over a requested tuition refund, and shot and killed several members of the campus community. “If you have an individual that is creating problems to the extent that you feel you need to expel them from campus, the act of expelling them does not necessarily solve or end the problem either for people within or people outside the ivy walls of the institution.”Allan Shackelford In an interview this week, we asked Allan Shackelford to offer his reflections on the tragedies in Tucson, AZ and Oakland, CA and to offer his recommendations. As an attorney […]

Boosting Retention for Ethnic Minority Students: Laying the Groundwork

Iowa’s three public universities have been in the news recently because of a fresh push from the state’s board of regents to improve the six-year graduation rates for underrepresented minority students. The University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and the University of Northern Iowa are each piloting different initiatives to boost persistence and academic success for their ethnic minority students, particularly African Americans. At Academic Impressions, we decided to reach out to representatives from the Iowa institutions and leading thinkers from other institutions to learn what practices or key considerations they would share with peers elsewhere in the US. In this first in a series of articles on the issue, we interviewed Goldie Adele, director of the Disability Resource Center at Southern Connecticut State University. Adele is an attorney with expertise in diversity and disability services, a past chair of the National Bar Association, Legislative Division, and a key thinker on supporting diverse student populations. Adele offers the following tips for establishing the initial groundwork for a truly effective push to support and retain more ethnic minority students. [wcm_restrict] The Data You Need First, Adele advises that it’s critical not to rely only on data on national trends. You need […]

Boosting Retention for Ethnic Minority Students: Leveraging Peer Leadership

ALSO READ Boosting Retention for Ethnic Minority Students: Laying the Groundwork For this second in a series of articles on supporting the academic success of underrepresented minority students, we interviewed Georgina Dodge, chief diversity officer and associate vice president at the University of Iowa. Dodge shared with us lessons learned and practical tips based on the early success of the University of Iowa’s pilot peer mentoring program for ethnic minority students, the Iowa Edge program. Students enrolled in that program show a higher retention rate than the overall retention rate for the institution. [wcm_restrict] The Thinking Behind Iowa Edge HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS “We bring 90 admits a week early. Over a period of that week before classes, theyr’e able to get into their dorm rooms, get settled and established with staff assistance. Then a week to learn about the campus, register, learn about success skills, get acclimated, learn how long it takes to walk from one location to the next. Most important, they form a cohort. They have a group they belong to.”Georgina Dodge, University of Iowa Underlying the program is Dodge’s conviction that when transitioning minority students into the institution, the two factors that will best prepare them […]

Improving Your Online Writing Center for International Students

As international student enrollment rises at many institutions, it’s going to be increasingly important to provide academic support for a growing population of students who may have diverse levels of fluency with academic writing in English. While there is a long tradition of providing ESL writing labs and other support for these “second language students” on campus, providing writing support for international students in an online writing center involves unique challenges and requires some specific expertise in the writing center staff in order to be effective. For advice, we turned to Beth Hewett, an educational consultant in online writing instruction and an adjunct associate professor with the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) and St. Mary’s University and Seminary. A college instructor for 30 years, Hewett is the author of The Online Writing Conference: A Guide for Teachers and Tutors (Heinemann, 2010) and one of the most knowledgeable practitioners in this area. We asked Hewett to offer some key considerations for institutions looking to launch or improve an online writing center or online tutoring service intended to support second-language students. Staffing the Online Writing Center Effectively “If you anticipate serving many second-language students via an online writer center or online […]

Ensuring Your Developmental Advising is Effective

by Sue Ohrablo, Ed.D.

