Category: Blog

An Innovative Model for Adult Student Orientation

Adult students have different experiences, expectations, and educational goals than traditional-age students, and they approach their transition to college with different questions and challenges. As nontraditional and working students occupy an ever larger percentage of the student demographic, adult student retention is rapidly becoming a priority at many postsecondary institutions. To gather a few tips for setting adult students up for success from the outset, we reached out to Janet Daniel, director of the office of adult students and evening services at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Daniel has recently piloted a new model for adult student orientation, and we wanted to learn more about the model, the guiding principles underlying it, and initial steps for other institutions that may want to attempt a similar approach. Read this earlier report for a review of key elements that, when present at your institution, make a significant difference in adult student success and retention. One of the four factors is an intentional approach to adult student orientation. The Model at UNC Charlotte The main orientation for adult students at UNC Charlotte focuses on: Beyond this “traditional orientation for nontraditional students,” however, Janet Daniel has recently piloted two additional programs that […]

Defining What Activities Are Truly Critical

Staff metrics and evaluation can be used to incentivize both superior staff performance (by giving managers the rationale and flexibility to reward high performers) and meaningful progress toward the strategic goals of your unit –- if you approach staff metrics in a thoughtful, credible way. This entails: Defining what activities are truly critical to measure Establishing criteria or rubrics for various levels of performance Designing and rolling out metrics through a fully participatory process Ensuring that the metrics inform effective supervision and staff development There is often need for greater intentionality in deploying staff metrics across both the administrative and academic divisions of an institution. In this edition, we’ll address examples from both sides of the organization. Focus on Results, not Tasks First, just because something is easy to measure doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to measure. It may be easy to track the number of service requests responded to by facilities management staff or the number of events organized by alumni relations staff, but these measure tasks completed, not necessarily progress toward that unit’s strategic outcomes. To take a more intentional approach to measuring performance, identify the outcomes that truly matter to the division (whether these are learning […]

Using Performance Measures to Drive Faculty and Staff Development

When performance metrics are developed in collaboration with staff and treated as a basis for incentivizing and rewarding superior performance, this entails a rethinking of the role and process of supervision. Check-ins between managers and staff, or between department chairs and faculty, can become a structured dialogue centered on the key performance measures and the resources needed to support faculty and staff in achieving success. We turned to Pat Sanaghan, president of The Sanaghan Group, and Mike Theall, an associate professor at Youngstown State University and a leading thinker on faculty evaluation, to learn more about what more effective supervision for faculty and staff would look like. Here is their advice. Effective Supervisory Dialogue Sanaghan, who is publishing a chapter on structured supervisory dialogue in his forthcoming book, How to Actually Build an Exceptional Team, suggests the guiding principle that the focus of supervision has to be the success of the team member in contributing to the unit’s goals. “The dialogue between supervisor is not meant to be critical,” he cautions. “Supervisors need to be asking themselves not how they can correct problems, but how they can incentivize, promote, and reward superior performance.” To facilitate a productive dialogue with that […]

Rollout and Buy-in: Handling the Transition to More Effective Staff Metrics

Few changes offer as much opportunity for resistance and tension within a unit as changes to the method of evaluating performance. It’s critical that not only the decisions around identifying the key metrics themselves but also the decision-making process, communication of the decisions made, and the steps for rolling out the new system are equally intentional. We’ve identified three key principles of an effective transition to a new system for evaluating faculty or staff: The metrics are developed as a collaborative effort between staff and supervisors The goals of moving to a more sophisticated system of performance metrics are clear, and it’s communicated that the metrics will be used as the basis for incentives and rewards for superior performance The process for rolling out the metrics is phased and deliberate Develop the Metrics in Dialogue with Your Staff Rick Dupree, assistant dean of development and alumni relations for the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, emphasizes the importance of not just dictating goals but of developing metrics in partnership with your staff. “Chat with them about what they’re sensing about the economy, about donor perceptions. Find out what challenges they’re facing. Let your officers play a role in determining […]

Rubrics to Measure Satisfactory and Superior Performance

Once you have identified and weighted those activities that have the greatest impact on your department’s ability to meet its operational objectives, the next step is to determine what evidence would be sufficient to determine if these activities have truly been carried out in a satisfactory, superior, or less-than-satisfactory manner. This is true whether you are looking to adopt more intentional metrics for your admissions office, your major gift officers, your faculty, or staff in any other division within the institution. By identifying and publicizing thoughtful and intentional criteria for measuring the success of staff activity, you avoid relying on purely qualitative or subjective assessments of staff or faculty performance –- and you ensure that the way staff performance is evaluated is aligned with the decisions your unit reached about what activities are truly important in meeting the unit’s goals. Let’s take a closer look at how rubrics might be applied within both an administrative unit and an academic department. Example: A Rubric to Assess the Quality of Annual Fund Visits When Scott Peters rolled out more intentional performance metrics for his annual gift officers at the University of Richmond, he wanted to take a more rigorous look at how […]

