Category: Blog

Checking for Policies and Procedures that Impede Student Success

Last July, we interviewed a past college president, a current college president, and a vice president of student affairs, about the need to review and audit institutional policies and procedures that delay students in progressing toward their degree — and they had specific tips on where to start looking for “bottlenecks.” This week, we decided to take a more in-depth look at how enrollment managers can make strides in identifying process bottlenecks that can frustrate and slow students. We interviewed Susan Leigh, associate vice president of enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University, and Lawrence T. Lesick, vice president of enrollment at Ohio Northern University, who have each fostered a true “customer service” approach in enrollment management at their institutions. Leigh and Lesick have specific advice to offer related to: Reviewing Student Complaints “Most frequently, student complaints emerge around the speed of getting a critical task done. Periodically review complaints, and when you find bottlenecks, take them apart. Often, behind that bottleneck, there is an outdated policy or an outdated procedure. Get the right people around the table, ask them directly: How can we improve this service for the student?”Susan Leigh, DePaul U For example, DePaul University, which enrolls a large […]

Changing the Culture of Space Allocation

As more postsecondary institutions undertake space management initiatives, those tasked with such initiatives are finding that they face challenges not just in inventorying and benchmarking space utilization, but in grappling with a siloed campus culture and attitudes of ownership toward space. Yet if institutions are going to meet increasing and competing demands for more space to enable more teaching and more research, it will be critical for academic and administrative leaders to treat campus space as a strategic asset, and for space management to cease to be an isolated function within facilities services and be seen as a shared responsibility across the institution. “We need to make it clear that space is not owned by a department; it is allocated to a need or an activity, to contribute to that activity’s success. We need to set the expectation that as activities shift in priority, space reallocation will be necessary.” Phil Rouble, Algonquin College   When we interviewed Frances Mueller, the University of Michigan’s assistant vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs and recently the project manager of the institution’s Space Utilization Initiative, early this year, she stressed the need to promote a collective commitment to stewardship of the campus’ physical […]

Strategies for Supporting a Diverse Faculty

While the diversity of undergraduate student populations is steadily increasing, faculty diversity continues to lag, especially in fields such as engineering and science. To see what could be learned from institutions that have made real strides in this area, we reached out to Wanda Mitchell, vice provost for faculty development and inclusive excellence at the University of New Hampshire, and Myron Anderson, associate to the president for diversity and associate professor of education technology at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. Anderson and Mitchell suggest that to really see gains in fostering a diverse faculty, you need to: “In removing the impediments that minority faculty face, at the end of the day you are creating better resources, tools, and policies for all of your faculty. When you are working toward “inclusive excellence,” you create a situation where everyone wins.”Myron Anderson, Metropolitan State University of Denver Reviewing Your Policies Mitchell suggests that the first step is to review your tenure and promotion policies — and make them more prescriptive. For example, ensure that there are clear guidelines for a structured conversation between department chairs and faculty at the annual review, and that both parties know how to prepare for that conversation. “It’s […]

The Changing Shape of Title IX Compliance: Update

(A less detailed version of this article appeared in Higher Ed Impact in May 2011. This week, we returned to Title IX compliance experts Betsy Alden and Jeff Orleans to dig deeper into additional tips and strategies for Title IX compliance. At the end of this article, Betsy Alden also offers a Title IX primer for institutions seeking to audit their compliance.) Last year, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) altered the 1979 “third prong” standard for Title IX compliance, changing an interpretation from the prior administration, and recently, at the NCAA’s May 2011 Gender Equity Forum, an OCR official sought to clarify what Title IX compliance entails; the resulting picture suggests a need for more rigorous standards and assessments than have been seen over the past decade. To learn more about what’s changing and where institutions need to be proactive in order to manage their Title IX liability, we turned to Betsy Alden (who has conducted many Title IX reviews for higher ed institutions) and Jeff Orleans (who helped write the original regulation for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972) with Alden & Associates Inc. A Shift from the Past What became apparent from the OCR representative’s remarks […]

Taking Engagement to the Next Level: Building Achievement Networks

Alumni and other prospects desire more meaningful engagement with your institution, meaning a continuation of the learning experience, connection with their peers, and (if they are to become volunteers and donors) a sense of shared purpose and of shared work toward a common cause. Jim Langley, president of Langley Innovations, argues that one of the most effective ways to build a sense of shared purpose is to share successes — and he notes that while colleges and universities often publicize their successes through press releases, they frequently miss many more meaningful opportunities to leverage success stories to build constituency. Langley suggests that institutions have many unrealized opportunities to engage those individuals who may not have been previously connected with the institution but who have an impact in the lives of the institution’s best and brightest. The basic idea is that when celebrating the successes of students at the high end of educational attainment (for example, students who have received a distinguished graduate fellowship or who are graduating in the top 5 percent of their class), institutions could also be reaching out to those students’ personal networks and inviting them into the celebration and afterward into sustained engagement with the institution. We asked Langley […]