Due to rising enrollment and budget cuts, academic advisors can find themselves nearly overwhelmed with high student traffic and high student/advisor ratios. Given this situation, how can directors of advising ensure a high quality of developmental advising, and how can they best encourage and support their staff in providing it? We spoke this week with Susan Ohrablo, a doctoral enrollment counselor with the Abraham S. Fischler School of Education at Nova Southeastern University. Prior to joining the Fischler School, Ohrablo served as the director of academic advising for the business school at NSU, providing training and leadership to a large staff of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral academic advisors. Here is her advice. Where Developmental Advising Efforts Often Fall Short “Given the lack of time and high expectations from students for a fast turnaround in responses to their inquiries,” Ohrablo cautions, “it’s easy for the advisor to focus on answering the immediate question at hand without necessarily engaging in actual developmental advising.” Ohrablo offers this scenario. Suppose a student calls indicating they have one more class to register for, and they are asking if they should take a certain course they find interesting. The advisor, pressed for time, responds with a […]

Four Experts on the Need for Annual Giving Planning

For most shops, the past several years have been a financial roller coaster for annual giving numbers. As annual giving recovers momentum this year, now is the right time to invest time and energy in planning for the long term. One of the most critical lessons that can be learned from the past few years is the importance of not remaining at the mercy of macro-level trends in giving. Rather than invest in the same efforts year after year, take a proactive approach to annual giving planning so that you can deploy your solicitation tools in support of specific, long-term goals. This week, we reached out to four leading thinkers on the issue to learn more about the shift in thinking that needs to occur in order to position the annual fund strongly for the future: Jessica Neno Cloud, who administers a comprehensive annual giving program for the University of Southern Mississippi Foundation Brian Daugherty, director of development and alumni relations for the School of Law at the University of San Diego Heather Grieg, interim senior director for Georgetown University’s annual fund Janine Kraus, assistant vice chancellor for annual giving programs at Texas Christian University Here are their insights. Defining […]

Strategies to Ensure Implementation

  In This Issue Setting Priorities for Your Division Developing the Action Plan Funding Your Action Plan Strategies to Ensure Implementation Beginnings are critical, and operational plans often lose momentum in their first year of implementation. This “first-year dilemma” emerges when expectations around timeline and phasing haven’t been right-sized. Consider these two scenarios: The student affairs division at Institution A has over-committed its staff and its limited resources, committing to too many action steps in the first year. In a surge of enthusiasm for moving the division into the future, the champions of the action plan have committed to do 80 percent of the work in the first year. The teams involved are stretched too thin and are losing momentum. The college of education at Institution B has the opposite problem: it’s become bogged down in the research and data gathering, and is seeing few tangible results in the first year. The college is still “planning to plan.” Let’s look at both what could have been done at the outset to avoid these two scenarios, and also at what can be done now, in the midst of the year, to diagnose the issue and address it. We asked for the […]

Setting Priorities for Your Division

  In This Issue Setting Priorities for Your Division Developing the Action Plan Funding Your Action Plan Strategies to Ensure Implementation Managing your division with excellence is going to require making very tough decisions. For example, perhaps you recognize the need to add an academic major in response to rising market demand. Yet your faculty and other resources are already operating at capacity, and you have limited funds for hiring additional faculty and limited space to allocate for the new courses. This scenario demands an honest and courageous look at whether your current resources are being invested in the best possible ways. As Michael Porter, a professor in the Harvard Business School, contends, it’s difficult to decide what to do and even more difficult to decide what not to do. But it’s most difficult to decide what to stop doing. “Just adding revenue streams isn’t enough. The public is increasingly skeptical as to whether colleges and universities use their resources in the most effective way. This will have a major impact on revenue growth in the coming years —- be it from net tuition, fundraising, or state appropriations. I can’t think of a more critical time for division heads to […]

Setting and Funding Priorities for Your Division: Making the Tough Decisions

In this Report: As institutions face increasing financial constraints, they frequently ramp up fundraising efforts in order to secure new funds –- rather than asking the tough questions about how to spend existing funds more wisely. Oftentimes, guidance from an institution-wide plan is vague or missing altogether. But because the majority of decisions that impact how an institution’s resources are expended are made at the division or college level, vice presidents, deans, and department heads have tremendous influence for ensuring maximum value from every dollar and person. It’s critical to establish a credible process for setting and funding several key priorities for your division, in order to gain your team’s commitment and ensure successful execution. Doing so can build trust — internally and externally — as resources are used more effectively to serve the institution. This edition will walk you through such a process, with input from past institutional presidents, provosts, chief financial officers, and division heads. We hope their advice will be useful to you. Read this report