Applying a Restorative Justice Approach to Student Conduct

A small but growing number of colleges and universities have been adopting restorative justice (RJ) processes as an alternative (in some cases) to traditional, sanctions-focused student conduct proceedings. Taking an RJ approach requires a philosophical shift for the student conduct office – it entails new sets of questions for student conduct hearings and an alert ear for cases in which there is the possibility to restore harm that’s been done, rather than simply (or only) penalize. If a hearing indicates that restorative justice may be possible and desirable, RJ processes usually proceed to individual pre-conference meetings held with the offender and those harmed in the incident. Ultimately, if all parties are willing, the issue is dealt with through a group conference with trained facilitators. The goal of the conference is to arrive at a mutual understanding of the harm caused and a mutual agreement for how the harm will be repaired. To learn more about how to make a restorative justice program most successful, we interviewed two officials from Colorado State University, which has frequently been recognized for its restorative justice and other student conduct programs. The two officials are Paul Osincup and Melissa Emerson, the associate and assistant directors […]

Three Tips for Supporting Veteran Students

NEED A MORE ADVANCED APPROACH? If your institution is in the earliest stages of investigating how to better assist this student population in the college transition, this February 23, 2012 article (below) will help you with: Some initial practical steps that you can undertake with minimal resources Advice for phasing your effort from a very small and informal start toward a funded position For more advanced strategies, read our previous article “Helping Veteran Students Succeed” (featuring recommendations from Don Pfeffer, director of the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, Higher Education Veterans Programs) for tips on: Establishing a veteran services center Clarifying veterans benefits Reviewing academic policies to ensure they don’t offer unnecessary impediments to veteran student success With more veterans returning from overseas and looking to transition into college classrooms, the question of support services for this growing student demographic has received more attention recently, and the challenges veterans face in transitioning to campus are becoming more well-known. This week, we asked several experts on veteran student services what items they considered top priorities for institutions at an early stage of planning to offer more comprehensive student services to veterans. Among the top answers: Assign a single point of contact […]

Creative Approaches to Rewarding High-Performing Advancement Staff

In a difficult budget climate, it’s all the more important to find creative and authentic ways to reward and recognize your advancement shop’s highest performers and foster a culture of healthy competition and high performance across the shop. A few institutions have established rigorous systems for measuring staff performance and awarding bonuses to high performers. (For one model on how to approach bonusing with transparency and rigor, see our article on “Getting Started with Advancement Staff Metrics”). Yet during a slow economic recovery, most shops will see limited options for establishing a slush fund for staff bonuses. We turned this week to Chris Groff, executive director of corporate and foundation relations at Fairleigh Dickinson University, to learn more about how advancement leaders can take a whole-picture look at practices for rewarding, motivating, and retaining high-performing fundraisers. Thinking through Non-Cash Rewards The standard in human resources is to identify opportunities for rewarding high performers with increased recognition, resources, or professional development. Practices such as recognizing individual achievements with gift cards, certificates, thank-you letters, thank-you lunches, and plaques have become increasingly common in the corporate sector. In higher ed fundraising, Groff recommends trying these additional ideas: Rewarding the Star Performer What about […]

A Proactive Model for Managing Off-Campus Parties

Colorado State University has recently expanded its two-month pilot party registration program into an all-year initiative. Adopting a markedly different approach from initiatives at many other institutions and from CSU’s own prior efforts (such as a “party partners” program that offered students who received noise citations for off-campus parties the choice of proceeding through the standard student conduct process or attending an educational seminar), the party registration program focuses on empowering students to police their own events. The program is designed to: Here’s How it Works The details: Students have the option of registering planned off-campus parties with the office of off-campus life. Students provide their first name, the address, the expected attendance, the phone numbers of two contacts, and an email address so that they can be surveyed at the end of the year to provide feedback on the program. Each Friday morning, the institution provides a copy of the list of registered parties to the city police department, and dispatch adds a code for the registered addresses. If dispatch receives a noise complaint over the weekend, they can cross-reference and see if the address is registered; if so, they can call one of the registered contacts, notify the […]

Transportation Demand Management (TDM) as an Opportunity to Improve Town-Gown Relations

LEARN MORE Discover more of Spense Havlick’s thinking on TDM in his book Mitigating the Campus Parking Problem. Issues of parking and traffic congestion in neighborhoods near campus have long been a sore spot between campus officials and the surrounding community. Yet, for this same reason, an investment in information-sharing and collaborative planning to address transportation issues can build (or rebuild) bridges between campus officials and municipal planning authorities. Here’s one recent example. Learning from a Success Story: A $7.4 Million Collaboration On the edge of the University of Colorado Boulder campus, you can find one of the most complex bus/bicycle/auto/pedestrian intersections in the Denver Regional Transportation District service area. The intersection involves Colorado State Highway 93 (28,000 vehicles per day), the University of Colorado main campus (32,000 students), multiple bike paths, and 16 different transit routes (involving both regional and city buses and campus shuttles). A history of bike, car, and pedestrian collisions has given the intersection an especially onerous reputation. As part of a field exercise at an Academic Impressions conference in 2007, participating transportation officials from postsecondary institutions around the country observed the intersection and proposed alternative plans for redesigning the intersection for safety and efficiency across […]

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