Daniel Fusch

Articles

How One Institution’s New Approach to Budgeting is Creating a Culture of High Trust

Recently, AI’s program manager Grace Spivak and our director of research and publications Daniel Fusch had the opportunity to interview Steve Kreidler, the vice president of administration and finance at Metropolitan State University of Denver, a public institution enrolling 20,000 undergraduate students. Several years ago, Metro State underwent a transformational strategic planning process and instituted […]

Makerspaces and Academic Incubators: A student using a virtual reality headset at the Garage

Makerspaces and Academic Incubators: Giving Innovation on Campus a Home

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions Listening recently to Melissa Kaufman, executive director of The Garage at Northwestern University (which incubated 147 start-ups in its first year), and David G. Broz and Todd Heiser, principals for Gensler, speak about academic incubators at our recent webcast (you can obtain a recording here), I was especially struck by the […]

Student Affairs: Trends to Watch in 2017-19

What will student affairs look like, 3 years from now? Looking ahead, what concerns you most? What do we most need to do this year? Recently, we held vigorous discussions of the future of student affairs with a panel of experts that included two vice presidents of student affairs (Les Cook and Paul Marthers), a […]

One President’s Advice: Focus on
Student Affairs

Recently, we had the chance to chat with Karen Whitney, president of Clarion University, about the future of student affairs – you can read the full interview in our article “Student Affairs: Trends to Watch in 2017-19.” As a past student affairs administrator, Karen Whitney brings a unique perspective both to the presidency (you can […]

3 Videos: Critical Skills for Admissions Officers

Training of new admissions counselors is often, out of necessity, much too hurried and perfunctory. The training that new counselors receive has historically been focused on the everyday duties of the job (travel, reading and processing applications, CRM systems, etc.), accompanied by lots of “just in time” training where other key competencies are concerned. But […]

The 21st Century Library: An Inside Look at Auraria Library

by Daniel Fusch and Michelle Sponholz (Academic Impressions) with Sommer Browning, Marical Farner, Cynthia Hashert, and Jenny Filipetti (Auraria Library) We recently had the opportunity to visit the newly renovated Auraria Library. This unique tri-institution academic library is shared by the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the Community College of Denver, […]

Special Edition: Successful Peer Mentor Programs

In an effort to increase retention, create leadership opportunities for students, and reduce costs, campuses are increasingly turning to peer mentor programs as one ideal solution. To help you as you develop or improve the effectiveness of your peer mentor program, we offer this Special Edition, bringing together experts from diverse institutions to offer their […]

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Bootcamp for Academic Advisors:
The New Skillsets

When training academic advisors at your institution, don’t overlook the relational and interpersonal skills that make great advisors. by Benjamin Forche, Academic Advisor, Patton College of Education, Ohio University, Joe Murray, MSHR, Director of University Advising Services, Florida Atlantic University, and Karen Thurmond, Director of Academic Advising and Degree Planning Resources, The University of Memphis with Daniel Fusch, Director of Research & […]

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5 Reports Every Enrollment Manager
Should Read

by Daniel Fusch and Sarah Seigle, Academic Impressions As we start the new calendar year, it’s an excellent time to step back and read ahead. What is the newest data on college enrollment and student demographic trends? On financial aid? On retention? On international students? Because we know you’re busy, we’ve taken a moment to […]

5 Articles Everyone in Your Annual Giving Office Should Read

by Gwen Doyle and Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions As we start a new year, and as many shops are starting planning for the next fiscal year, there continues to be a pressing need to strengthen the donor pipeline, and often annual giving is under increased pressure to build this sustainable pipeline for future philanthropic efforts. […]

Best of AI: 11 Recorded Webinars

Here are a few samples from our digital library of hundreds of higher-ed professional development webinars and recorded online trainings. You might know Academic Impressions from our comprehensive library of complimentary articles, papers, and reports or from our higher education professional development conferences and workshops. What you may not know is that our small […]

The Small College Turnaround: Counter-Intuitive Lessons from the Success of
Anoka Tech

by Donald B. Lewis (Vice President of Finance & Administration, Anoka-Ramsey Community College and Anoka Technical College) and Julie Myers (President, Faculty Union, Anoka Technical College) with Daniel Fusch and Amit Mrig contributing (Academic Impressions) The Story: A Remarkable Turnaround Anoka Technical College recently instated an annual collaborative budgeting process that took the college from […]

Funding for Innovation: Image of Dollar Bills Falling through the Air

Leveraging a Donor Network to Fund Innovation: Lessons Learned from the Success of the Jefferson Trust

University budgets are tight, so how do you set aside funding for innovation? Here’s one strategy from the University of Virginia, which has issued 141 grants in a little over a decade to fund strategic projects at the institution. In an earlier paper, we highlighted several distinct approaches institutions had taken to setting aside funds […]

FERPA Checklist: What Can Never Be Shared

In Academic Impressions’ online FERPA training (you can order this online training here), FERPA expert Helen Garrett, the university registrar and chief officer of enrollment information services at the University of Washington, and recent president of PACRAO (the Pacific Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers), gave a thorough review of the fundamentals of FERPA regulations […]

STEM: How Can Effective Facilities Best Enrich STEM Learning?

Recently, we gathered representatives from community colleges, undergraduate institutions, and Tier 1 research institutions in Orlando, FL for a groundbreaking dialogue on how to design and deliver modern STEM facilities on their campus. One of the highlights of our annual Designing STEM Facilities for 21st Century Learners workshop was a series of collaborative visioning exercises in which our […]

Enrolling and Supporting Women in STEM: Practical Steps to Take

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions During a tour early this summer of the Colorado School of Mines, I had the opportunity to hear from a number of women enrolled in the geophysics and engineering programs there, and to speak with Stephanie Berry, the former director of CSM’s innovative WISEM (Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics) program. […]

Faculty Checklist: Steps to Respond to Classroom Incivility

by Lisa Cook and Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions Finding a balance between protecting free speech and keeping classroom discussions professional is often easier said than done in an election season when anything from climate change to history lessons might quickly become a hot topic. For practical, useful advice on classroom civility, we talked with Barbara […]

The $10,000 Bachelor’s Degree That Works

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions A few years ago, National Louis University in Chicago, which has historically served adult working students, has launched the new Harrison Professional Pathways Program, which provides access to bachelor’s degrees for traditional-aged high school graduates from all socioeconomic and academic backgrounds, but aims in particular to increase college access and […]

Online Learning in the Middle East: One Chancellor Speaks

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions Recently I had the opportunity to attend several speeches by Dr. Mansoor al Awar, the chancellor of Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University (HBMSU) in Dubai, the Middle East’s first online university, founded in 2002. Dubai’s higher education model is very different from that of the U.S., yet there are lessons […]

Due Process and the Likely Gap in Your
Title IX Investigation

Series: The Compliance Issues You Need to Know About Welcome to the third in this series. You can read the first two articles here: Juggle Smart: Steps for Managing the Intersections of Clery Act, Title IX, VAWA, and DFSCA Assistance Animals and Compliance: What You Need to Know About Recent Developments Daniel Fusch. Bev, thanks for […]

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The Current State of Competency-Based Education in the US

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions Recently, I had the privilege to sit in on a press release of the very preliminary findings from a joint Eduventures/Ellucian survey reporting on institutions’ level of commitment to competency-based education (CBE). The full report on the survey will not be released until June, and in fact the survey is […]

Students with Goggles: Virtual Reality and Adaptive Learning in the Classroom

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions I was recently invited to visit Ellucian’s Innovation Lab to speak with Brian Knotts, Ellucian’s Chief Data Scientist, and to sample some emerging learning technologies first hand. We discussed machine learning, virtual personal assistants, and I had the chance to don a set of virtual reality goggles to experience what […]

Leveraging Parents as Allies in Student Success

by Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions), interviewing Marjorie Savage (University of Minnesota) While some colleges are seeking positive ways of managing parent involvement throughout the college years, others have established farewell rituals near the start of a student’s first term to deliver the message that parents are expected to let go and step back. These separation […]

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A Tool for Increasing Application and Retention Rates for At-Risk Students

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges, universities, and organizations that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are […]

Juggle Smart: Steps for Managing the Intersections of Clery Act, Title IX, VAWA, and DFSCA

For this addition to our ongoing column on managing regulatory compliance in higher education, we’ve reached out to Bev Baligad, Director of Compliance at the University of Hawai’i – West O’ahu. When we asked Bev what Title IX coordinators and others on campus should be paying closer attention to this year, she pointed us to the overlap […]

Assistance Animals and Compliance: What You Need to Know About Recent Developments

In at least three recent lawsuits, post-secondary institutions have come under fire for failing to comply with provisions of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) that make it unlawful to deny housing based on a person’s handicap and that require institutions to accommodate “assistance animals.” What most institutions don’t realize yet is that the federal definition […]

One Easy Way Faculty Can Improve
Student Success

More Resources for Faculty:How to Encourage Academic Grit and a Growth Mindset in Your StudentsCivility in the Classroom: A Better Approach by Lisa Cook and Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions There has been a lot of talk recently about how faculty serve on the “front lines” of student success, and how changes to syllabus design or […]

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AMP UP: A Study of New Approaches to Math Remediation at Bergen Community College

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, […]

Creating a Written Professional Development Plan

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions In our second annual survey on The State of Professional Development in Higher Education, we learned that those who optimize the return on their investments in professional development (PD) are very intentional about making those investments. They don’t just go to the same events annually; they actively seek out new […]

Scorecard: How Do Higher-Ed Institutions Leverage Professional Development?

Professional development is a strategic asset to an institution, as it is a key engine for increasing the capacity of your team and for bringing in proven strategies from other organizations—allowing you to both avoid “reinventing the wheel” and to revitalize your work with fresh ideas. In late 2015, we surveyed 971 managers and frontline […]

A Close Look at Rio Salado College’s Approach to Boosting Success for At-Risk Online Students

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Gateway Math: A Close Look at Miami Dade College’s Approach

A Look Inside Academic Impressions

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions, interviewing Amit Mrig, President, Academic Impressions I know from talking with many of our subscribers that not all of you are aware of the full breadth of what Academic Impressions does in the higher-ed industry. Some things you may not know about AI: We organize over 100 conferences for higher […]

Example of RIT's George cards for encouraging interdisciplinary research

“George”: How RIT is Encouraging Interdisciplinary Collaboration

by Lisa Cook and Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions Institutions seeking to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration in research and teaching are pursuing an array of approaches: hiring faculty into multiple departments based on shared interdisciplinary interests, launching research initiatives that provide additional funding to get interdisciplinary projects off the ground, and providing shared research spaces. One of the […]

Spotlight on Innovation: Colleges and Universities that are Making a Difference

Emerging Trends: How Colleges Can Operate as Learning Organizations In late 2014, the US Department of Education awarded $75 million in “First in the World” grants to twenty-four colleges and universities, to fund initiatives to improve college access and completion, particularly for lower-income or first-generation students. Since then, we’ve interviewed those leading the First in the World […]

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Best Practices in Student Housing Design

READ THE FULL SERIES 1. Executive Summary: The Changing Shape of Student Life Facilities2. Financing and Planning Student Life Facilities3. Best Practices in Student Housing Design (this article) by Patrick Cain and Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) This summer, we released an executive summary of the findings from a survey of institutions looking to add new student life […]

Financing and Planning Student Life Facilities

READ THE FULL SERIES Executive Summary: The Changing Shape of Student Life Facilities Financing and Planning Student Life Facilities (this article) Best Practices in Student Housing Design by Patrick Cain and Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) This summer, we released an executive summary of the findings from a survey of institutions looking to add new […]

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This is How We Need to Rethink the Work of Student Affairs

by Daniel Fusch and Caleb Tegtmeier (Academic Impressions) The challenges facing our students and our institutions are more complex than in the past, and no single, siloed office can address these challenges adequately. That’s why some institutions have been forming student affairs innovation hubs to bring together a more diverse crew of creative minds from […]

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A Conversation in Fundraising We Need to Have

We asked Jason McNeal to share the philosophy behind his unique handbook and why he feels that training on effective contact reports can be – in the long term – a game-changer for development shops. An interview with Jason McNeal (Gonser Gerber LLP), author of Writing Meaningful Contact Reports: A Handbook for Fundraisers. AI. Jason, thanks for […]

Executive Summary: The Changing Shape of Student Life Facilities

READ THE FULL SERIES 1. Executive Summary: The Changing Shape of Student Life Facilities (this article) 2. Financing and Planning Student Life Facilities 3. Best Practices in Student Housing Design by Patrick Cain and Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) Earlier this year, we conducted a study of how institutions are planning for the design and placement of student life […]

Special Report: Why Donor Relations is the Next Game-Changer

Donor Relations: A Strategic Asset to Your Fundraising Program The field of donor relations has undergone a transformative few years. In the summer of 2014, we embarked on a comprehensive survey of more than 300 chief advancement officers at higher ed institutions and discovered more shops making a significant investment in their donor relations programs. […]

How Higher-Ed Leaders Need to Rethink Tuition Discounting

Rising institutional costs and greater price sensitivity on the part of prospective students and families have caused many institutions to strategically rethink their tuition discounting strategy. The following is an excerpt from a brief interview conducted with enrollment management expert John W. Dysart, president of The Dysart Group, who spoke at Academic Impressions’ conference on […]

Spotlight on Innovation: Purdue To Study Why Active Learning Works

Active learning models are becoming more common – but do we know why they’re effective? Researchers at Purdue are investigating. SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 24 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student […]

Spotlight on Innovation: Game-Based Strategies for Improving Access for First-Generation Students at USC

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 24 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are […]

Small but Mighty: 4 Small Colleges Thriving in a Disruptive Environment

Bucking the National Trend In this new paper from Academic Impressions, learn how four small colleges have bucked the national trend of enrollment decline, by: Securing the resources for growth Developing an outward focus Overcoming resistance to change and taking risks Pursuing smart experimentation Profiled in this paper: Art Kirk, President, Saint Leo University Melissa […]

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Spotlight on Innovation: How Southern New Hampshire is Replacing Remedial Education with Just-in-Time Academic Assistance

Is Your Professional Development Ad Hoc or Planned?

by Martin Klubeck (University of Notre Dame; author of “The Professional Development Toolbox“) and Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) A 2014 Academic Impressions survey of over 500 higher-ed professionals found that higher education institutions are divided roughly in half in terms of whether professional development is planned and proactive, or ad hoc and reactive. This gave us […]

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The Skills Higher-Ed Leaders Need to Succeed

2017 Update: Following up on this research, we have published our findings and our best current thinking in the paper “The Skills Future Higher-Ed Leaders Need to Succeed.” by Amit Mrig and Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions In Denver, CO this March, Academic Impressions convened a select group of forty academic and administrative leaders […]

