Course Category: Virtual Training Recording

Reinvigorate Your Meetings and Workshops: A Training for Deans

Deans across higher education are tackling some of the biggest challenges yet.  Take, for instance, declining student enrollments (and the reduced budgets that follow) and the low levels of faculty morale and engagement (which, in turn, lead to high turnover). Let’s face it—these are big problems that take a village to solve. And yet, you probably feel like the responsibility to remedy these challenges falls largely on your shoulders. So how can you convene others across your college to become part of the village that can help you to tackle these challenges?  Watch this recording of a live event where you’ll learn how you can elicit the best thinking in your unit. This training includes a simulated activity which will demonstrate how you can design and facilitate a collaborative and interactive meeting or brainstorming session with your team. You’ll walk away with a detailed facilitation guide and tips for how to implement this practice on your campus. If you’re looking for ways to reinvigorate your meetings and workshops, this training is for you! 

Annual Giving Institute for New Professionals

In the ever-evolving landscape of annual giving, the recent shift away from the APR metric has opened unprecedented opportunities for your organization. If you’re new to annual giving or looking to revitalize your approach, this session is your gateway to becoming the transformative force your organization needs.  When it comes to your data, annual giving programs are a powerhouse.  Discover how to leverage them to not only enhance donor engagement but also to forge meaningful partnerships across campus and refine your engagement and stewardship strategies.   Join us for this virtual conference recording to unlock the full potential of your annual giving program and set a new standard for success. This session promises to equip you with the insights and tools to:  Don’t miss the chance to transform your approach and make a lasting impact. 

The Art of Influencing Up as Academic Dean

Influencing your Provost and other senior leaders is a key function of your role as academic dean.  It’s your responsibility to provide input and perspective on decisions that will shape your unit—as well as the entire institution. As leadership transitions become more commonplace in higher education, it becomes more difficult to know how to effectively influence “up.” Not only are you learning how to navigate newfound relationships, you’re also responding to emerging strategic plans and changing unit-level priorities. Some days, it may feel like everything is a moving target. In this environment, where everyone is experiencing a higher level of stress, and where attention is split in so many different directions, it can feel difficult to know how to develop trust and credibility with your senior leaders.  Join us online and learn how you can better engage with, support, and influence senior leaders such as your Provost. Using the Five Paths to Leadership® as our framework, you’ll learn how to:  This workshop will give you an opportunity to reflect on an existing relationship you have with a senior leader, and we’ll then share tips and strategies you can apply to that relationship to nurture trust. We’ve also designed this training […]

Create Meaningful Volunteer Opportunities for your Major Donors

Leadership volunteers can help to advance your institutional goals not only through their major gifts, but through their ambassadorship as advocates of the mission you convey, and by opening access to opportunities as well as leveraging expertise and input that only they can provide. However, if you don’t have a defined objective on what these volunteers can help you to accomplish as part of your fundraising strategy, you won’t have the momentum required to achieve the fundraising outcomes your organization desires. Layering a leadership volunteer’s time and effort into a capital campaign or major initiative is accomplished by developing an engagement plan that aligns their core passion with your fundraising goals. Once you have them on board, creating a meaningful experience worthy of their time can then lead to lifelong engagement and sustained success. Join us at this live event and learn how to approach and manage leadership volunteer recruitment and sustainable engagement for major donors while cultivating these relationships as a central part of your fundraising strategies.

Actualize Your Purpose, Part 2: Everyday Strategies for Staying Connected to Your Well-Being

Working in higher education now requires navigating remote, hybrid environments and supporting overextended students and colleagues while navigating institutional complexity and resource precarity. To show up for this kind of work, you must intentionally center your well-being to thrive in this ever-changing environment.  In Part 1 of this workshop series, you assessed your well-being, identified your values, and crafted your own definition of success. In Part 2, you will spend time exploring strategies to stay connected to your larger purpose in your everyday work. Jennifer will show you time-based and mindset strategies such as: creating a model calendar, time tracking, thinking medium- and long-range, and more.

Actualize Your Purpose, Part 1: Connecting Your Well-Being to Your Work

During this 3-hour workshop, you will assess your well-being through the research-based Resilience @ Work framework. Then, you will explore how you can redefine success in ways that support your values and the impact you want to have in the world. You will conclude the workshop by drafting an initial plan for how you can do this in your everyday work.  

Establishing a Culture of Philanthropy as an Academic Dean

Philanthropic work in higher education is as important as ever, as the cost of delivering a high-quality education continues to increase. Academic deans are situated in an important role that allows them to guide the strategic direction of their school or college to help meet the academic mission of their institution. But to achieve their strategic vision, deans must embrace their responsibility to foster a culture of philanthropy within their academic unit to ensure success for years to come. This video course will be beneficial to any academic dean—new or experienced—or those aspiring to the role who are seeking to develop or refine a plan to achieve philanthropic goals for their institution. This course is designed to help you understand what a culture of philanthropy is, why it is important, what your responsibility is as a dean in establishing a culture of philanthropy, and how to approach fundraising as a part of this culture. Our expert instructor, Dr. Wade Weast, will help you to understand how your roles as a visionary, collaborator, role model, and fundraiser come together to help alumni, donors, and friends of your academic unit leave a lasting impact. Accompanying this course is a workbook designed to […]

Between Shame and Supremacy: A Model for Healthy White Identity Development 

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts have provoked a tidal wave of fury from a broad swath of Americans, especially some White Americans, who believe such efforts paint all White people as “bad people.” Until we develop a more nuanced understanding of the White racial identity development process that decenters shame and guilt and recenters the damaging effects of structural racism on all of us, we will continue to elicit sharp resistance that stymies social justice struggles.  In this interactive workshop, you will have a chance to further your own self-awareness and understanding by engaging with concepts around the history of Whiteness, White socialization, and the psychology of White racial development in the U.S. today. You will leave the event with: 

Using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to Improve Academic Program Evaluation

Natural language processing, artificial Intelligence, and machine learning can help universities to allocate resources, identify areas of high demand, and optimize scheduling. Join us for an interactive discussion to learn how these powerful tools, embedded in a modern program evaluation system (PES), can help you to evaluate and improve academic programs and ensure that your students receive the best education possible.  The modern PES is becoming more powerful as it integrates these three technologies. A PES can now parse job postings, assess employer skill requirements, and analyze the skills taught in each program. It can predict program size, attrition, and margins. Academic leaders and program managers can use a modern PES to identify potential growth and cost-reduction opportunities, and to better align curriculum with job market requirements. 

Maintaining Relevance in an Era of Accelerating Change: A Leadership Conversation for Provosts

As higher education is rocked by repeated external challenges, including increased politicization heightening public skepticism about its value, Provosts—charged with upholding the academic mission—must take steps to ensure that their institutions stay nimble, relevant, and financially sound. But changing the existing system can be incredibly difficult, as governance structures are often designed to protect the status quo, and many organizational structures force zero-sum thinking. What are the implications for Provosts’ leadership in this situation? How can they effect the change that is necessary for their institutions to remain both viable and vibrant?    Join our panelists and other Provosts across North America for a discussion about leadership approaches that you can take to help your institution maintain relevance in a time of accelerating change. Together we’ll share beginning thinking around challenges for which there are no easy answers, such as:   You’ll leave with ideas, insights, and reflections from your peers about what it means to lead as a Provost in this unique moment in higher education.