Course Category: Free for All-Inclusive Members

Managing Change as a Department Chair: 5 Traps to Avoid

As a department chair, you are responsible for leading your faculty through large-scale disruptions, such as department restructures, curricular reform, and policy changes. Even if you’re familiar with change management literature, managing the change can be especially tricky within academic departments. Your role as a “middle manager” can often be ambiguous because you lead both as a member of faculty and an administrator in a shared-governance environment. Join us online to learn how to avoid common change traps – behaviors that prevent all of us from adopting, embracing, and engaging with change. We’ll discuss how change traps often play out in academic departments, and you’ll leave with a solid understanding of how you can recognize and manage the traps in your own initiatives.

Sharing Your Story and Experience as an Underrepresented Woman

Your story as an underrepresented woman in the academy shapes your approaches to conflict, problem-solving, and decision-making. The perspective of underrepresented women is unique, and yet, too often we discount that unique position – burying it or even rejecting it. Denying our story does a huge disservice to our leadership potential and growth and to those we serve. How can you begin to articulate your story to fully express who you are as a professional and become stronger and more effective? Join us online and learn how to define and share your unique leadership strengths in an authentic and credible way. You will practice identifying, storyboarding, and communicating your past experiences, motivations, and unique perspectives so that you leave with at least one story you can share with others to help you communicate your authentic self.

Customizing Donor Communication through Smarter Segmentation

In order to appeal to alumni and donors, you need to rethink the typical segments of age, class year, academic major, or giving status. For example, class year may not define individuals’ motivations for engagement and/or giving nearly as well as their interests or career paths. But, identifying who appreciates fine art versus who appreciates athletics could help you create segments that resonate much more. Join us as Lynne Wester, the Donor Relations Guru, discusses how this mindset shift doesn’t have to require a large investment in time or money. Through sample alumni personas, she will share segmentation and communications ideas that will help you use existing data to start small. You’ll leave with at least one new segment to target in your outreach efforts.

Increasing Emotional Intelligence by Identifying Your Triggers

When we can overcome our emotional triggers, we are able to navigate a variety of situations more effectively. But when experiencing a trigger, our emotions take over. Many of us struggle to recognize and explain our reactions. How can we take a step back to respond in the moment more thoughtfully and productively? Join us online to learn a simple, yet powerful, approach to help you regain control and respond in a more intelligent way to your next triggering event. During the session, you’ll practice using a journaling tool that will increase your awareness of your emotions and how they impact others.

Establishing a Culture of Talent Development in Frontline Fundraising

Frontline fundraising is a demanding job that leaves many major gifts officers emotionally and physically drained. Dealing with rejection and adjusting to life on the road are just two of the stressors that help explain why gift officer retention is at an all-time low. By engaging fundraisers in career planning conversations early in their tenure, you can help address these root causes of gift officer churn and develop a more stable operation. Join us online to learn options for having more individualized talent development conversations with your frontline fundraisers to reinvigorate them and help them raise more money for the institution. Audra Brickner, Vice President of Advancement for Semester at Sea, will share how conversations with your fundraisers can progress from career mapping to individual needs assessment to unique job crafting.

Building a Faculty and Staff Giving Campaign

Enthusiastic partners can help you persuade faculty and staff of the value of philanthropic giving. Merrimack College was able to use giving ambassadors in a targeted campaign to increase their faculty participation rate from 20% to 59% in just one year. By recruiting the right leader to kick start the program, and by onboarding and supporting the right ambassadors, you can grow interest and convey authenticity to your institution’s ask. Join us online to learn how to create a similar movement on your campus that engages your faculty and staff in philanthropy and demonstrates the impact of their gifts. What You Will Get As part of your registration, you will receive a Campaign Ambassador Toolkit from Merrimack College that offers sample emails, meeting agendas, tracking tools, and campaign FAQs.

Using Video Effectively in Recruitment Marketing

Learn to reach prospective students more effectively by choosing the right video channel. Agenda During this webcast, we will address how to best use both live and pre-produced video that is specifically positioned for prospective and admitted students. We will explore each of the following questions as they relate to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat: How much new content should I be creating? What kinds of videos are other institutions creating and sharing with prospective students? Which channels should be prioritized for both the creation and the sharing of video? What results have other institutions seen from using video in their recruitment marketing efforts? You will also leave with brief suggestions for TikTok. Resources Presentation Materials Additional Resources

Career Services: Fostering Meaningful Connections Between Diverse Students and Employers

You know it’s important to put your employer partners in front of your diverse students. But events that reach the most students, such as panels and info sessions, may not resonate with your students as they have in the past. Join us online to hear how UNC Charlotte has created a targeted approach to matching employers with diverse students – one focused on sustainability and quality, not quantity. You will learn how UNC Charlotte: Created and uses a survey to assess their employer partners’ needs, so they can match students with intention Retooled an existing program (Career Treks), which brings students to employers so the students can witness the work involved, and as a result, better meets the needs of its diverse students and employer partners while also managing its own resources effectively Built a referral system with the student diversity groups on campus to make finding diverse students on campus quicker and easier for employers

Tailoring Programming for Unengaged Professional and Graduate School Alumni

Graduate and professional alumni typically aren’t as engaged with their alma mater as their undergraduate counterparts. But graduate alumni are often highly career-focused with strong connections to classmates, faculty, and mentors. How you can leverage these traits to increase engagement with this population? Join us online to hear from Mario Peraza at the University of California San Francisco, a graduate-only institution leading the way in health sciences. He’ll show you how he’s used meaningful programming and volunteer opportunities to increase alumni engagement, and you’ll leave with sample programs you can adapt to make your professional and graduate school alumni feel more connected: Alumni Weekend: Centering robust 5-year reunion programming around scientific content UCSF Connect: Providing virtual networking and mentoring in partnership with the university career center UCSF Alumni Advocates: Mobilizing the alumni community as advocates for university priorities at local, state, and federal levels

15 Tips to Engage Gen Z in Your Communications

Marketing can be expensive and time-consuming, so you need to connect with your students and alumni as effectively and efficiently as possible. Maybe you’re finding that the strategies you’ve been using with previous generations are not resonating with Gen Z. Or perhaps you’re uncertain whether your current practices are the best practices to reach Gen Z. Join us online to learn 15 easy-to-implement tips that can help you better connect and communicate with Gen Z without excluding others. Our expert will teach you how to think through: Using Influencers Prioritizing Mobile Leveraging Direct Mail Showcasing Philanthropy You’ll also review many examples of marketing pieces and discuss how the 15 tips can be used to improve those communications.

Loading survey...