Title IX: Recent Changes and What They Mean for You

February 2015. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) recently released three documents to provide guidance for the Title IX Coordinator role at colleges and universities: One that clarifies the Title IX Coordinator role One that outlines Title IX Coordinator responsibilities A 30-page Title IX resource guide To help your institution understand the crux of these […]

Inside the Transformational Gift

by Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) Recently, the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego, announced a $100 million transformational gift from local philanthropist Ernest Rady. It is the largest single commitment ever made to a business school the size of the Rady School, and the gift is intended to empower the […]

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Spotlight on Innovation: LaGuardia Community College Pilots Project COMPLETA to Support First-Gen, Low-Income Students

Measure of Grace: A Different Approach to Tuition and Persistence

by Daniel Fusch and Sarah Seigle, Academic Impressions With their new “Measure of Grace” initiative, Grace College is working to keep their undergraduate degrees affordable and incentivize student persistence and completion. A few years ago, the college began offering the option to complete all of their bachelor’s degrees as three-year degrees. Now, with “Measure of […]

Spotlight on Innovation: How Jacksonville State University Plans to Boost Students’ Critical Thinking Skills

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Spotlight on Innovation: How Georgia Tech and AMAC Are Working to Make Course Materials More Accessible

Spotlight on Innovation: How Kennesaw’s TAG Program is Creating Better Degree Completion Pathways for Transfer Students

Spotlight on Innovation: How Indiana State University is Accelerating College Completion

How Maricopa is Improving Student Success through Comprehensive Support for Adjunct Faculty

by Lisa Cook and Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions A push to improve student outcomes at Maricopa Community College District in Phoenix, AZ, has included a close look at how Maricopa can support the adjunct faculty who teach those students. Maricopa is one of the nation’s largest community college systems, serving more than 260,000 students at […]

Spotlight on Innovation: How the University of Minnesota is Building Collaborative Partnerships to Improve Retention of First-Gen Students

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Spotlight on Innovation: Learning Communities to Study First-Gen Student Success at Western Michigan

Rethinking Your Capital Planning Process: Focusing on the Student Experience

The key opportunity for chief academic officers, chief financial officers, and capital planners is to establish a data-informed prioritization process for capital planning efforts — one in which campus projects are prioritized based on how academic, residential, and recreational facilities on campus can be best used to improve enrollment and retention. We recently spoke with […]

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Why AI? The Perspective I Bring to Higher Education

by Daniel Fusch, Director of Research and Publications, Academic Impressions I’ve been with Academic Impressions for over eight years — a pretty significant portion of my life. In this article, as I look toward the new year, I reflect back on my career with AI, how I came here, what it has meant to me, […]

The State of Professional Development in Higher Education

For twelve years, Academic Impressions has been assembling many of the leading experts in higher education to teach and facilitate webcasts, conferences, and workshops to develop critical skills and knowledge in the staff who are committed to helping change their institutions—to make higher education more sustainable for the future. We believe passionately that professional development […]

How One Institution Revamped International Student Arrival and Orientation

by Lisa LaPoint and Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions), interviewing Karen O’Neill (San Jose State University) San Jose State University (SJSU) has experienced a spike in international enrollment in the past couple of years—”instead of building slowly, a tsunami wave of hundreds of additional students each semester,” as Karen O’Neill, San Jose State’s recent director of […]

Taking Virtual Academic Advising from OK to Great

by Daniel Fusch, interviewing Cory Phare (Academic Impressions) September 2014. With the “high-touch, high-tech” mindset and 24-hour service expectations of today’s students, many advising programs are exploring how to offer quality advising to distance learners. Advising departments are also continually asked to do more with less, and to make processes more efficient while still providing […]

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You’re Embarking on Competency-Based Education; How Do You Fund It?

September 2014. We wanted to gather advice for how to set up internal funding for CBE courses and programs effectively. How can colleges who are in the early stages of piloting competency-based education set up their own CBE course development or program development grant? To learn more, we reached out to Dr. Sally M. Johnstone, vice president […]

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Poll: Taking First-Year Student Experience to the Next Level

by Cory Phare and Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions August 2014. Recently, we polled a group of 55 administrators tasked with directing first-year programs. Of this group: For 2 in 3 administrators, assessing their first-year program is a priority; yet for one full third, this is not the case. Few are looking at “student success” more […]

Improving Your Enrollment Services

Colleges are working hard to bring in additional students. And there is such a cost to bringing in each student, that you don’t want to lose them through an enrollment and registration process that is confusing or simply takes too long. Or as Kevin Pollock, the president of St. Clair County Community College, remarks pointedly, […]

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Diagnosing the Barriers to Improving Customer Service

In November 2012, Academic Impressions surveyed professionals from 79 institutions of higher education, asking them to grade their institution’s level of customer service and to comment on the challenges faced in improving it. The responses were revealing. A “C” in Customer Service 29 of our respondents rated their institution with a “B” letter grade for […]

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Improving Your Academic Support Services

Improving customer service isn’t only an opportunity in enrollment management. Academic support services often face similar structural, procedural, and training barriers to improving service to students. Cindy Barnes, director of advising and retention at West Texas A&M University, developed a one-stop student success center for the institution. We reached out to her recently to learn […]

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Identifying Academic Policies and Procedures that Impede Student Success

Our interview with Dennis Pruitt, vice president for student affairs at the University of South Carolina, suggested the need to direct attention to something that is often overlooked: the need to review and audit institutional policies and procedures that delay students in progressing toward their degree. “Historically, many have assumed that if students get over their […]

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4 Blind Spots Colleges Miss in Revising General Education

AN IN-DEPTH STUDY OF GENERAL EDUCATION REVISION In 2013, Academic Impressions conducted a survey of 308 post-secondary institutions and conducted select follow-up interviews to learn more about how US and Canadian institutions are seeking to revise their core curriculums. We presented our findings and several case studies in our paper General Education Reform: Unseen Opportunities, […]

The Title IX Gap: Where Campuses Are Less Prepared Than They Think

by Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) August 2014. In recent articles, we’ve commented on the fact that there are immediate steps colleges and universities need to take to ensure compliance with Title IX and with new OCR guidelines for grievance procedures in cases of harassment and sexual assault. For complimentary resources on this, see: Title IX […]

Beyond “The Ivory Tower”: Success Stories for Higher Ed

by Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) Last night I saw The Ivory Tower with my colleagues. I was interested to see a wide-ranging take on the higher-ed industry, but was struck by the movie’s focus on extreme examples — and by the fact that it shared few success stories. In the years ahead, higher-ed leaders will face […]

Worksheet: Rate Your Behavioral Intervention Team’s Effectiveness

When Did You Last Update Your Behavioral Intervention Process? by Louise A. Douce, Ph.D. (The Ohio State University), Gregory T. Eells, Ph.D. (Cornell University), Ruben Robles (University of Redlands), and Lisa LaPoint (Academic Impressions) After the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, most higher-ed institutions established behavioral intervention teams (BIT) to better manage potential issues of […]

From Enrollment to Net Tuition Revenue: Where CEMs and CFOs Need to Focus

Recent studies have chronicled enrollment shortfalls and their impact on institutions across the country. Yet, given the increase in tuition discounting over recent years, it’s imperative that institutions manage the critical metric of net tuition revenue and not just enrollment numbers. This will require a more unified and methodical approach — and close collaboration between […]

Hazing Prevention: It Pays to Be Proactive

by Keith Ellis (University of South Carolina) and Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) A few weeks ago, Sigma Alpha Epsilon announced that it would end pledging entirely, as an attempt to reform the fraternity’s culture and prevent hazing. Various news sources commented on how the decision came on the heels of a Bloomberg investigation that had […]

Beyond Friendraising: The Shift to Metrics-Driven Alumni Relations

SIGN UP FOR AI TRAININGS FOR FREE WITH AI PRO! We want to take a moment to thank you for reading our publication, and let you know about AI Pro, our new membership service that includes free access to 50 recent online trainings for advancement professionals, as well as many upcoming trainings! Membership also includes […]

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How One Institution Ensured its Crisis Management Plan Didn’t Just Sit on the Shelf

by Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) The University of Wyoming’s emergency preparedness plan has become a template for plans at other Wyoming institutions and state agencies—including Casper College, which used emergency protocols based on the University of Wyoming’s in responding to a tragic crossbow shooting incident on campus in December 2012. In a recent conversation with […]

Innovative Practices in Higher-Ed Leadership Development

The external search is engrained in the culture of higher education, but this is already beginning to change as an aging workforce forces institutional leaders to address issues of succession planning and leadership development. Across the country institutions are starting or increasing their investments in in-house leadership development programs. This paper reviews 3 innovative practices […]

Crowdfunding: Stats and Critical Advice

by Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) Crowdfunding can increase alumni engagement and participation while serving as a cost-effective tool for acquiring updated alumni contact information, re-engaging donors, and serving faculty and students in their philanthropic efforts. Recently, we have released a series of resources for higher-ed professionals interested in exploring crowdfunding initiatives: Higher-Ed Crowdfunding: What Is […]

Help Your Faculty Manage Online Workload

We turned to Larry Ragan and Susan Ko for tips on how department chairs and faculty developers can help faculty manage online workload. We hope you will also invite your faculty to review our recorded webcast, Managing Online Course Workload. Because online and blended courses require more preparation than most traditional courses, faculty often find […]

Checklist: Using LinkedIn to Engage Alumni

During a recent Academic Impressions online training, Keith Hannon of Cornell University asked alumni relations professionals from 81 institutions to share where they have found success in sharing content and starting discussions with alumni via LinkedIn. The lively list of responses provides a quick checklist of content that alumni relations officers are trying across higher […]

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Panel: How Peer Mentoring Can Assist Students in Niche Programs or at Niche Institutions

At Academic Impressions, we have offered a number of articles and other resources on peer mentoring, and our readers and participants at our events have asked, “Is peer mentoring effective in a niche academic program — such as nursing or aviation — or at a niche institution?” We forwarded this question to a panel of […]

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Debunked: Myths About Peer Mentoring

Recently at Academic Impressions, we asked a panel of experts on peer mentor programs if there were any myths or common misconceptions about peer mentoring that they would like to debunk. This article provides their answers. Included on the panel: Margie Bader, SMILE program coordinator and professor at Seneca College Bryce Bunting, program administrator and […]

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Reforming the Core Curriculum: When You’re Mid-Process

Earlier this fall, Academic Impressions released a study of general education reform in North America, based on a survey of 308 academic leaders and a series of interviews with leading innovators in core curriculum reform. In the weeks since the release of our report, we have continued to interview provosts and deans at a diversity […]

Special Edition: Developing and Evaluating Adjunct Faculty

Recently, Academic Impressions conducted an informal poll asking academics how their institutions develop and evaluate adjunct faculty. When we asked academics about methods for supporting and developing contingent faculty, we learned: 67% offer individual consultations. 61% use a workshop series. 51% use faculty learning opportunities/teaching circles. 15% offer grants for professional development. And when asked […]

Selecting the Right LMS: 2 Critical Decisions

A recent Academic Impressions survey found that one third of academics are unhappy with their current learning management system (LMS), and over a third are unhappy with their institution’s process for selecting an LMS. In September, we asked Thomas Cavanagh to respond to the findings; he offered two brief checklists (which you can review here) […]

A Roadmap for Successful Academic Coaching

In a new training with Academic Impressions, Jennifer Bloom, director of the University of South Carolina’s Higher Education & Student Affairs (HESA) master’s degree program and co-author of The Appreciative Advising Revolution (2008) and Increasing Persistence: Research-based Strategies for College Student Success (2012), offers an overview of how she has applied an appreciative inquiry model […]

How One Institution is Forecasting Housing Needs and Costs

Pro forma can be an effective tool in analyzing and forecasting the financial health of any housing operation. However, few housing administrators are well-versed on developing a comprehensive pro forma model and leveraging information to make smarter decisions about: Rate increases Renovations External revenue streams Other capital investments This lack of knowledge often leads to […]

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Outreach to International Alumni: The Opportunities You May Be Missing

When we asked advancement professionals in a recent, informal 7 Second Survey to note their most effective tactic for outreach to international alumni: 28% found alumni chapters and clubs most effective. 23% found university events most effective. Curiously, less than 5% were relying most on alumni volunteer opportunities that connect alumni with student recruitment. 37%, […]

How One Institution is Monetizing its Physical Assets

The Ohio State University recently monetized their parking operation — which OSU identified as a campus asset that was non-mission critical — and secured $400 million, most of which OSU invested in its endowment. As other institutions seek to counterbalance increasingly depleted revenue streams, OSU provides a key example of how to identify assets that […]

Speechwriting for Campus Leaders: 2 Crucial Tips

In this audio supplement to our article “Speechwriting for Your Institution’s Leaders: Why Speeches Fail,” Chuck Toney discusses 2 crucial steps you need to take before writing any speech for your academic leaders: Identify the speaker’s strategic messages Identify the speaker’s unique voice In the audio, Toney also provides specific examples from effective speeches. For […]

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Speechwriting for Your Institution’s Leaders: Why Speeches Fail

BEFORE WRITING ANY SPEECH FOR AN ACADEMIC LEADER Speechwriter and policy analyst Chuck Toney suggests 2 crucial preparatory steps that can make all the difference between boring and compelling speeches: Identify the speaker’s strategic messages Identify the speaker’s unique voice For specific examples, please listen to this free podcast from Chuck Toney and Academic Impressions: […]

Conversations That Matter: Approaching the Academic Calendar More Creatively

In one of our recent 7 Second Surveys, we found that: 92% of colleges responding to the survey offer summer sessions. 52% offer winter sessions. 41% offer maymester. 31% — less than one third — offer other flexible options on the academic calendar, such as fast track sessions or late start semesters. Special sessions are […]

General Education Reform: Unseen Opportunities

A recent national survey conducted by Academic Impressions revealed a surprising and welcome finding that 80% of the more than 300 institutions surveyed have recently completed or are currently involved with reforming their general education programs. For years, leaders across all types of institutions have been calling for reforms to general education to improve persistence […]

Title IX Checklist

The April 2011 Office of Civil Rights (OCR) “Dear Colleague” letter mandated changes for how institutions must handle reports of sexual misconduct. Recently, we conducted one of our informal 7 Second Surveys to learn whether a general sample of faculty and staff across campus were concerned about the changes and their institution’s compliance, we received […]

Conversations That Matter: Copyright, Fair Use, and MOOCs – What To Be Aware Of

Fair use and copyright ownership are complicated enough when we are considering materials for a class with seven or 70 students. But what if you are venturing into the world of the MOOC, where media and written materials may be shared with 7,000 or 70,000 students? How do fair use and copyright considerations change as […]

