Category: Uncategorized

The President’s Role in Crisis Recovery

The media this week featured the work of Brandeis University’s new president, Frederick Lawrence, who is tasked with guiding Brandeis through its recovery from both a financial crisis and a reputation crisis. In his three-month tenure at the institution, Lawrence has spent one-third of his time on the road, visiting with donors, alumni, and other stakeholders, and considering new plans for the much-disputed Rose Museum. What the case of Brandeis illustrates is the critical role that an institution’s president has to play during the recovery phase of a crisis. As the public face of the university, the president will be looked to for leadership, transparency, and for clear answers about the details of the situation and the institution’s future. To gain a better understanding of the steps a president needs to take during this sensitive period, we turned to Cindy Lawson, assistant to the chancellor for marketing and communications at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Inadequate Responses First, certain responses, Lawson warns, are entirely inadequate. These include: Deciding not to talk about the crisis — especially with the media — in hopes that the situation will “go away” Failing to take responsibility for the crisis In the first case, Lawson notes that […]

Marketing Your Academic Programs

Amid increased calls for public accountability, public debates that measure the academic quality of an institution according to specific outcomes (such as completion rates), and increased competition for students between peer institutions, there is a need for rethinking the way you market your institution’s academic strengths — and specific academic programs. Increasingly, prospective students and parents want to hear evidence that your institution will help further their educational, career, and life goals, and want to know how the academic experience your institution offers will help them achieve success differently than the academic experience offered at other institutions. This week we asked Bob Sevier, senior vice president of strategy at STAMATS, to discuss with us his approach to promoting the academic strengths of an institution. What Doesn’t Work First, Sevier warns that many institutions still discuss their academic quality in terms that members of the institution may assign value to, but that prospective students and parents do not. It’s important not to rely on historic indicators of quality, such as the size of your library collections or the endowment dollars per student. “In order to measure quality meaningfully from the prospective student’s perspective,” Sevier suggests, “you need to look at the outcomes […]

Planning and Budgeting in a Low-Trust Environment

At a 2011 Academic Impressions conference on “Integrated Strategic Planning and Resource Allocation” (San Antonio, January 2011), 50 presidents, provosts, chief finance officers, and other members of senior leadership teams from an array of  public and private institutions were asked about the key issues and barriers they saw to making a planning and budgeting process effective — and ensuring its implementation. Thirty-seven of the attendees (nearly 75 percent) cited low trust as one of their primary obstacles. Two of the presenters at the AI conference — Larry Goldstein, president of Campus Strategies, LLC, and Pat Sanaghan, president of The Sanaghan Group — have offered to comment on the issue and offer practical steps for strategic planning in a low-trust environment. Commitment from the Top Goldstein and Sanaghan: First, the president and the cabinet must make a public commitment to creating and implementing an inclusive, participative, and transparent planning process. This applies just as much — and possibly more — to the resource allocation process. Plans are one thing, but trust becomes especially critical when money and other resources (positions, space, etc.) are at stake. Without taking steps to cultivate institutional trust, a president simply cannot lead. In a low-trust environment, every decision becomes a debate. […]

Getting Started in International Fundraising

With the balance of wealth shifting overseas — and with more colleges and universities increasing their international enrollment — international fundraising is likely to play an increasingly larger role in development at North American institutions. An editorial this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education noted some of the complexities of reaching out to overseas alumni. To learn how institutions can get started in such an effort, we interviewed Gretchen Dobson, senior associate director for alumni relations at Tufts University. Dobson, who participates in a significant overseas fundraising effort at Tufts, and who will have a book on international alumni relations appearing later this year, recommends several steps that make all the difference in launching an effective effort: Craft a story that will be compelling to your international alumni Get a “data dump” of past informal agreements and memorandums of understanding between your institution and individuals or entities in the target region Develop an advisory committee of international alumni representing the target region Seek strategic partnerships with internal and external allies INTERNATIONAL FUNDRAISING TAX AND LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS: UK, INDIA, AND HONG KONG Legal and tax hurdles can stop the most well-planned international effort before it has even started. Join us online on July 11, 18 […]

Increasing Adult Student Enrollment

With the current pressure on completion rates and the growing demand for higher education from a non-traditional “adult” demographic (a diverse, heterogenous demographic, comprising working mothers, career-aged adults seeking a career change or a safe harbor amid a troubled economy, military veterans, and adults of all ages returning to complete a degree), more colleges and universities across the US are devoting more attention to the recruitment and retention of adult students. Because enrollment policies and practices have long been tailored to traditional-aged students (especially at four-year institutions), efforts to recruit and enroll adults offer special challenges. We reached out to Mike Barzacchini, director of marketing services for Harper College, who has seen considerable success in this area, for advice on how institutions can increase their enrollment of adult students. Increasing Inquiries from Adults First, Barzacchini suggests a two-pronged approach to generating leads: Mine your historical data to identify past stop-outs and other cohorts that have shown interest in a degree at your institution Create an adult-friendly website Stop-outs are those who did not attain their degree — not for reasons of low academic performance, but because of the intervention of life circumstances. An audit of your records can tell you which past students stopped a few classes shy of a degree. […]