Engaging Your Academic Leaders

Not only are there many times when a dean or a department chair will need to be involved in the conversation between a potential donor and the institution, there are also many times when that academic leader may need to be the only official involved in the conversation. This is because the donor may want to hear from the academic leader in his or her field of interest, rather than from a professional fundraiser. And as more institutions, both private and public, look to ramp up fundraising efforts in a sluggish economy, the role of academic leaders will become increasingly vital. For advice on engaging your academic leaders in the work of development, we turned to Leonard Jessup, currently the dean of the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, and previously responsible for Washington State University’s foundation. Jessup has served on both sides of the table: the academic side and the foundation, so he brings both perspectives to bear on the issue of how best to bridge the gap between the advancement shop and the academic side of the house. Here’s his advice. The First Hurdle: They Have to Believe in the Value Academic leaders can be passionate about advancement work — if you […]

Steps to Support International Student Success

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s article “The China Conundrum” draws attention to the challenges both institutions of higher education and students from China are facing — including not only language barriers and obstacles to the recruiting and enrollment process but also differing cultural expectations around student/faculty roles, intellectual property and knowledge-sharing, and the nature of academic research. The secondary education system in China is not designed to prepare students for an American university, and most students receive little pre-arrival preparation for integration into the American college experience. While these differing expectations are increasingly well-documented, there has been little treatment of the broader issue of acculturation. International students pursuing an undergraduate degree in the US not only are participating in a new and challengingly different classroom experience; they are also living and adapting to a new country and a challengingly different surrounding culture — with limited support in learning how to navigate American culture, establish social and professional friendships, or draw upon local and campus resources effectively. A preliminary survey conducted earlier this year by three researchers — Peter Mather, an Ohio University assistant professor of higher education and student affairs; Bethany Schweitzer, a recent Ohio University doctoral graduate; and Gunter Morson, head of higher education and […]

Proactive Approaches to Deferred Maintenance

YOU’LL ALSO WANT TO READ: Benchmarking Deferred Maintenance: A Recent Survey (May 2012)How Do You Make the Case for Funding Maintenance and Renewal for Campus Facilities? (May 2012) Many institutions of higher education are being squeezed between two pressures: a growing deferred maintenance backlog and increasing needs for capital expansion as they compete for students, faculty, and research dollars. For a number of years, the majority of campuses have remained focused on short-term planning for facilities investments, deferring maintenance needs until a later date (but often without reliable data on facilities condition). This continued deferral of maintenance needs is placing greater strains by the year on already limited budgets for facilities management. It’s critical to develop a sustainable model for funding facilities replacement and renewal. To learn from successful models currently in place at two very different institutions, we turned to Faramarz Vakili, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s associate director of the physical plant, and Kathie Shafer, the vice president for operations at Messiah College. These models are both creative in their approaches to funding maintenance needs and forward-thinking in their prioritization of facilities projects. “No one wants to fund repairs for HVAC or roofing. It’s not sexy. There’s no pizazz in it. […]

Engaging Future Donors While They Are Still Students

Amid the decline of state support for public institutions and a less forgiving fundraising climate, establishing a more reliable pipeline of invested donors is critical — and to develop a stronger donor pipeline, the key is to start earlier. Yet institutions attempting to raise giving rates for young alumni are often rebuffed. In a study of the attitudes of young alumni conducted last summer, the Engagement Strategies Group confirmed that the majority of young alumni are reluctant to give due to high tuition costs and a lack of understanding of how institutions of higher education are funded and how institutions do (and don’t) draw on endowment spending to finance their needs. Colleges and universities need to solicit more support from their former students, but what reports such as the Engagement Strategies Group survey demonstrate is that the best opportunity to create an ambassador for your institution is to cultivate them while they are still students on campus. It is more expensive and much more difficult for the development office to repair relationships after commencement. You can’t remedy the student experience after the fact, and you can never fully recover the lost opportunity to get your students bought in, from the beginning, to the […]

Reconnecting and Re-engaging Your Alumni

According to a national survey of higher education alumni conducted by the Collaborative Innovation Network for Engagement and Giving and presented to the Annual Giving Directors Consortium (April 2010), only 52 percent of alumni believe their alma mater keeps them closely connected and values its alumni relationships. This lack of engagement represents a significant impediment to engaging alumni philanthropically. We turned to Jim Langley, president of Langley Innovations, for his advice on how institutions need to rethink their strategy for engaging future donors. A Diagnosis: How Institutions and Alumni Misconnect “The underlying malady,” Langley remarks, “is a loss of emotional engagement with the institution. Alumni remain appreciative of their degree and of their time at the institution, but feel emotionally detached from the alma mater after graduation.” This disaffection can take different forms for different generations of alumni: Young alumni are likely to have graduated with a significant load of student debt and are now facing the challenges of building a career amid a sluggish economic recovery; when asked to give back financially to their alma mater, their response may be that they are already giving back — by paying their tuition bill (via debt) over the next decade Alumni later in […]

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