2 Checklists: Selecting the Right LMS

In last week’s 7 Second Survey, Academic Impressions asked academics to comment on their learning management system (LMS). 184 academics responded. What they told us: 33% of respondents were unhappy with their current LMS. Asked why, they cited lack of user-friendliness, “clunkiness,” and lack of flexibility for their needs. 34% were also unhappy with their […]

Conversations That Matter: Reviewing Your Academic Library’s General Collection

Are you managing your library’s general collection in a way that is responsive to the needs of all of your stakeholders–including faculty and students? Recently, for our podcast series Conversations That Matter, we interviewed Annie Belanger with the Dana Porter Library at the University of Waterloo and Michael Levine-Clark with the University of Denver Libraries, […]

How to Reach Millennial Donors

The 2013 Millennial Impact Report offers data on millennials’ propensity to give: 83% of millennial respondents gave a financial gift to a non-profit in 2013 (up from 75% in 2012) 52% would be interested in monthly giving In light of this high propensity to give and the significant opportunity this presents to grow the donor […]

Conversations That Matter: The Next Generation in Student Residential Facilities

Wake Forest University’s new residential facilities–part of the institution’s transition to a three-year residency requirement–are unique in several respects. First, they were designed to mirror the stages of students’ social development. For example, the new facilities offer a more communal atmosphere for freshmen, sophomore assignments based on “friendship groups” that students have formed, and apartment-style […]

Email Advising: Doing it Wrong, Doing it Right

by Susan Ohrablo (Nova Southeastern University) In a recent, interactive online training session, Susan Ohrablo, a doctoral enrollment counselor with the Abraham S. Fischler School of Education at Nova Southeastern University and past advising center director, conducted a detailed critique of a series of examples of advisor responses to students’ email inquiries. Ohrablo reviewed what […]

Online Giving is Trending Up: Here’s the Data You Need to Guide Your Strategy

At a recent AI online training “10 Tips for Improving Your Online Giving Site,” consultant and blogger Lynne Wester of www.donorrelationsguru.com reviewed recent data on online giving and what this data means for your giving site and email solicitation strategy. Here are several key takeaways that we recommend sharing with your colleagues. Let’s take a […]

And the Tweets Have It: What Matters in Student Philanthropy

Twitter was alive this week with discussion and shared best practices among alumni relations, annual giving, and student philanthropy officers who attended Academic Impressions’ 2013 student philanthropy conference. Here are some of the highlights and key takeaways from that conversation. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER Can’t attend one of our events? Follow us on Twitter @academicimpress […]

Why You Need Your FERPA Policy in Writing

In Academic Impressions’ recent webcast “FERPA Policy and Procedure Audit” (you can order this online training here), FERPA expert Helen Garrett, the dean of enrollment management systems at Lane Community College and recent president of PACRAO (the Pacific Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers), gave an in-depth walkthrough on how to review, update, and […]

Mobile Learning: 5 Student Safety and Privacy Risks Every Educator Should Know

As mobile learning and remote teaching increase in popularity, so do concerns regarding personal safety and privacy. As you pilot mobile projects in your classes, are you considering how those projects impact both privacy and security? During a recent webcast, Academic Impressions conversed with mobile learning veterans Stephen Baldridge, assistant professor and baccalaureate program director […]

Doing More with Less: Moving Information Literacy Instruction Online

During a June 18, 2013 webcast, Academic Impressions asked librarians from academic libraries across North America whether they are looking to move information literacy programming online — and why. The three main reasons offered: Enrollment growth in online and blended courses, where students may have limited access to the physical library or to meeting librarians […]

Conversations that Matter: The Other Higher Ed Bubble

In our recent paper The Other Higher Ed Bubble, we argued college and university leaders need to act now and make fundamental changes to how they operate in order to ensure a sustainable future. This will mean holding critical conversations across your campus, defining the right problems to solve in the next 5-10 years, challenging […]

Special Edition: Boosting Retention for Ethnic Minority Students

How does your campus support the academic success and retention of ethnic minority students? In “Campus Diversity: Beyond Just Enrollment,” Mary Hinton, the vice president for planning and assessment at Mount Saint Mary College, argues that often colleges and universities have prioritized enrolling an ethnically diverse incoming class without planning for the follow-through: academic success […]

Is There a Financial Bubble?

by Amit Mrig, President, Academic Impressions This article is an excerpt from our paper “The Other Higher Ed Bubble: The Bubble We Aren’t Talking About.” To read the rest of the paper, click here. As government-subsidized debt continues to fuel higher ed’s growth, there is increasing speculation as to whether higher ed is the next […]

Assessing Student Learning Outcomes: Surveys Aren’t Enough

In a recent Academic Impressions webcast, student learning assessment expert John Hoffman polled student affairs representatives from 200 institutions of higher education about their data collection methods for assessing student learning. Participants were asked to select their two most common methods of gathering data. The results were dismaying but perhaps unsurprising: 89% use student surveys, […]

Lessons Learned from Institutions Undertaking Program Prioritization

At Academic Impressions, we recently offered a national snapshot of efforts to prioritize academic programs and administrative services at higher-ed institutions. Our report included commentary from Bob Dickeson (who literally wrote the book on program prioritization) and Larry Goldstein (president of Campus Strategies, LLC), in which these two experts identified the prerequisites for success. The […]

Special Edition: Engaging Your Alumni

Are your alumni engaged? Are you sure? According to a national survey conducted by the Collaborative Innovation Network for Engagement and Giving, only 52 percent of alumni at the 100 institutions with the highest alumni participation rates believe that their alma mater keeps them closely connected and values its alumni relationships. That’s a foreboding statistic. […]

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Alumni volunteer engagement: Image of four alumni volunteers in blue "volunteer" shirts

Alumni Relations ROI: An Approach

Marquette University has piloted (and refined) an innovative metrics tool for measuring the impact of alumni engagement efforts. Numerical scores are assigned to specific activities that are indicative of alumni engagement and participation, and the scoring is used to measure the return on investment for alumni relations efforts in quantitative terms and to inform allocation […]

College Student Mental Health Statistics - Photo of a Stressed Student

Addressing Student Mental Health Issues – On a Budget

by Anne E. Lundquist I was very interested in the article by Kristen Domonell that appeared in University Business on March 19. In this article, she emphasized that, in an era of increasing numbers of students with significant psychological disabilities and serious mental issues, colleges and universities are being forced to “do more with less” […]

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Meeting the Challenge of Program Prioritization

Report: May 2015. In this report, you’ll see a national snapshot of program prioritization efforts based on a recent survey of over 100 institutional leaders — plus critical lessons learned to aid you in your own efforts, including: Prerequisites for a successful prioritization process The importance of clear goals and targeted cuts How best to pursue […]

Naming Opportunities: Don’t Miss Them

Those shops that are best able to leverage naming opportunities to secure gifts and to steward long-term relationships with donors will be those that have thought ahead. Even as more institutions look to launch new campaigns — often increasingly ambitious ones in terms of their dollar goals — donors are increasingly interested in attaching their […]

Are Outdated Policies Holding You Back?

“Your company’s organizational memory might be holding it back,” business professor Vijay Govindarajan and retired management consultant Srikanth Srinivas cautioned in Harvard Business Review this week, offering advice that spans the for-profit and non-profit sectors. According to Govindarajan and Srinivas, Organizational memory – the way we have always done things – can include “obsolete policies […]

Photo: Students in a developmental education course

Why Rethinking Developmental Education is a Priority

Included in This Report: Reassessing the Costs and Benefits of Developmental Education Placing Students in Gateway Courses: A More Informed Approach A Fresh Look at the Developmental Ed Curriculum A Letter from Amit Mrig, President, Academic Impressions March 2013. Given public and federal pressures on college completion, several higher education and policy groups have recently […]

Reassessing the Costs and Benefits of Developmental Education

Reports over the past several years from the Lumina Foundation, Complete College America, and other policy and research groups have documented the high cost of developmental education, measured not only in dollars spent but in student attrition rates. In fact, “Core Principles for Transforming Remedial Education,” a recent joint statement and meta-analysis provided by the […]

Placing Students in Gateway Courses: A More Informed Approach

One of the most insidious, documented effects of the traditional pipeline of developmental courses on an incoming student is the fatigue of taking multiple non-credit courses (or, in some cases, being required to retake a non-credit course repeatedly). Tristan Denley, provost at Austin Peay State University, calls this course sequence the “slow death.” Your goal […]

A Fresh Look at the Developmental Ed Curriculum

Institutions that have made real strides in improving retention and academic success rates for academically underprepared students have focused not only on revisiting their policies around academic placement but also on revamping their developmental education curriculum. Let’s take a close look at two successful—though quite different—models: The assisted learning approach: replacing prerequisite courses with corequisite coursework […]

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Special Edition: Making a Difference with International Students – The Resources You Need

According to the Open Doors report on international education, international student enrollment has increased every year for the past 60 years. With this trend expected to continue, and international students becoming an increasingly important constituent group, it’s critical for institutions to take a more holistic view at how they’re meeting these students’ needs now and […]

Students at Risk of Suicide and Risk Management: Advice from Allan Shackelford

Student suicide has received renewed attention both in the US and Canada, not only because of the increased number of suicides by college students (with research studies indicating that as many as 1.5% of college students may actually attempt suicide, while many others will give suicide serious consideration at some point during their years on […]

Measuring Brand ROI: An Interview with Bob Sevier

As the higher ed marketplace becomes increasingly competitive, it has become more critical than ever to be able to measure the impact of your marketing efforts on brand perception — critical, but not always easy. In a recent interview with Academic Impressions, Bob Sevier, senior vice president of strategy for Stamats Inc., shared with us […]

Video: Trust and the High-Performing Team in Higher Education

Drawing on current research on high-performing leadership teams both within and outside of higher education, Pat Sanaghan, president of The Sanaghan Group and author of Collaborative Leadership in Action (2011) and the forthcoming book, How to Actually Build an Exceptional Team (2013), has identified 10 differentiators of exceptional teams, 10 qualities that enable teams to rise […]

Customer Service in Higher Education: More than Just Demeanor

In a survey of professionals of higher education a few months ago, Academic Impressions found that: If asked to give their institution a letter grade for customer service, most professionals would assign a “C” or lower. There is a growing awareness among managers in higher education that customer service entails more than presenting students or […]

Taking the Campaign Beyond Campus Events: A Case Study

The University of the Virgin Islands (an HBCU with campuses on St. Thomas and St. Croix US Virgin Islands) saw their alumni giving rate increase from 13% to 42% in the past year during the institution’s “50 for 50 Campaign” celebrating UVI’s 50th anniversary. What is especially noteworthy about this jump in giving rate is […]

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Predicting Student Success: Beyond the Traditional Approach

Given increasing competition, shifts in student enrollment, and reduced resource levels, it’s critical that colleges and universities recruit and retain the students who are most likely to succeed at their institutions. By transitioning from a risk-based model for predicting student enrollment and retention to a success-based model, you can look across the student life cycle […]

Identifying the Untapped Potential of Mobile Devices on Campus

January 18, 2013. “Missed Opportunities” Interviewing a range of experts in the use of mobile technologies in enrollment, teaching and learning, and alumni relations during the closing months of 2012, we found consensus on several points: Many institutions still limit their use of mobile technologies to replicate what they already do or provide through other, […]

A Diagnosis for Academic Advising: 3 Missed Opportunities

Through a series of surveys and interviews with advising directors across North America, Academic Impressions has identified a number of frequently missed opportunities that prevent institutions from maximizing the effectiveness of academic advising to improve student retention and academic success. The following are among the most significant: As academic advisors find themselves overwhelmed with high […]

How will MOOCs Affect Fair Use and Copyright Compliance?

As more institutions consider offering Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs), we wanted to investigate what impact these open-enrollment online courses might have on copyright compliance issues for faculty in higher education. To learn more, we turned to copyright and fair use policy experts Steven McDonald, general counsel for the Rhode Island School of Design […]

Restructuring Your Financial Aid Office: Debunking 3 Misconceptions

With continuously changing regulations and compliance standards, financial aid offices sometimes find it difficult to balance legal obligations and customer needs. Gettysburg College recently undertook a restructuring of its financial aid office and dramatically improved customer service without adding additional staff members or making significant changes to the budget. We turned to Chris Gormley, Gettysburg’s […]

Revitalizing Your Phonathon Effort

Often you hear that “the phonathon is dead”; perceived barriers to bringing in dollars through your phonathon include fewer alumni owning phones, fewer alumni answering the phone, and the difficulty of maintaining an accurate database of cell numbers. Yet a small number of institutions have seen some significant success in approaching their phonathon effort in […]

The Student-to-Alumni Transition: Are You Missing These Opportunities?