Alumni Career Services on a Budget

Published in 2011. As advancement officers strive to maintain the health of the annual fund in a season of donor uncertainty, articles such as this recent feature in the Calgary Herald point to a growing awareness among North American colleges and universities of the need to engage alumni early (even before they graduate), and a trend in institutions offering more high-demand services in order to remain connected with alumni after graduation and demonstrate the institution’s interest in a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship. We turned this week to Julie Hays Bartimus, vice president of the alumni career center for the University of Illinois Alumni Association, to learn more about how academic institutions can offer meaningful career services for alumni — on a limited budget. Based on lessons learned from the progress at the University of Illinois, Bartimus offers an array of tips for resourcing key career services initiatives: Facilitating professional networking among young alumni Expanding the educational programming you can offer Ramping up to offer one-on-one career counseling services Facilitating Alumni Networking “The greatest stated need of alumni,” Bartimus remarks, “is for us to help them identify job opportunities. But in reality, the job board is not the most effective […]

Twitter in the Classroom

Since the release of the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s December 2010 study of Twitter usage and the social media monitoring service Sysomos’ release, in the same month, of data on the growth of Twitter, there have been a surge of fresh articles on the uses of Twitter in higher education. Taken together, the data from Pew and Sysomos tell a compelling story: Only 8 percent of American internet users are Twitter users, but that percentage doubles among the college-aged 42 percent of Twitter users joined in the past year, evidence of a rapid and recent increase in the tool’s popularity But it is important to cut through the hype and not to simply encourage faculty to use Twitter on the assumption that the tool will automatically have a positive impact on student engagement or academic performance, independent of a deliberate pedagogical strategy. The key to assessing where Twitter (or any social media tool) can help is to identify specific pedagogical challenges or outcomes and align them with the strengths of particular tools. For example, the strengths of Twitter include real-time, rapid communication and feedback; ease of sharing links and resources; and the ease of making a channel more public than a particular classroom. There […]

Going Solar: What Colleges Need to Know

One campus sustainability trend emerging in early 2011 is that more institutions are considering larger solar installations. To cite a few major examples from the past few weeks, the University of Maryland at College Park recently announced its plans to install more than 2,600 solar panels on buildings across campus, and Princeton has announced plans to install a solar field featuring 16,500 panels on 27 acres of campus-owned land. To assist other colleges and universities that are considering whether to add solar installations (either small or large), we turned this week to Jon Pietruszkiewicz, senior project manager for renewable energy and energy efficiency at Black & Veatch, to learn more about: How the solar market is changing What questions institutions need to address as they consider investments in solar energy Trends in the Costs of Solar Power Pietruszkiewicz notes that as recently as two or three years ago, the payback period on rooftop solar installations for institutions of higher education was uncertain or long enough to make it difficult for many colleges and universities to justify return on investment. However, two factors have contributed to making solar power much more affordable for colleges and universities: A swift decline in the cost of solar […]

Minority Students: Study Abroad and Academic Success

This article was first published in 2011. However, many of the strategies and perspectives shared below apply today. Numerous studies have demonstrated the impact that study abroad and other forms of experiential learning (internships, service learning, etc.) have on the persistence and academic performance of undergraduates in general and of minority students in particular; yet increasing the participation of minority students in these programs often remains an overlooked pathway to retention and academic success. Last year, findings were released from GLOSSARI, the Georgia Learning Outcomes of Students Studying Abroad Research Initiative, based on a decade of data. Among the findings: 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 few as 1.5 percent of American college students study overseas each year, and participation from under-represented ethnic minorities is especially low. According to the 2010 Open Doors report from the Institute for International Education (IIE), although ethnic minorities account for 37 percent of enrollment in higher education in the US, they account for only 18.6 percent of students studying abroad. This week, we turned to Jennifer Campbell, assistant director for the Benjamin A. Gilman […]

Allocating Your Advancement Shop’s Resources

by Jim M. Langley

Many college and university advancement shops are facing increased constraints on their resources (not only budgetary resources, but staff and time) while also facing increased demand from stakeholders across the institution, who often clamor for central advancement resources, then object when they don’t receive them or receive fewer than they deem necessary for their efforts. The resulting disappointment can slow progress on key priorities or even lead to donor “hoarding.” In this climate, it is critical that advancement leaders establish specific protocols for allocating central advancement resources and articulate those protocols clearly to internal stakeholders. For advice on how to approach the issue, we reached out to Jim Langley, founder and president of Langley Innovations, and past vice president of advancement at Georgetown University. Here’s what he shared with us. Priorities and Protocols “The needs of claimants will always be far greater than the ability of the advancement shop to respond. If you try to be all things to all people, you will be overwhelmed, and will invite a cycle of mutual disillusionment. One of the great skills of successful advancement leaders is to develop protocols that allow them to address and manage internal expectations.” Jim Langley, Langley Innovations “In an ideal world,” Langley muses, “when we think […]