To develop a stronger donor pipeline, the key is to start earlier. However, institutions attempting to raise giving rates for young alumni are often rebuffed. In a study of the attitudes of young alumni conducted in 2010, the Engagement Strategies Group confirmed that the majority of young alumni are reluctant to give due to high […]

Taking the Next Step with Early Alert Programs: From Reactive to Proactive

Early alert programs have been emerging on college campuses for the last 10 years to varying degrees of success. Too often after the initial startup, many early alert programs fail to fully meet their designed purpose of identifying and reaching out to academically at-risk students — in part because these programs are often focused on […]

Expanding the Reach of Your Alumni Events through Social Media and Mobile Technologies

Social media and mobile technologies offer low-cost opportunities to increase the impact of your alumni events, because you can extend the reach of your current efforts to online alumni communities such as a Facebook alumni group or Twitter feed. Andrew Gossen, senior director for social media strategy for alumni affairs and development at Cornell University, […]

Five Experts on the Need for Annual Giving Planning

For most shops, the past several years have been a financial roller coaster for annual giving numbers. As annual giving recovers momentum this year, now is the right time to invest time and energy in planning for the long term. One of the most critical lessons that can be learned from the past few years […]

Survey Report: Customer Service in Higher Education

2012. Academic Impressions surveyed professionals from 79 institutions of higher education, asking them to grade their institution’s level of customer service and to comment on the challenges faced in improving it. The responses were revealing. A “C” in Customer Service 29 of our respondents rated their institution with a “B” letter grade for level of […]

Supporting Adjunct Faculty: An Investment in Your Instructors, an Investment in Your Students

A 2010 US Department of Education study found that adjunct instructors teach 60% of the college courses in the US. They represent a critical first line of instruction for many students, yet often receive minimal faculty development and minimal institutional support for serving students. This week, we interviewed Jennifer Strickland, the interim director for Mesa […]

Adopting Mobile: Reasons for Urgency

But how urgent is it to move on mobile technologies? Let’s review the data. Mobile Technologies in the Eyes of Students and Alumni In June 2010, Ball State University released a study showing that of college students owning phones, 49% owned smartphones. An ECAR report released a few weeks ago documented that this number has […]

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What Mobile Technologies Can Do

Don’t Try to Do Radio on TV A few years ago, as the first institutions were making forays into mobile learning, Academic Impressions reached out to Judy Brown, founder and former director of the University of Wisconsin system’s Academic ADL Co-Lab and a key thinker in mobile learning strategies. Brown notes that when we […]

Examples of Innovations with Mobile Technologies

Here is a showcase of examples from different institutions that have found relatively inexpensive ways to use mobile devices to add real value to key interactions with students and alumni — for example, during the campus tour, in the classroom, and at alumni events such as reunion and homecoming. Fully Leveraging the Power of the […]

Moving to a Mobile-Enabled Approach

Post-secondary institutions are traditionally both risk averse and slow adopters of new technologies. In facing the rapid adoption rate of mobile technologies by the general population, it can be difficult to know where to start and how to know whether your initial efforts are working. But this is the time to jump in and learn. […]

Rethinking the President’s Role in Fundraising

Because your institution’s president is uniquely positioned to scan the horizon and help develop and communicate a vision of the future to prospective donors, his or her role in fundraising entails far more than just making connections and making the ask. In his recent monograph “Fundraising for Presidents: A Guide,” Jim Langley, president and founder […]

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Your Campus Website: Why Responsive Design May Be Your Next Step

Recent projections by technology researchers confirm that mobile devices and tablets are seeing rapid adoption — and that more prospective students and alumni are first viewing your institution’s website from a mobile device. For example, market research firm IDC reported last year that by 2015 in the US, more people will access online content through […]

Survey Report: Online Giving, Mobile Apps

Market research firm IDC projected last year that by 2015 in the US, more people will access online content through mobile devices than through wired Internet connections, and many institutions are reporting sharp increases in the web traffic they are seeing from mobile devices. For example, Brett Pollak, director of the campus web office for […]

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Twitter and Learning

What are specific ways that faculty can use Twitter in the classroom – and outside it – in ways that aid student learning? Several studies at Michigan State University over the past couple of years have produced some fascinating findings about college students and Twitter: A 2010 study led by Jeff Grabill found that […]

Predicting Student Success: Rethinking GPA

In Academic Impressions’ recent edition of Higher Ed Impact: Monthly DIagnostic, “Success Leaves Clues: Predictive Modeling in Higher Education,” we interviewed a number of experts to provide a conceptual overview of how institutions can take steps toward a more rigorous mining of their current and historical student data to identify predictors not only of which […]

Reviewing Your Data: What You Might Find

With scarce resources, it’s time to become increasingly savvy about the students you recruit and enroll, how you support them in ways that make a difference in their academic success and persistence, and how you approach the student-to-alumni transition. Success Leaves Clues Look at your past and current students and your current donors to identify […]

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Data-Informed Recruitment and Enrollment

Moving beyond high school GPA and standardized test scores, you will want to look for predictors of student success and affinity for your institution by analyzing data on your past and current students at each stage of their relationship with your institution. Identify shared characteristics of those students who model behaviors you want to encourage. […]

Mining Your Data: From Students to Alumni

Your institution has enrolled a strong class of students, and a high percentage of them have persisted and are thriving academically. Now it is the senior year. In a few months, these students will graduate, and, if you do not engage them proactively now, you will lose your best opportunity to invite them to engage […]

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DFW Rates and You: Rethinking Support for At-Risk Students

In a recent interview with Academic Impressions, Bernadette Jungblut, West Virginia University’s director of assessment and retention, noted with some dismay that too frequently institutions have used data on individual courses’ D/fail/withdraw rates primarily as a means of performance evaluation for faculty, rather than partnering with faculty in taking a closer look at the DFW […]

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When a Crisis Occurs: The President as Spokesperson

At a recent Chicago-area panel of crisis communications experts – a panel attended by media relations professionals from local higher education, government, and business entities – one of the top five questions presented to the experts was: When should your president serve as a spokesperson during a crisis, rather than your chief communications officer? We […]

Prospecting Using Social Media: Getting Started

Marianne Pelletier, CFRE, the director of research and data support for Cornell University and author of the recent Academic Impressions monograph Prospecting Using Social Media, has embarked on some extensive experimentation with integrating social media into prospecting and prospect research. We interviewed her this week to ask why prospect researchers need to be moving on […]

Targeting Your Social Media Content

In a 2011 interview with Academic Impressions, Brad Ward, CEO of BlueFuego Inc., cited his organization’s research into the impact of university Facebook pages. After a 25-month study of nearly 400,000 Facebook updates across more than 1,200 university Facebook pages, Ward concluded that most institutions offer too much content via social media channels, leading to […]

Showcase: Examples of Mobile Technology Used for Teaching and Learning

With students bringing smartphones and tablets to campus — and expecting to access information and course content via mobile devices — it continues to be urgent for faculty developers and instructional technologists to explore the affordances of these devices and the opportunities for using them to enhance teaching and learning. In our past article, “Piloting […]

Why It’s More Critical than Ever to Cultivate the Middle of Your Giving Pyramid

In Academic Impressions’ recent free webcast Rethinking Campaign and Major Gift Strategies, we put together a snapshot of data culled from a series of recent surveys and reports. While many institutions responded a fear years ago to the recession by focusing increasingly on cultivating top donors, the snapshot we presented documents the extent to which […]

Seeing Success in Space Optimization

In a July 2012 survey of facilities managers in higher education, Academic Impressions found that 73% of facilities managers cite optimizing space utilization as either “high priority” or “highest priority” among initiatives for the next year. When asked about challenges faced in achieving this, facilities managers expressed concern over buy-in, both from senior leadership (for […]

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Enrolling and Retaining First-Generation Students: 3 Things You Need to Know

As demand for college education rises among lower-income families amid a troubled economy, and as the pressure mounts on completion rates, more institutions are beginning to assess their strategies for recruiting and retaining first-gen students. We’ve addressed the issue before in Higher Ed Impact, offering tips from various experts in enrollment management. This week, we […]

Allocating Campus Space Strategically

“Space is a critical resource, just like your institution’s financial resources; it has to be managed effectively and used efficiently. It is an asset that you need to allocate in order to support short- and long-term priorities.” Frances Mueller, University of Michigan Institutions of higher education have a limited history of tracking and allocating their […]

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Taking a Proactive Approach to Energy Savings and Deferred Maintenance

“You have to be clear on the distinction between deferred maintenance and ignored maintenance, and ensure that your institution’s leadership is clear on this. Intentionally deferring needed maintenance after a careful assessment of your facilities condition is a strategy. Ignoring maintenance is a problem.” Faramarz Vakili, Associate Director of the Physical Plant, University of Wisconsin-Madison […]

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Funding Facilities and Facilities Improvements in the Current Market

In recent years, more institutions have looked for innovative, outside-the-box methods of funding their investments in the physical campus — including an array of models for public-private partnerships, mixed-use facilities, and (in a few cases) fundraising for renewal and maintenance. We asked Pete Isaac, senior project manager with Brailsford & Dunlavey, to offer his insights […]

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Training Peer Mentors for First-Year Students: What’s Missing

Peer educators can serve as an effective front line in the student development and academic success of first-year students, and employing peer mentors (either as employees or as volunteers) can save on costs. Yet many institutions provide only the most cursory training and orientation for their peer mentors. This week, we turned to Sarah Whitley, […]

3 Ways to Help Peer Educators Succeed

In a related article, we asked Sarah Whitley, director of first-year experience and family programs at Longwood University, to offer her insights on what critical items are often missing from peer mentor training. Whitley’s answers indicated the need for a shift in thinking about the support and development peer educators need, whether your peer educators […]

Succession Planning: Advice for the President, the Board, and HR

Is external search the best approach? The president and the board at least have an open and honest conversation about whether to pursue succession planning, asking whether an internal successor who knows the culture and has the trust of other key stakeholders would be better positioned to take the helm and affect change. Lucie Lapovsky, […]

Naming Opportunities for Athletics: 4 Tips

Because the marketplace for public arenas and sports stadiums is now saturated with corporate namings and sponsorships, many corporations are turning increasingly to the higher education sector for naming opportunities. At the same time, many athletics departments in higher education are striving to become more entrepreneurial, particularly at institutions that have recently cut athletics budgets […]

Designing Sustainable Facilities as Learning Spaces

“We have this expression here that the campus is another member of the faculty. In our planning and our design we need to always keep this in mind, because students will learn from and interact with the physical space. It’s not just a passive setting.”Jack Byrne, Middlebury College For institutions that have made sustainability a […]

Four Tips for Helping Students Graduate
on Time

NPR’s Talk of the Nation interviewed a series of academic leaders and experts in academic advising to examine why many students find barriers to graduation within four years. At Academic Impressions, we decided to follow up with some practical advice for where institutions can see significant gains in helping students graduate earlier. Of the following four […]

Benchmarking Deferred Maintenance: A 2012 Survey

How Do You Make the Case for Funding Maintenance and Renewal for
Campus Facilities?

YOU’LL ALSO WANT TO READ: Benchmarking Deferred Maintenance: A Recent Survey (May 2012) Proactive Approaches to Deferred Maintenance (November 2011) In our January – February 2012 survey of facilities managers (read the executive summary here), Academic Impressions learned that while physical plant operations at most institutions have assigned a high priority this year to addressing […]

What Might be Missing from Your Crisis Communications Plan

While most institutions now have a full crisis communication plan in place to allow their communications office to communicate with the emergency response team, the campus community, local entities, and the local media during a crisis, one particular contingency often goes missed: what if the crisis that occurs includes a sustained electrical outage? Your campus […]

Does Your Curriculum Serve
International Students?

“Too often, integration of international students into the institution is not viewed systemically. The institution may be recruiting international students to increase diversity, to increase revenue, or for some other goal … but you rarely see the globalization of the campus conceived of as a systemic effort.” Gayle Woodruff, University of Minnesota Recruiting international students […]

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Recruiting and Admitting International Students: Key Considerations

Unless you are already enrolling high numbers of international students, it’s likely that stepping up recruiting efforts will require significant work in revisiting your admissions communications and processes. Many processes that are “tried and true” in the US may throw unintended obstacles in the way of international applicants, and simply translating your current communications and […]

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The Transition In: Setting International Students Up for Academic Success

A survey conducted in 2011 by three researchers from different institutions confirmed that while most international students feel welcomed and at home on their college campuses, many have a low sense of belonging in the US generally and face challenges in making the transition to American culture. These same students voice concern over the lack […]

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Measuring Marketing ROI: Debunking 3 Common Myths

Higher education marketing professionals are under increased pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of their marketing and branding initiatives. To ensure funding, marketing offices must measure the return on investment of their strategies and communicate their success in tangible ways. We turned this week to Elizabeth Scarborough, CEO of SimpsonScarborough, to ask where institutions may be […]

Boosting Retention for Ethnic Minority Students: Faculty Buy-in and Involvement

ALSO READ Boosting Retention for Ethnic Minority Students: Laying the GroundworkBoosting Retention for Ethnic Minority Students: Leveraging Peer Leadership For this third article in our series on supporting the academic success of underrepresented minority students, we interviewed Goldie Adele, director of the Disability Resource Center at Southern Connecticut State University. Adele is an attorney with […]

Survey Report: Where Your Institution May be Missing Opportunities to Improve
Academic Advising

In November 2011, Academic Impressions surveyed colleges and universities on their practices in assessing academic advisors. 73 institutions responded, and of those who responded, 57 percent employ both faculty and professional advisors, 24 percent use only faculty advisors, and 19 percent use only professional advisors. The aggregated results from the survey reveal some significant issues. […]

Expelling Students: Cautionary Advice from Allan Shackelford

In two recent, tragic examples, a student who was expelled from a postsecondary institution for apparent behavioral issues later shot, killed, and injured other people. In one case, Jared Loughner, expelled from Pima Community College (Tucson, AZ) attacked citizens who were not associated with the institution. Pima Community College then came under considerable scrutiny as […]

Boosting Retention for Ethnic Minority Students: Laying the Groundwork

Iowa’s three public universities have been in the news recently because of a fresh push from the state’s board of regents to improve the six-year graduation rates for underrepresented minority students. The University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and the University of Northern Iowa are each piloting different initiatives to boost persistence and academic success […]

Ensuring Your Developmental Advising
is Effective

Due to rising enrollment and budget cuts, academic advisors can find themselves nearly overwhelmed with high student traffic and high student/advisor ratios. Given this situation, how can directors of advising ensure a high quality of developmental advising, and how can they best encourage and support their staff in providing it? We spoke this week with […]

Improving Your Online Writing Center for International Students

As international student enrollment rises at many institutions, it’s going to be increasingly important to provide academic support for a growing population of students who may have diverse levels of fluency with academic writing in English. While there is a long tradition of providing ESL writing labs and other support for these “second language students” […]

Four Experts on the Need for Annual
Giving Planning

Setting Priorities for Your Division

In This Issue Setting Priorities for Your Division Developing the Action Plan Funding Your Action Plan Strategies to Ensure Implementation Managing your division with excellence is going to require making very tough decisions. For example, perhaps you recognize the need to add an academic major in response to rising market demand. Yet your faculty […]

Developing the Action Plan

In This Issue Setting Priorities for Your Division Developing the Action Plan Funding Your Action Plan Strategies to Ensure Implementation Once you have defined the priorities for your division and have set some strategic objectives for the immediate future (e.g., the next three years), how do you turn those objectives into concrete action plans […]

Funding Your Action Plan

In This Issue Setting Priorities for Your Division Developing the Action Plan Funding Your Action Plan Strategies to Ensure Implementation Consider this likely scenario. Your division has identified four strategic priorities that are of both high importance and high cost. But the institution is facing budget cuts, and you actually have less funding to […]

Strategies to Ensure Implementation

In This Issue Setting Priorities for Your Division Developing the Action Plan Funding Your Action Plan Strategies to Ensure Implementation Beginnings are critical, and operational plans often lose momentum in their first year of implementation. This “first-year dilemma” emerges when expectations around timeline and phasing haven’t been right-sized. Consider these two scenarios: The student […]

Transitioning International Students into Your Donor Pipeline

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. To learn how institutions can get started in such an effort, we interviewed Gretchen Dobson, the senior associate director for […]

Engaging International Alumni

Tips for Establishing Paid Peer
Mentor Positions

The 2009 Peer Leadership Survey sponsored by the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition found that 65 percent of peer mentor positions receive some financial compensation. Today, the nature of the compensation (paid/unpaid, type of pay, and expectations for the position) varies widely between institutions and often varies widely even […]

Four Tips for Training Annual Fund
Phonathon Callers

Despite how critical the phonathon can be to the annual fund, student callers are often given minimum training — or training that doesn’t set them up well to succeed in soliciting donor support for the institution. To learn some tips from past and present managers of highly effective phonathon programs, we turned this week to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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

LEARN MOREDiscover 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 […]

Keeping Your Division’s Strategic
Priorities Current

Picture this scenario. Your institution undertook a lengthy and arduous strategic planning effort, to which your division responded with an operational plan, identifying a list of core initiatives intended to help meet the institution’s strategic goals. It is now two years later. Your division’s operational plan or action plan sits on a shelf (whether physical […]

Supporting Faculty Use of Social Media and Cloud-Based Technologies in the Classroom

Recently, we offered examples of how some faculty have successfully leveraged social media technologies to help them address specific challenges in teaching and learning –- you can find these examples in our article “In and Out of the Classroom: Using Social Media in Ways that Matter.” This week, we’d like to provide you with practical […]

Vetting Early Alert Technologies

As more colleges and universities look to improve the success of those students who are most academically “at risk,” a host of software technologies to assist in early alert have proliferated on the market. Investment in such a third-party technology can be significant; yet many institutions purchase these tools quickly without the up-front decisions needed […]

Social Media: Not a Brave New World

Although most postsecondary institutions now leverage social media channels to some extent for marketing and communications, alumni engagement, and teaching and learning, many of these efforts remain ad hoc and largely unintegrated with key strategic efforts within each division. An April 2011 survey of professionals at research institutions conducted by Slover Linett Strategies Inc. and […]

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Social Media and Student Recruitment

In student recruitment, social media tools present opportunities to extend your reach, but you’ll see the best results when you use these channels in ways that are both targeted and closely aligned with your communications in other media, with very specific outcomes in mind. Jason Simon, director of marketing and communications services for the University […]

social icons and global connection illustration

In and Out of the Classroom: Using Social Media in Ways that Matter

Because so many students use social media tools – and because so many faculty use the same tools in their personal or professional lives – it can be tempting to bring social media into the classroom almost by default, on the assumption either that social media technologies are needed to engage students or that they […]

Social Media and Alumni/Donor Engagement

CASE STUDY: COMMENCEMENT “Spring 2011. We wanted to find ways to increase engagement around commencement. We have a thriving community of students and alumni on Facebook, but rather than jamming that channel with content, we asked one simple question about memorable professors. 200 responses came back sharing memories. We asked one question, started a conversation, […]

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Providing Central Guidelines and Support for Social Media

It’s crucial that social media communications across your institution support your institution’s brand and mission. Aligning multiple channels (both social and traditional) to tell the same story about your institution in varied voices is powerful; multiple and uncoordinated channels telling different stories about your institution is problematic. It’s also a missed opportunity. Yet studies over […]

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Managing Your Institution’s Social
Media Channels

Many of the institutions seeing the greatest success in leveraging social media communications to help boost strategic efforts in marketing and communications, student recruitment, and alumni engagement have actually invested relatively little budget and few staff to the effort. Instead, these institutions’ marketing and communications offices have focused on identifying and leveraging those social media […]

Course Materials for Mobile Devices:
Key Considerations

In the past term, Duke University piloted a course in introductory chemistry that replaced the standard textbook and course materials with online, multimedia content collected by the instructor from open repositories, as well as materials developed by the instructor under creative commons. The content included video clips from recorded lectures, ePUB texts and PDF files, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Student Leadership Development - Image of Four Students Facing a Sunset Together

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 […]

What Engagement-Focused Advancement Looks Like

The funding landscape for higher education has changed in ways that make it necessary for institutions to rethink their approach to advancement. Donors, both individual and corporate, are increasingly less likely to make unrestricted gifts, and alumni indicate that they feel disengaged and unvalued by their alma mater (according to a national survey of higher education […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Public/Private Partnerships: Understanding the Rating Agency’s Perspective

Increasing demands for capital expansion combined with a continued weak economy make partnerships with private entities an attractive option for financing new campus facilities. But before forming partnerships, an institution must review the possible trade-offs, including implications of those partnerships on the institution’s risk profile, debt capacity, and credit rating. To learn more about how a rating agency will evaluate […]

An Engagement-Centered Approach to Corporate Relations

Corporations are giving less frequently and in smaller amounts, and in many cities the corporate landscape has changed dramatically during this recession due to mergers, consolidations, and bailouts. These conditions make it critical for corporate and foundation relations staff at institutions of higher education to rethink their opportunities for deepening and stewarding their relationships with corporate donors. Recently, we […]

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Mobile Marketing and QR Codes: Some Key Tips

Last June, Ball State University released a study showing that of college students owning phones, 49 percent owned smartphones; the number had doubled since 2009. In the year since, many colleges and universities have launched mobile marketing initiatives or mobile apps for students and alumni, and a few admissions offices have begun experimenting with uses of […]

Practical Approaches to Information Literacy for the First-Year Student

As research on gaps in college preparedness continues to emerge, fueling debates in both academic and public forums, most postsecondary institutions have taken some measures to assist undergraduates in developing a higher degree of information and digital literacy, and to prepare students better for conducting academic research. To learn where you can see the highest […]

Involving Off-Campus Constituencies When Planning Public/Private Partnerships

Successful P3 partnerships engage off-campus constituencies both early and deliberately. Here is advice from Dale McGirr on how. Increasing demands for capital expansion combined with a continued weak economy make partnerships with private entities an attractive option for financing new campus facilities. These partnerships are often fraught with complexity — and not only because of […]

Doing Service Learning Right

At many institutions, service learning programs are pursued in an ad hoc manner. Here’s how to realize the full potential of a service learning initiative. Service learning programs have proliferated on college and university campuses over the past decade, leading in the best cases to measurable gains in student learning and engagement; yet at many […]

Occupy Colleges and Student Walkouts: Takeaways for Media Relations Professionals

This article looks back at lessons learned from the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many adjunct and part-time faculty, students at institutions across the US have been organized walkout days in support of the movement. Because of the public nature of the movement and the extent to which social media have been used to organize student […]

Speechwriting for Your Institution’s Leaders: Why Speeches Fail

It’s likely that at some point we have all seen a convocation, state-of-the-university, or other speech by an institutional leader fall flat — even when the subject matter of the speech was not itself intrinsically dull. Yet it has rarely been more important for presidents and cabinet members to be able to speak compellingly and directly […]

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The Changing Student Demographic: What You Need to Rethink

Increasingly, academic leaders are becoming aware that the traditional, 18-year-old high school graduate enrolling as a freshman at a four-year institution is a shrinking demographic. According to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES): Three -fourths of today’s college students are nontraditional 49 percent are enrolled part-time 38 percent work full-time 27 percent have […]

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Offering a More Flexible Curriculum

Your efforts to both attract and retain the growing population of adult students have to begin at the curricular level. No amount of investment in marketing or student support will make up for a curriculum and an academic calendar that does not meet adult learner needs. When asked about key influencing factors on college choice for […]

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Recruiting and Admitting 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. To learn more about key actions at each stage of the admissions funnel that can have an impact on the enrollment of adult students, we reached out to adult-recruiting veteran Mike Barzacchini, […]

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Boosting Adult Persistence

Beyond offering flexible course scheduling, what are the real keys to persistence and academic success for adult learners? Janet Daniel, director of the office of adult students and evening services at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, distills the current research into four key points that, when present, make a difference: A central unit on campus […]

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Building Affinity and Planting the Seeds
for Giving

Because adult students represent a growing demographic and one largely untapped in terms of the donor pipeline, advancement shops with a long-term view need to act now to begin planning how to move alumni who were adult students into the pipeline. For advice on how to start, we turned to Don Fellows, president and CEO […]

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Taking On-Campus Student Employment to the Next Level

September 29, 2011 Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions The 2010 census data paints a bleak financial picture for recent graduates, and as the recession lingers, it’s clear that many of the students enrolled at your institution will be graduating into a very difficult market. There has rarely been a better time to conduct an aggressive rethinking […]

Recruiting Latino Students

In this article, we want to highlight the practices from an interview we conducted in November 2010 with Judi Diaz Bonacquisti, the associate vice president of enrollment services at the Metropolitan State College of Denver (MSCD). In the past few years, a number of institutions in Colorado have been investing in efforts to become Hispanic Serving […]

Crafting a Naming Opportunities Plan

As institutions navigate a prolonged recession, many are launching new fundraising campaigns in response to decreased funding sources — some of them quite ambitious in their scope (most notably, the University of Southern California’s recently announced $6 billion campaign). Even as more institutions look to launch new campaigns, donors are increasingly interested in attaching their names […]

Marketing to Adult Students

Increasingly, academic leaders are becoming aware that the traditional, 18-year-old high school graduate enrolling as a freshman at a four-year institution is a shrinking demographic. According to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES): Three-fourths of today’s college students are nontraditional 49 percent are enrolled part-time 38 percent work full-time 27 percent have dependents […]

Including Social Media in Your Crisis Communications Plan

In a 2009 interview with Academic Impressions, Cindy Lawson discussed some of the risks presented by social media in the event of a crisis, such as the potential for the rapid spread of misinformation. This week, we spoke with Lawson again to learn more about the opportunities social media channels present in the event of […]

Stepping Up Orientation for
International Students

With the number of international students studying in the US up nearly 3 percent last year (contributing $20 billion to the US economy) and with Canadian institutions also seeing gains, creating a seamless arrival-and-welcome process that ensures the success and retention of these students is rapidly becoming a key area of investment for many institutions. At […]

Fundraising for the Library: Building
Shared Purpose

The academic library faces increased demand for services and the increased costs of acquisitions, digitization, and facilities upgrades, even as many institutions are trimming budgets. This has led to a growing awareness that library leaders need to devote more energy to partnering with advancement and academic leaders to raise external funds for the library. Yet […]

Daniel, and Academic Impressions employee, deep in thought at a conference

Branding Your Community College

August 2011. As more community colleges compete for a limited pool of students — and for the students most likely to complete degrees — a growing number of two-year institutions are looking into branding efforts. However, given the constraints on the marketing budget of a community college, most institutions have faced significant obstacles in launching a new or […]

Moving Your Marketing Office from News Bureau to Strategic Partner

August 2011. Institutional marketing departments are increasingly asked to be all things to all people and are frequently under-resourced and under-staffed. In order to be effective and meet the competing demands of various campus constituents, department heads need to think creatively and strategically about structure, staffing models, and resource allocation. We turned this week to Elizabeth […]

Make Your Threat Assessment Team Effective: Part 2

This is the second of two articles offering practical advice on making behavioral intervention teams effective. You can read the first article here. August 18, 2011. In today’s difficult economic climate, most institutions of higher education are facing significant reductions in counseling and mental health budgets at a time when the mental health needs of students, faculty, […]

Lessons Learned from Piloting the iPad: Part 2

August 2011. A growing number of colleges and universities have launched pilot projects to test how the iPad might be used to produce a positive impact on student learning and engagement. Pepperdine University has just completed the first two terms of its three-term iPad Research Initiative (consisting of classroom observations, surveys, and focus groups), looking at how students are […]

Make Your Threat Assessment Team Effective: Part 1

This is the first of two articles offering practical advice on making behavioral intervention teams effective. The second article, which will focus on five pitfalls to avoid, will appear in late August. An abbreviated version of this article appeared in an earlier edition of Higher Ed Impact. August 4, 2011. In today’s difficult economic climate, most […]

Do Your Living-Learning Communities Offer a Comprehensive Immersion Experience?

August 4, 2011. Living-learning communities offer high potential for boosting the academic success and the education of the whole student, but they also present your campus with unique challenges because of the coordination they require between academic affairs and student services at your institution. The National Study of Living-Learning Programs (NSLLP) has begun documenting how living-learning […]

Encouraging the Success of Online Students

July 28, 2011. The past decade has seen a plethora of research studies attempting to document the impact of online learning on measures of academic success and student persistence. The studies often produce widely divergent results, in part because institutions vary dramatically in the level of support and preparation they offer to both students and faculty. […]

What Engagement-Focused Fundraising
Looks Like

July 28, 2011. 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 at those institutions with the highest alumni participation rates believe their alma mater keeps them closely connected and values […]

Getting Started With Advancement
Staff Metrics

July 28, 2011. As advancement shops in higher education struggle with a slow economic recovery, it is increasingly important to build staff metrics that encourage effective work. Tracking meaningful metrics beyond dollars raised can empower you to: Reward high performers, making it easier to retain your best officers Identify training needs Incentivize cross-boundary work toward shared […]

Preparing First-Generation Students for
Academic Success

Given the lower retention rates of first-generation students, more colleges and universities are devoting attention to how best to aid the success and persistence of this cohort. To learn more about how higher ed institutions can respond to the issue, we turned this week to Thom Golden, senior associate director of admissions at Vanderbilt University […]

Improving the Accessibility of Online
Course Materials

July 7, 2011. In a climate of increased demand for online courses and increased federal scrutiny of regulatory compliance, it is increasingly critical that colleges and universities ensure the accessibility of their online course materials for students with disabilities — and not only for online courses, but also for classes held in the physical classroom that direct […]

A Sustainable Approach to Sustainability

Whether driven by a desire for social impact, or the harsh economic realities of unsustainable utilities expenditures, or by political and market demand, more colleges and universities are taking the trend to become more environmentally sustainable seriously. More than 650 institutional presidents have pledged carbon neutrality as signatories to the American College & University Presidents’ […]

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Integrating Sustainability into Curricular and Co-curricular Programs

Once your sustainability committee has inventoried all sustainability-related educational programming that already exists on campus, you can look for opportunities to connect interested faculty with each other and to build organically on efforts already in place. The keys are to align curricular and co-curricular programming, offer structured opportunities for faculty to share resources and ideas […]

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Efficiency and Cost Control

“Demonstrating that sustainability isn’t just a cost but also provides payback, especially financial payback, is crucial to establish early,” Dave Newport suggests. As you look to build momentum for sustainability efforts on your campus, it will be critical to identify what energy, water, and resource savings projects have already been undertaken at your institution, and […]

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Leveraging Early Successes to Increase Funding and Involvement

Telling the story of your institution’s sustainability efforts to key stakeholders is a critical step both for building momentum and support for an initiative, and for leveraging your successes to solicit both engagement and funding from your constituents. When Academic Impressions surveyed a number of the nation’s leaders in campus sustainability, we found that one […]

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Improving Completion Rates for Online Students

(An earlier version of this article ran in April 2010.) With the percentage of students who are taking online courses rising rapidly (a 17% increase in 2009 alone), improving completion rates for online students (many of whom are returning, adult learners) will likely become a key priority for higher education. In an interview with Academic […]

Five Tips for Making Your Website
Mobile-Friendly

June 23, 2011. Last June, Ball State University released a study showing that of college students owning phones, 49 percent owned smartphones; the number had doubled since 2009. In the year since, many colleges and universities have launched mobile marketing initiatives or mobile apps for students and alumni. Among those efforts that have seen early gains: […]

Social Media: Targeting Your Content

June 16, 2011. In a recent interview with Academic Impressions, Brad Ward, CEO of BlueFuego Inc., cited his organization’s research into the impact of university Facebook pages. After a 25-month study of nearly 400,000 Facebook updates across more than 1,200 university Facebook pages, Ward concluded that most institutions offer too much content via social media channels, […]

Five Things Department Chairs Need to Know About Fundraising

According to a January 2010 Academic Impressions survey of department chairs, 64 percent of department chairs felt that they were not adequately prepared to assume the role when they first began chairing their department. And of the various duties and responsibilities of the academic chair, 43 percent felt least prepared to address advancement and fundraising […]

Make Your Alumni Board Effective

June 9, 2011. During a series of interviews with leaders in alumni relations earlier this year, Academic Impressions found that many alumni relations offices are struggling with their alumni boards or alumni association boards. While a working board can offer institutional leaders partners to aid in achieving institutional goals for engagement and giving, most boards are […]

Four Tips for Managing the Brand Launch

June 9, 2011. Competition for visibility continues to pressure institutions of higher education to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. In order to stay competitive, maintain enrollment levels, and meet advancement goals, your institution needs a unique brand strategy that carefully defines who you are in the minds of stakeholders. Often, though, marketing professionals and institutional leaders […]

Rethinking Higher Education’s
Leadership Crisis

America’s higher education enterprise is facing multiple challenges — increasing demands from students and government; changing demographics; structural fiscal challenges; and technologies that are disrupting how information and education is delivered. Not to mention an aging workforce and an uneven track record for developing leaders. Without investing in identifying and developing the right talent at […]

Meeting Adaptive Challenges: The New Leadership Skill Set

NOTE: For an updated and much deeper look at new leadership skills in higher education, based on years of intensive research, read this complimentary paper from Academic Impressions and Pat Sanaghan. To define the leadership skill set needed to meet adaptive challenges, we turned to Larry Goldstein, president of Campus Strategies LLC, and Pat […]

Identifying Leadership Potential in Your Staff

Once you have identified the skills that are essential in tomorrow’s higher ed leaders, you will need ways to identify the staff within your institution who demonstrate those skills — these are the people whose leadership development you want to invest in, and whom you want to entrust with greater responsibilities and opportunities to contribute meaningfully […]

Building an In-House Leadership
Development Program

Once you have clarity on the leadership skill sets your institution is seeking — and a commitment to look beyond the “usual suspects” when identifying future leaders — the next challenges involve offering meaningful opportunities for your institution’s “stylistic invisibles” to become visible and providing an intentional and deliberate process for developing your high-potentials as future leaders. There […]

Deepening Your Talent Bench: Horizontal Career Ladders

Historically, the pathway to the presidency in higher education has been through traditional academic ranks — tenured faculty or department chairs becoming a dean, and then later a provost. But as Academic Impressions president Amit Mrig notes, “the competencies required to ascend the academic hierarchy don’t necessarily match those required to lead increasingly complex organizations […]

Locally Sourced Foods on Campus: Thinking Outside the Box

June 2, 2011. The University of Winnipeg has been praised in the media lately for a dramatic turnaround in the quality and profitability of their food services operation; Macleans’ 2009 University Rankings had taken the university to task for poor food and poor service, and the institution’s dining operation was seeing attrition in its student customers. In […]

Four Tips for Increasing First-Gen Student Yield

A new report from the Pell Institute (pdf link) suggests that without more students from low-income and working-class families earning bachelor’s degrees, the United States will be unable to meet the Obama administration’s college-completion goal. As demand for college education rises among lower-income families amid a troubled economy, and as the pressure mounts on completion […]

Planning Online Programs: Making Sure There’s a Market

As they look to improve student access and increase degree completion rates, more institutions are considering launching or scaling up existing online initiatives. At Academic Impressions, we’re responding to the trend with a series of articles interviewing leading experts on planning online programs, and by offering an upcoming conference that leverages collaborative information sharing and […]

Connecting Your Humanities Graduates
with Careers

Published in May 2011. Recent studies confirm that some of the graduates having the most difficulty finding fulfilling employment are those with majors in the humanities and social sciences. This week, we interviewed Andrew Ceperley, director of the University of California, San Diego’s highly effective career services center. Ceperley suggests that to help graduates in […]

Planning Online Programs: Involving
Faculty Early

A May 6, 2011 open letter addressed to the University of California chancellor Mark Yudof by the faculty senate expressed concerns over how the system’s pilot effort for online programming would be evaluated, as well as (implied) concern over how faculty would be involved in the ongoing planning process. The issues raised at the University of […]

The Changing Shape of Title IX Compliance

May 12, 2011. In 2010, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) rescinded the 2005 “third prong” standard for Title IX compliance, and recently, at NCAA’s Gender Equity Forum, OCR and Department of Education (DOE) officials have sought to clarify what Title IX compliance entails; the resulting picture suggests a need for more rigorous standards and assessments than […]

Developmental Education: Making a
Greater Impact

by Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions The White House’s 2020 college completion goal and funding opportunities such as the Walmart Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s focus on college completion have placed fresh pressure and attention on both college preparation and “remedial” education. According to a new analysis by a national education advocacy group […]

Recruiting and Admitting
First-Generation Students

A 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education review of federal data found that less than 15 percent of undergraduates at the 50 colleges and universities — both public and private — with the largest endowments received Pell Grants in 2008-09; the findings gathered considerable attention in the media because of the conclusion that America’s most selective […]

Social Media and the Capital Campaign

During the recession, many institutions scaled back their campaign goals and timelines, but as donors begin to bounce back (a new study (subscription required) finds that 4 in 5 donors intend to give as much if not more to nonprofits in 2011 as they did in 2010), some institutions are considering more ambitious efforts. For example, […]

A Strategic Road Map for Campus
Sustainability Efforts

Recent stats from The Princeton Review indicate that 69 percent of college applicants now cite as a factor in their college choice an institution’s level of commitment to environmental sustainability. Higher education institutions in the US and globally are recognizing the importance of sustainability, but many struggle with knowing where to begin or how to […]

Greening Your Dining Services:
Key Opportunities

A quick scan of the nation’s media will show a plethora of stories about institutions adopting practices such as trayless dining and — in some cases — composting or purchasing of local and organic food. Dining services professionals continue to face pressure from student groups and administrators to “green” their operations, work with local farmers, and reduce […]

Supporting International Student Success

A recent preliminary survey conducted 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 careers at England’s CATS College — revealed that while most international students feel welcomed and at home on […]

Safety and Risk Management Training for Faculty Leading Study Abroad: Part 2

Recent international crises have prompted evacuations of American and Canadian students studying abroad, and have lent some urgency to reviewing risk management for study abroad programs. One area needing particular attention is the role of faculty who are on the ground leading study abroad programs overseas. Trained in scholarship and pedagogy, these program leaders may […]

Recruiting Students: Five Tips for Making the Most of Facebook

April 14, 2011. In our January – February 2011 edition of Higher Ed Impact: Monthly Diagnostic, which identified opportunities for using social media to move the needle on key objectives in student recruitment, student engagement, and fundraising, we highlighted the ethnographic research of danah boyd (sic), a social media researcher with Microsoft Research New England and a […]

Helping Veteran Students Succeed

April 14, 2011. Veteran students represent a growing demographic of college students, and that demographic is likely to grow further as more military members return to the states from the overseas wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, seeking college degrees and transitions into the civilian workforce. Yet veterans (and military students in general) face unique challenges […]

Student Success: A Team Effort

Our Member Exclusive report Tackling the Retention Challenge: Defining and Delivering a Unique Student Experience emphasizes the importance of achieving a broad alignment of academic and student support services, rather than trusting to isolated, one-off retention initiatives. Yet there are often organizational and cultural barriers that keep efforts within student affairs and academic affairs separated and […]

Where Current Retention Efforts Fall Short

In this issue: Where Current Retention Efforts Fall Short Starting with Fit: Defining and Delivering the Unique Student Experience Designing the Student Experience: Building Bridges across Student and Academic Affairs Delivering on the Promise: Removing Barriers to Student Success Identifying and Intervening with At-Risk Students This year is seeing increased public and federal pressure […]

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Starting with Fit: Defining and Delivering the Unique Student Experience

In this issue: Where Current Retention Efforts Fall Short Starting with Fit: Defining and Delivering the Unique Student Experience Designing the Student Experience: Building Bridges across Student and Academic Affairs Delivering on the Promise: Removing Barriers to Student Success Identifying and Intervening with At-Risk Students To what extent is your institution defining what it […]

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Designing the Student Experience: Building Bridges across Student and Academic Affairs

In this issue: Where Current Retention Efforts Fall Short Starting with Fit: Defining and Delivering the Unique Student Experience Designing the Student Experience: Building Bridges across Student and Academic Affairs Delivering on the Promise: Removing Barriers to Student Success Identifying and Intervening with At-Risk Students If your institution opts not to “be all things […]

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Delivering on the Promise: Removing Barriers to Student Success

In this issue: Where Current Retention Efforts Fall Short Starting with Fit: Defining and Delivering the Unique Student Experience Designing the Student Experience: Building Bridges across Student and Academic Affairs Delivering on the Promise: Removing Barriers to Student Success Identifying and Intervening with At-Risk Students In a recent interview with Academic Impressions, Dennis Pruitt, […]

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Identifying and Intervening with
At-Risk Students

In this issue: Where Current Retention Efforts Fall Short Starting with Fit: Defining and Delivering the Unique Student Experience Designing the Student Experience: Building Bridges across Student and Academic Affairs Delivering on the Promise: Removing Barriers to Student Success Identifying and Intervening with At-Risk Students Even with a clearly defined student experience; close alignment […]

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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, […]

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 […]

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 — […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Minority Students in Study Abroad: Visiting Zimbabwe

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 […]

Allocating Your Advancement Shop’s Resources

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 […]

Identifying At-Risk Students: What Data Are You Looking At?

Renewed national and public pressure on college completion rates is fueling a continuing surge of interest in “early warning” intervention programs for college students deemed at risk of withdrawal or failing. The earlier an academically at-risk student is identified, the better the prognosis for their success in college. Early alert systems, implemented within the first […]

Making the Most of Alumni Volunteers

It’s critical that development officers at colleges and universities identify the best opportunities for harnessing alumni volunteerism. A December 2009 study by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and VolunteerMatch offers some compelling data to demonstrate the importance of volunteerism to fundraising: The average amount given by volunteers is more than 10 times that given by […]

Report: What Higher Ed Leaders Are Saying About Program Prioritization

The recent economic crisis has driven a surge of interest in program prioritization, as state legislators and governing boards insist that colleges set priorities for future investment and as institutional leaders find that they can no longer afford to “be all things to all people.” Facing severe financial shortfalls and external demands for accountability, many […]

Piloting the iPad

A growing number of colleges and universities have launched pilot projects to test how the iPad might be used to produce a positive impact on student learning and engagement. In this article, we visit Pepperdine University to find out what lessons could be gleaned from Pepperdine’s own iPad pilot project. We interviewed Dana Hoover, assistant […]

Encouraging Students’ Financial Literacy

Beginning in 2012, the federal government will use three-year student loan default rates (which are rising quickly) to help decide which higher ed institutions qualify for federal student aid programs. While this will have the largest impact on for-profit colleges (whose students, according to a US Department of Education report, are more likely to default […]

Making Your Faculty-in-Residence Program Successful

A small but growing number of public institutions are adding living-learning residence programs that include the integration of faculty into the residential facility. Recent news has highlighted faculty-in-residence programs at the University of Colorado and the University of South Carolina. What’s clear from the success of programs at USC and other institutions is that having faculty […]

Adding Gender-Neutral Housing

While most media coverage and public attention to gender-neutral housing has been positive (for example, see this article in the Washington Post), it is critical to manage communications with the local media, conservative student groups, parents, and other campus constituencies with some care. A few proactive steps early in the process can help prevent or […]

Helping Students Cope with Stress

The weeks preceding the holiday see quite a bit of media attention to practices student affairs professionals have adopted to help students manage the stress and study-load of exams week (for example, this piece in the Boston Globe). A number of colleges are trying “emergency stress relief” techniques such as bringing a masseuse or late-night […]

Survey Report (Part 2): What is Broadly Participative Planning?

In the first part of our report on Academic Impressions’ November 2010 survey of presidents, chief financial officers, and academic leaders, we noted that the foremost challenge cited by institutional leaders related to strategic planning and resource allocation is integrating the planning and budgeting processes. In this second part of our report, we want to […]

Survey Report (Part 1): Meeting the Challenges of Integrated Planning and Budgeting

Strategic planning at a college or university is difficult work. Institutions are large, complex, and highly decentralized environments. Too often, institutions of higher education approach strategic planning reluctantly and without meaningfully seeking input and commitment from key stakeholders, which unfortunately leads to plans that are disconnected from budgets and plans that don’t get implemented. In […]

When Student Behavior Becomes a Media Crisis: Mitigation and Recovery

As one news source put it, Duke University “keeps getting in the news for all the wrong reasons.” The barrage of negative media attention to what are in all probability isolated and exceptional incidents at the university (a recent alumnus detailing her intimate encounters with Duke athletes; an email from a Duke fraternity inviting female […]

The College Store: Encouraging
Customer Loyalty

As college bookstores face increased competition from chains such as Barnes & Noble, peer-to-peer sites, and popular online retailers such as Amazon and eBay, many stores are seeing fewer students come through their doors, meaning not only declines in revenue from textbook sales but also from sales of other items — apparel, electronics, and campus memorabilia. A […]

Returning Adults: Four Keys to Academic Success and Retention

According to a recent report by the Workforce Strategy Center, by 2018, two-thirds of the jobs in the US economy will require a postsecondary credential, yet 80 million to 90 million adult workers have low basic skills and are not qualified for those jobs. These data suggest that over the next decade, colleges and universities […]

Five Website Tips for International
Student Recruitment

Even as the demand in international markets for a US education continues to rise, more institutions are responding to budget pressures in part by stepping up recruitment of international students, who typically bring significantly more tuition revenue than domestic students. According to the Institute of International Education, in 2008-09, more than 26,000 Chinese students were […]

Translating a Positive Student Experience into Lifetime Support for your Institution

November 2010. Institutions’ strategic initiatives and plans are increasingly reliant on financial support from alumni and donors, yet most institutions aren’t particularly strategic in their approach to cultivating and sustaining support. Relying solely on your development office to garner this support is both more expensive and less effective than leveraging the efforts of each department […]

Future Support Starts with the
Student Experience

Amid the decline of state support for public institutions and a less forgiving fundraising climate (a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy study showed a 12% decline in giving for 2009, the sharpest drop in 50 years), ensuring the future financial health of your institution will require more intentional footwork in establishing a reliable pipeline of invested […]

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Student Philanthropy: The Academic Impressions Model

In 2007, Academic Impressions researched the top student philanthropy programs in the United States and identified a student philanthropy model that highlights three core components shared by the most effective student philanthropy programs: The Academic Impressions Student Philanthropy Model This model provides a conceptual framework for examining the components of an effective approach […]

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Starting with Admission: Planting the Seed for Lifetime Affinity

Beginnings are a critical time — you can plant important seeds for future constituency with some deliberate planning around how you will convey messages regarding awareness, gratitude, and giving to students during their transition into the institution. In this article, a university president, three enrollment managers, and a thought leader in institutional advancement offer their advice […]

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Between Convocation and Commencement: Developing Undergraduates as Stakeholders

Truly laying the groundwork for long-term private support requires rethinking how your institution manages its relationship with students. From the moment of their transition to your campus, it is critical to treat students as stakeholders, not merely consumers or “kids.” This mindset has implications for how offices across your campus interact with students. Each office […]

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Student Philanthropy between Convocation and Commencement

Once you have invited students to take responsibility for the success of their alma mater and have adopted a campus-wide relationship management strategy to remove any “wedges” and facilitate a seamless and positive student experience, a third key step is to involve your undergraduates in student philanthropy. However, the majority of institutions leave career services, […]

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The Student-Alumni Transition: Encouraging Meaningful Giving

Just as it is important not to miss the opportunity of inviting students into a lifetime relationship with the institution at convocation or during orientation, it’s also critical to manage the opportunity presented by the students’ transition out of their undergraduate years. Many institutions miss the chance to educate students about the real role of […]

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Encouraging a Higher Giving Rate from Young Alumni

Now, more than ever, institutions need to ensure the long-term health of the annual fund by moving donors into the pipeline early, and young alumni are often an insufficiently tapped resource. Yet this year sees not only a continuing trend of volunteerism but also growing numbers of recent graduates seeking to reconnect with their alma […]

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Recruiting for the Humanities

With philanthropic monies flowing to the sciences, and sharp declines in the number of students declaring majors in the humanities (8% of US undergraduates in 2007, down from 17% in 1996, according to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences) as students increasingly look for disciplines linked to specific career outcomes, there is a growing […]

Research Consortiums: What Can Academic Libraries Do Today?

A report from the Association of Research Libraries (pdf) offers four scenarios for predicting the research needs that faculty, students, and other researchers will have in the year 2030, and offers strategic objectives for academic research libraries who will need to build capacity and collections to meet those needs. One of those objectives involves building […]

Retaining and Rewarding
High-Performing Faculty

The news is filled with accounts of extended pay freezes and tightened departmental budgets. More than ever, it is crucial to identify creative, meaningful, and low-cost ways to reward and retain high-performing faculty. Mary Coussons-Read, professor of psychology and acting chair of the department of physics at the University of Colorado Denver, reviews low-cost practices […]

Piloting Mobile Learning

The Urgency of Going Mobile Several recent reports have highlighted a rising rate of adoption for mobile devices: Gartner, this week, released a projection that tablet devices such as Apple’s iPad will see more than 19 million units sold worldwide this year, most of them in the US; Gartner also anticipates that this figure will […]

Key Strategies for Retaining Men

This week, the Washington Post highlighted the efforts many smaller colleges are making to add football programs as a strategy to recruit more men — one of several strategies colleges are currently employing to enroll more men (other efforts include adding academic majors that commonly appeal to men). However, recruitment is only the first part […]

Securing New Resources in a Difficult Financial Climate

In this report: Advance with a Defined Sense of Purpose Identify Inefficiencies on the Academic Side of the House Prioritize Academic and Administrative Units Plan for Resource Allocation in Ways That Build Trust A Letter from Amit, President, Academic Impressions October 2010. In reviewing the last two years, it might be easy to think that higher […]

Advance with a Defined Sense of Purpose

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Advance with a Defined Sense of Purpose Identify Inefficiencies on the Academic Side of the House Prioritize Academic and Administrative Units Plan for Resource Allocation in Ways That Build Trust The economic crisis has opened a window of opportunity for institutional leaders. This can be a time to make previously unpopular […]

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Identify Inefficiencies on the Academic Side of the House

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Advance with a Defined Sense of Purpose Identify Inefficiencies on the Academic Side of the House Prioritize Academic and Administrative Units Plan for Resource Allocation in Ways That Build Trust The vast majority of an institution’s resources are expended on instructionally related and academic support activities. Institutions looking to identify inefficiencies […]

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Prioritize Academic and Administrative Units

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Advance with a Defined Sense of Purpose Identify Inefficiencies on the Academic Side of the House Prioritize Academic and Administrative Units Plan for Resource Allocation in Ways That Build Trust It’s vital to recognize that the single greatest source of financial resources will not come from tuition increases, state or federal […]

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Plan for Resource Allocation in Ways That
Build Trust

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Advance with a Defined Sense of Purpose Identify Inefficiencies on the Academic Side of the House Prioritize Academic and Administrative Units Plan for Resource Allocation in Ways That Build Trust Almost all colleges and universities have already started making cuts, many of which are targeted rather than across-the-board. Yet many institutions […]

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An Approach to Learning Games for Lower-Division Courses

The past year has seen a growing trend in Web-based learning games that are custom-built to address a specific learning need and in this way improve students’ academic performance. Examples include Roger Travis’ “practomime” exercises for his classics students at the University of Connecticut and this month’s Chemical Mahjong Tournament at Stetson University. We interviewed […]

Tips for Outreach to Area High Schools

Colleges frequently pursue partnerships with local high schools to improve college preparation and build a stronger pipeline for first-generation students, but these are often focused just on providing brief sessions either at the high school or on the college campus. Really effective partnerships involve more than just a quick one-and-done workshop. We contacted Mary Ontiveros, […]

Addressing the Academic Leadership Crisis

In a recent editorial entitled “The Imminent Crisis in College Leadership,” Richard Ekman, the president of the Council of Independent Colleges, suggested a growing risk is that more institutions may soon be led by presidents who have less of an understanding of the academic mission, and he called for greater investments in professional development and […]

Outsourcing Financial Aid Operations

Financial aid offices at colleges that are experiencing rising enrollment as well as increased percentages of the student population seeking financial aid find themselves facing: High inbound call volume (especially at peak times) Longer lines as students unable to get through by phone visit the office in person A bottleneck in staff time and resources […]

Academic Libraries: Defining (and Communicating) Your Value

Amid calls for accountability, a new report from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) offers recommendations for academic libraries on how to define their value to the institution and how to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing environment. Among the recommendations: defining outcomes, putting assessment management systems in place, and defining and […]

Addressing Housing Overflows Proactively

At those residential institutions that are seeing enrollment growth, providing adequate student housing has rarely been more challenging. Sudden, unexpected housing overflows at residential institutions can prove both expensive and complex to manage. We turned to Lorinda Krhut, director of student housing and residence life at the University of Mississippi, for her advice on how […]

Making Your Campaign Successful

Meeting campaign goals in this economy remains a challenge, and recent news emphasizes how few institutions are exceeding campaign goals this year (a very different story than in 2007-08). Many institutions are just barely meeting their goals: Pace University recently celebrated the close of a seven-year capital campaign with a $100 million goal; the amount raised: […]

Incentivizing Faculty Retirement

Recent news has highlighted how the economy is making aging faculty more reluctant to retire and slowing colleges’ ability to hire new faculty. And this week saw a New York Times feature interviewing diverse faculty about the issue. Mary Coussons-Read, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Denver, summarizes some forward-thinking approaches institutions […]

Teaching Academic Honesty in the Classroom

Incidents such as Centenary College’s decision in 2010 to discontinue a program in China due to the high incidence of cheating among the program’s students raise the question of how to clearly communicate (and police) academic honesty, not only among international students but also among domestic students. Given that many cases of inappropriate academic behavior […]

Building Strong Relationships with
Young Alumni

In recent news, development officers at Claremont McKenna College are expanding their alumni engagement strategy by asking alumni volunteers to interview their peers about interest and affinity. The college’s commitment to investing in engaging young alumni has already seen returns: the institution’s 10-year average giving rate has increased 6% since 2008, despite a difficult economy. […]

Affordable, High-Impact Study Abroad

Among the findings from GLOSSARI, the Georgia Learning Outcomes of Students Studying Abroad Research Initiative: 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 the Chronicle‘s article “7 Signs of Successful Study Abroad Programs” notes, as […]

Strategic Planning: Engaging Faculty and Other Stakeholders Early

As July 2010 draws to a close, the news is full of reports of state budget shortfalls, belt-tightening initiatives to cope with the approaching demise of stimulus funding, and growing protests from faculty and staff as institutions make politically unpopular decisions in re-allocating increasingly scarce resources. In this environment, it is critical to engage as many stakeholders as […]

Supporting Faculty in Adopting Emerging Learning Technologies

The 21st Century Report released by CDW-G confirms an increasing trend of rising student expectations for technology on campus: 63% of current college students indicate that campus technology was a critical factor in their college choice 93% of current high school students indicate that campus technology is a critical factor in their college choice, 95% […]

Testing Your Emergency Response Plan

Testing your campus’s crisis response plans frequently and rigorously is key to ensuring that you can protect campus resources and recover speedily following a crisis, and as of July 1, 2010, annual testing is mandated under the updated Clery Act. Nonetheless, annual testing represents a significant shift in practice for many institutions. Nearly a quarter […]

Integrating E-Portfolios into Your
Assessment Strategy

Trent Batson, executive director of The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL), stirred some controversy this week with an article entitled “The Testing Straitjacket,” in which he advocates for privileging e-portfolios over legacy testing as a primary tool for assessing student learning, arguing that e-portfolios, which “encourage students to use their collection of […]

Re-enrolling Stop-Outs: Overcoming
the Barriers

In the news recently, the regents for the University of South Dakota system have focused attention on re-enrolling students who have “stopped out” and left their degree incomplete. This is in response to a recent report to the board that demonstrated that 1,889 students who had earned at least 90 semester credit hours had left […]

Evaluating Part-Time Faculty

Traditionally, most institutions have not made significant investments in either training or rigorous evaluation for contingent faculty. However, given the rising percentages of part-time instructors, it is increasingly crucial that deans and department chairs give thought to implementing evaluation methods that will encourage continued improvement of the quality of instruction in their adjunct-taught courses. For this […]

Doing Lecture Capture Right

Lecture capture has been receiving a lot of attention in the news this year, as colleges attempt to expand online and blended course offerings or make instruction to more students in remote locations. The impact on student learning of removing the ‘face-to-face’ dynamic remains a continuing concern for educators. A few institutions have recently made […]

Training and Preparing Your Faculty for Teaching Online

This year we have seen a growing proliferation of proposed online degree programs, as more institutions feel the pressure of needing to increase enrollment and revenue without also increasing expenditures in physical infrastructure. Most recently, Indiana has launched an online-only university to serve rural adults, and the University of California has decided to invest between $5 […]

Connecting Returning Adults with Careers

The majority of career services programming targets either traditional-aged students approaching graduation or young alumni. However, the recession has driven increased enrollment by returning adults who have already spent some time in the workforce but who may now have been displaced from their jobs or who are hoping to boost their career with some further […]

Connecting Young Alumni with Careers

With a shaky job market, many alumni offices are seeing rising demand from recent graduates and young alumni for networking and career help — just as many undergraduate career offices are seeing rising demand for their services from students nearing graduation. We asked Matthew Donato, senior associate director of alumni career services for the University of […]

Connecting Undergraduates with Careers

Even as the demand for career services from students and recent graduates is rising, many career services centers are seeing their budgets cut. Yet this is a critical moment; there is evidence of increased hiring in some sectors, and many companies are again looking for interns. A recent survey by the National Association of Colleges […]

Contract Training in a Changing Economy

An Inside Higher Ed article this week noted that with fewer large businesses influencing workforce training, many colleges engaged in contract training are shifting their approach away from serving larger employers and toward serving as a training “hub” for numerous smaller businesses. We reached out to Leah Kier, community outreach and custom training director for […]

Rethinking Your Approach to Corporate Donors

Corporations are giving less frequently this year and in smaller amounts, and in many cities the corporate landscape has changed dramatically during this recession due to mergers, consolidations, and bailouts. In an editorial this week, the CEO of Western Union suggested that universities and other nonprofits need to seek out more holistic and intentional partnerships […]

Speaking with Applicants and Admits About Financial Aid

The 2010 Student Poll published by the College Board and Art & Science Group, LLC confirms that most college applicants are dismissing colleges from their list on the basis of sticker price, without considering net price. The study also finds that applicants are nonetheless willing to attend a higher-priced school for: Strong academics in field of interest […]

Recruiting Men: Four Strategies

In this article, W. Kent Barnds, vice president for enrollment, communication, and planning at Augustana College, offers four key strategies for boosting enrollment of undergraduate men: Audit your academic offerings to ensure that you have adequate offerings of interest to men Provide an earlier, hands-on experience Provide opportunities to inspire young men Focus your marketing […]

Avoiding a Media Relations Crisis: Lessons Learned from Laramie County
Community College

After some initial controversy over FERPA and student privacy, a set of documents from Laramie County Community College were made public, prompting a media flurry and providing a cautionary case of how one college may have mishandled a response to the suicidal behaviors of a student while leading a 2008 class trip to Costa Rica. The incident […]

Safety and Risk Management Training for Faculty Leading Study Abroad: Part 1

May 2010. After some initial controversy over FERPA and student privacy, a set of documents from Laramie County Community College were made public, prompting a media flurry and providing a cautionary case of how one college may have mishandled a response to the suicidal behaviors of a student while leading a 2008 class trip to Costa Rica. The […]

person drawing figures and making connections to a central theme

Positioning IT as a Strategic Partner on Campus

Though institutions of higher education are increasingly looking for technological solutions to strategic challenges, downgrades in the rank of the chief information officer at institutions such as MIT and the University of Chicago raise questions about the CIO’s role in university leadership. While there isn’t any conclusive data to suggest that the CIO role is […]

Academic Advising for Adult Learners

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently highlighted the diverse needs of adult learners, noting the importance of developing course rotations, a broader approach to remediation, and advising strategies that make sense for returning adults and are tailored to their diverse sets of needs. We turned to Denise Hart, director of adult education and creator of […]

Business Intelligence: Making Data Reporting More Effective

Attention to analytics for higher education is growing. Campus Technology recently published an intriguing interview with Florida State University, highlighting the success of FSU’s initiative to build end user ownership of data reporting, and Tech Therapy this week podcasted an interview with the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County on making the transition […]

Recruiting Chinese Students

We have seen enrollment commitments, aspirational statements, and recruiting plans focused on Chinese students at institutions across the US. However, few colleges and universities in the US have developed a strong tradition of marketing to Chinese students. In a recent conversation with Academic Impressions, Tom Melcher, chairman of Zinch China (an entity that offers services to […]

3 Questions to Answer Before a Wide-Scale Adoption of the iPad

In a Campus Technology article this week entitled “CIO Predicament: What To Do About the iPad,” Tim Chester, CIO and vice provost for academic administration at Pepperdine University, recommended a middle ground between the opposing camps of those hurrying toward wide-scale adoption of the iPad and those refusing to support the new mobile device. While […]

Taking Marketing Materials From Print to Online: A Few Tips

More colleges are trimming back print viewbooks and related materials and moving to more digital approaches; most recently, the University of Colorado at Boulder hopes to save more than $250,000 a year by scaling back its recruiting brochures. We turned to Elizabeth Scarborough, CEO of SimpsonScarborough, and Jason Simon, director of marketing and communication services […]

Admitting Transfer Students

This week, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) released a report detailing how institutions of different types and sizes are weighting different admissions factors when reviewing transfer student applications. Among other findings, the report confirms that most (though not all) institutions have begun weighting postsecondary grades and achievements over secondary grades. Responding to the NACAC survey, […]

Succession Planning for IT

Amid a wave of CIO retirements, it is critical for information technology leaders in higher education to engage in proactive succession planning and talent development throughout their IT organizations. We asked Tim Chester, chief information officer at Pepperdine University, for his advice on developing leadership competencies within IT. Invest in Developing More Than Just Technical […]

Improving the Academic Success of Latino Students

While many colleges are making investments in recruiting Latino students, Western Oregon University, a public institution primarily serving first-generation students, has made significant investments in supporting and retaining Latino students. Oregon Live reported that WOU raised its completion rate for Latino students 16% between 2002 and 2007 (the 2007 rate was 49%, actually several points […]

Weathering a Year of Increased Student Price Sensitivity

Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president of enrollment management at DePaul University, and Joseph Russo, director of student financial strategies at the University of Notre Dame, offer advice on assessing price sensitivity as you look to weather the next year. What No One Should Be Doing Boeckenstedt advises against one common scenario in which a cabinet […]

Reaching out to the Town During
Campus Expansion

There have been several stories in the news lately about colleges with growing enrollments that are planning for campus expansion (including Loyola and New York University), and these stories have highlighted both the importance and challenges of strong town-gown relations during the capital planning process. We asked Mark Beck, director of capital planning at the […]

Energy Efficiency: Partnering Successfully with an ESCO

A recent feature in The Chronicle detailed how as funds for facilities decrease, more colleges are signing performance contracts with energy services companies (ESCOs); often, an experienced ESCO can implement much needed infrastructure improvements and efficiency projects that are then paid for by energy savings. However, the Chronicle notes several cases in which poorly structured […]

Resource Allocation for IT in a Time of
Lean Budgets

Recent news has been rife with stories of information technology budgets slashed, and of chief information officers needing to make quick decisions around cuts and resource reallocation. Most recently, Campus Technology reported — in a dramatically titled article, “Campus IT Under the Knife” — that the University of Illinois, owed $431 million by the state government, has […]

Practomime: An Innovation in Learning Games

The Chronicle‘s Wired Campus blog featured the work of Roger Travis, associate professor of classics and director of the video games and human values initiative at the University of Connecticut, in developing the learning games he has dubbed “practomime.” Relying on roleplaying and narrative storytelling, practomime requires students to complete course tasks and fulfill course […]

Keeping Faculty Mentoring Meaningful

A study just released by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) at Harvard University highlights various attitudes, preferences, and professional desires of young (Generation X) faculty. Among the findings: Most Gen X faculty desire more mentoring and feel that they were inadequately mentored upon first entering their current position Nearly all Gen X faculty desire to participate as […]

Making a Compelling Case for
Scholarship Endowments

In this week’s news, Hamilton College (Clinton, NY) is adopting a “need blind” admissions policy; Hamilton expects over the next four years to add about $2 million to its annual financial aid budget. Initially, that additional expense will be borne by six trustees, who have each pledged $500,000 to seed the need-blind effort, and then […]

PLA: Outreach to Faculty

CAEL just released a study of the impact of prior learning assessment (PLA) on student learning and academic success, based on findings from 48 colleges and universities. The study found significantly higher graduation and persistence rates among students who earned prior learning credit when compared to non-PLA students, as well as shorter time-to-degree and higher GPA. […]

Boosting Yield at Private Colleges: Making the Case for Value

There is no question that this is a tough economy. Many colleges are having to consider steep tuition hikes. Two prestigious schools that had adopted no-loan policies have recently canceled them (Williams and Dartmouth), finding them no longer financially tenable. And with the rapid rise in demand for need-based aid and a decline in the […]

Marketing with Online Video

Published in 2010. The last week has seen some unorthodox and controversial uses of online video, including Yale’s admissions musical. With more colleges considering the uses of online video in communicating with applicants and other constituents, we turned to Jason Simon, director of marketing and communications for the University of California system, and Mike Barzacchini, director of […]

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Assault Prevention on Your Campus

Assault prevention programs on campus: What works, and what doesn’t? Here is what two leading experts suggest. A report on campus rape compiled by NPR in collaboration with journalists at the Center for Public Integrity concluded that: Colleges almost never expel men who are found responsible for sexual assault The US Department of Education has […]

Crisis Communications: Lessons Learned From Lynn University

The January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti left four students and two faculty from Lynn University (Boca Raton, FL) missing, and for several long weeks, no definite information was available about the whereabouts or the security of the missing persons. During the long rescue and recovery, Lynn University kept the campus community, the families of those […]

Key Components for a Competitive
Pricing Strategy

In this difficult economy, higher education has seen a rapid rise in demand for need-based aid and a decline in the ability of many student applicants and their families to pay the costs of college tuition. Institutions have been responding to the economic pressure in a variety of ways — sharp tuition increases, tuition freezes, […]

Naming Gifts for Campus Facilities

“Endowed chairs and scholarships are well understood as naming properties. We have well-defined processes for them. We don’t often have well-defined processes for how to manage naming gifts for facilities, but it’s needed.” This article refers to events in 2010 but offers practical strategies are still very relevant today. In an unusual story (2010), it […]

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Considering Mobile Learning For
Your Institution

Academic Impressions has designed this seven-step checklist that you can consider with your team. This is a list of critical decision points along the road to adopting mobile learning at your institution. A Campus Technology article highlighted both Abilene Christian University’s development of a homegrown mobile learning solution a few years ago and their current expansion […]

Helping Chinese Students Transition for Academic Success

Originally published when international enrollment was booming, the suggestions given below for helping Chinese students achieve academic success remain relevant. A number of reports in the past months have highlighted rising numbers of students from China, and rising efforts by US institutions to recruit them. A recent article in USA Today profiled some of the […]

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Techniques for Assessing Prior Learning

Here’s how to do prior learning assessment (PLA) rigorously and well. The suggestions given are by the author of a landmark study of prior learning assessment portfolios. 2010. Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation for Education, has released a statement offering ideas for a national strategy to rapidly train workers for new […]

Make Your Veterans Resources
Center Effective

The New York Times this week ran a thoughtful feature following one military veteran’s transition from the battlefield to campus life. This and other recent articles on veteran students reveal that: Although there is a tendency to focus on worst-case scenarios (such as PTSD) veterans are already resourceful at developing their own coping strategies The […]

Community College Finance:
Maintaining Liquidity

2010. A report from Moody’s Investors Service stresses that as community colleges experience enrollment surges during this down economy, many will issue bonds as a means of raising the capital needed to provide the new construction, renovation, and technological infrastructure projects needed to meet the growing demand. As community colleges take on more debt to […]

Improving Community College Student Success

Last week, a new study involving 13 participating institutions, Jobs for the Future, and the Delta Cost Project released a report on cost return for student success initiatives; with the report, the researchers made available a cost-return calculator that ties program-level cost data to student outcomes in success programs. With increasing federal and public pressure […]

Marketing the Value of the Education
You Offer

In October after the release of the College Board’s Trends reports, we interviewed Robert Massa, vice president for communications at Lafayette College, for tips on marketing the value and affordability of your institution. This week, we have asked Bob Sevier, senior vice president of strategy at STAMATS, for practical strategies toward publicizing the value of your academic […]

Recruiting Military Students

Even though this market is largely dominated by the for-profits, the past year has seen many non-profit universities make initial investments in services for military students, especially since the passing of the post-9/11 GI Bill. We asked Jim Paskill, principal and creative director for Paskill Stapleton & Lord; Eric Craver, director of marketing and recruitment […]

Revamping the Computer Lab

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted a trend in which many US colleges and universities are either phasing out the traditional computer lab or revamping that space to provide more effective opportunities for collaborative learning and group study. The trend is a response to pervasive research on the impact of collaborative […]

Making it Easier for Students to
Graduate Sooner

Encouraging students to graduate on time (or early) is a priority for many higher ed institutions. However, many students find speedy degree completion difficult due to obstacles in securing the courses they need to complete degree requirements. Lucie Lapovsky, president of Lapovsky Consulting and past president of Mercy College, offers some advice on correcting curriculum inefficiencies […]

Creating a Crisis-Ready Emergency
Notification Policy

Virginia Tech had two contradictory emergency notification policies, which stalled efforts the day of the massacre. What does your emergency notification policy need to include? When the state of Virginia provided its update on the official report on the Virginia Tech massacre, correcting factual errors and revealing details about breakdowns in emergency communications on the […]

Campaigns, This Side of the Recession

A Marts & Lundy report recently highlighted the drop in major gifts to colleges and universities this year, and made recommendations that institutions embarking on a campaign expect to rely on fewer multimillion-dollar gifts and concentrate on securing more contributions of under a million. This report came quickly on the heels of statistics from The […]

First Steps in Supporting Part-Time Faculty

Among other findings, the recent Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) has highlighted the phenomenon of “part-timerness” prevalent not only among students attending evening and weekend classes but also among adjunct faculty. The survey authors have called upon two-year institutions to take steps to better engage and support part-time faculty. As the percentage of […]

Greening the Campus Fleet: Tips from
Dave Newport

In this week’s news, the University of South Carolina announced its “Genesis 2015 Initiative,” promising a 90% drop in carbon-dioxide emissions from its campus fleet in the next five years. This is the latest in several recent commitments by colleges and universities to green their campus fleets. Other colleges and universities have hesitated to take […]

Quick Environmental Scanning for Workforce Education Needs

With so many displaced workers and unemployed adults, especially in manufacturing, more colleges and universities are working to identify specific workforce needs in their area and launch new workforce education programs in response. While many program directors don’t have the time or resources to conduct a traditional environmental scan, there are some fast steps you […]

Student Wellness: Finding The
Low-Hanging Fruit

The recent controversy over Lincoln University’s graduation requirement that all overweight graduates lose weight or take a fitness course illustrates the importance many colleges and universities are placing on wellness programming as a vehicle to promote student health and cut the rising costs of student health insurance. Yet many colleges are opting for health and wellness […]

Crisis Communications 10 Years After the Texas A&M Bonfire

This week saw the 10-year anniversary of the tragic 1999 bonfire collapse that killed 12 students at Texas A&M University. At the time Cindy Lawson, the university’s executive director of university relations, deployed the university website to relay timely and accurate information to the campus community, and worked proactively with the media to direct the public […]

Strengthening Library/Faculty Partnerships

Last week, after heated protest from the faculty senate, the Syracuse University Library pulled back from plans to move thousands of books off campus. The tensions at Syracuse University illustrate the importance of communicating with faculty and with academic leaders early and often; as academic libraries continue to grapple with issues of core identity and […]

Tips for Training Faculty on Teaching
with Technology

CDW has released a report indicating, among other findings: Only 38% of students surveyed believe faculty are making effective use of interactive learning technologies in the classroom Faculty identify training as what they need most to help them integrate learning technologies Patricia McGee, associate professor of instructional technology at the University of Texas at San […]

Engaging Transfer Students Before They Arrive

NSSE’s 2009 annual report cites low participation in high-impact activities (such as study abroad, service learning, internship, undergraduate research, or senior experience) among transfer students as one measure of engagement and likely persistence. The lowest engagement was from vertical transfers (students who enter four-year institutions from community colleges). In the survey, 62% of native seniors had participated […]

Investigating the Viability of Renewable
Energy Options

The New York Times’ Energy and Environment column this week offered a list of institutions who are pursuing geothermal energy projects this year. Often funded by stimulus grants, the projects are desirable both because they can reduce carbon footprint and because they can reduce heating costs significantly. The number of institutions investigating solar, wind, and […]

Professional Development: Making the
Right Investments

One state legislator is criticizing the University of Iowa this week for its plan to send 35 hospital workers to several days of training offered at a center in Orlando, FL, at a cost of $130,000. UI officials have replied that now more than ever, training represents a critical reinvestment in the organization. The conversation […]

Recruiting International Students

Overall first-time graduate enrollments from international students at US institutions did not climb in 2008-09 (though emerging markets in the Middle East still saw increases), according to a survey released this week by the Council of Graduate Schools. Reasons suggested for the stagnant numbers include the global recession and increased competition from other nations. Many undergraduate […]

The Net Price Calculator: Template
or Customize?

By fall 2011, Title IV institutions are required by law to provide a net price calculator (NPC) that will give student applicants opportunity to understand the difference between university sticker price and net price, and to receive an estimate of potential aid eligibility. The US Department of Education has released an NPC template that colleges […]

Laying the Groundwork for Effective
Faculty Evaluation

Recent incidents in the news — at DePaul University and elsewhere — highlight the importance of building an effective faculty evaluation and tenure review process. While some problems are specific to faculty evaluation systems at particular institutions, most often the underlying issue is a lack of clarity on the criteria by which faculty are to be evaluated. […]

Identifying At-Risk Online Students

An article in Inside Higher Ed featured a community college and a for-profit online university which are both using features of learning management systems to track student engagement data and alert faculty and administrators to online students who may be at risk. This is one of the advantages in online instruction: student engagement in the course […]

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