News

What Happens When Volunteers Are No Longer a “Nice to Have” Resource, But Instead a Strategic Investment?

Most colleges treat volunteers as “nice to have” resource, but a well-managed volunteer infrastructure can mean better fundraising, stronger student outcomes, and deeper relationships with donors, alumni, and friends of the institution. by Valerie Jones, College of Saint Benedict The Scenario In October 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted from a rural road in St. Joseph, Minnesota. The event made national headlines and united the community in support of his family. Twenty-eight years later, their worst fears were confirmed. As the grieving family began planning a memorial service in 2016, the College of Saint Benedict (CSB) offered to host. The invitation drew RSVPs from more than 6,000 people, including state and national dignitaries. Logistics such as parking, shuttles, security, media management, hospitality, and more demanded resources. With only two weeks to prepare and with all normal functions of the college already maxed out with the beginning of the fall semester, the college turned to the one resource that would make all the difference: volunteers. Within 10 days, CSB recruited, trained, and deployed roughly 125 volunteers to support the memorial service. Volunteers worked alongside college staff parking cars, ushering dignitaries, greeting shuttles, guiding media members, tending to presenters, collecting condolences and […]

Athletics Donors and the New Tax Law: Time to Reconsider Your Communications Strategy?

by Sasha Egorova, Academic Impressions The new tax law passed in December 2017 has the potential to significantly affect athletics fundraising. The law repealed an 80% tax deduction that donors could previously take on contributions tied to the right to purchase athletic tickets. Division I schools that rely heavily on these types of gifts could potentially lose millions of dollars in contributions if their donors decide to no longer make these payments. This News Has Made Universities Nervous In April 2018 Academic Impressions surveyed institutions to understand how the law is expected to affect athletics fundraising and how different universities are responding to this change. We found that: Here’s How They’re Responding Things are still very much in flux, as schools are figuring out their way forward. There are many things to consider: interpretation of the law, accounting implications, campaign and fundraising goal-setting, donor communications, receipting, fund restructuring … the list goes on. Overall, there are two ways institutions are responding. RESPONSE 1 Some schools are trying to find a way for donors to still keep contributions like these deductible. In essence, that entails finding a workaround to the law. To do this: This option is still far from clear, […]

Implementing a Research Mission at Your Teaching-Intensive University

by Mary Coussons-Read

When it comes to implementing a research mission, the devil is in the details. Scenario As a dean at Middlestates Territory University (MSTU), you are charged with creating, funding, and implementing a vision and action plan for bringing the “research” portion of the institution’s statutory mission to the forefront.  After many years of negotiation, lobbying, presentation of historical data, and handshaking behind closed doors, the state legislature has finally allowed MSTU to include the words “research-focused” in its official state statutory description and mission. Although the upper administration views this as a victory, the institution has extremely limited financial, laboratory, and human resources, and as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, you know a long slog lies ahead. You oversee a college comprised of 16 small departments with no more than 10 tenured faculty members in each, and of the total 145 tenured and tenure-track faculty (TTF) in your college, only 15% have or have had external grant funding for research. Research productivity is variable in the college, not only because the disciplines represented range from English to Music to Psychology to Chemistry to Women’s Studies, but also because the standard teaching load for TTF is […]

Title IX and Faculty Misconduct: Steps You Need to Take Today

by Daniel Fusch

Here are steps Title IX coordinators can take in the next day, week, month, and year to start changing the culture on campus. An interview with Rabia Khan Harvey, Academic Impressions, recently Title IX coordinator at Columbia College Chicago Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions. Rabia, thanks for another conversation. There are so many stories emerging over the last year regarding sexual harassment or other misconduct toward students by some faculty. What has struck you as especially critical for Title IX coordinators to pay attention to? What conversations do they need to be having with department chairs? Rabia Khan Harvey. That’s a tough one. That’s a really tough one. I really feel this needs to become a strategic initiative for the institution. That’s what it will take to get the necessary buy-in and engagement with the whole faculty. Because the steps we need to take aren’t small ones. We need to improve relationships with students from historically marginalized populations. We need to talk with faculty about how the academic department is choosing to nurture students to become alumni of the department. If we don’t provide a department and an institution that is safe for them, that will come back to haunt us tenfold. […]

Title IX and #MeToo: Next Steps for Title IX Coordinators

by Daniel Fusch

What opportunities does the #MeToo movement open up for Title IX coordinators, and how can we seize the moment? An interview with Rabia Khan Harvey, Academic Impressions, recently Title IX coordinator at Columbia College Chicago Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions. Rabia, thanks for joining me today. I wanted to ask: What does the #MeToo movement mean for college campuses? Rabia Khan Harvey. The first word that comes to mind is outlet. The #MeToo movement was founded in 2006 but didn’t go viral until the Harvey Weinstein allegation. Now it provides an outlet for survivors who have felt silenced for so long, who feared they wouldn’t be believed. It has lifted multiple barriers, from self-blame to not wanting to get the person who was accused in trouble—that was a very real barrier. Secondly, solidarity. It used to be that survivors were left feeling very alone. Now there is the feeling that others have experienced this, and survivors don’t need to be silent anymore. Third, awareness. This movement illustrates for people how much our society has ignored rape culture, how much we have normalized and explained away rape culture. Daniel Fusch. What does it mean for Title IX coordinators and staff, specifically? Rabia […]

4 Strategies for Closing the Coaching Gap for Mid-Level Academic Leaders

by Daniel Fusch

While executive and administrative leaders have had a longer history of working with coaches, there is growing awareness of the benefit to middle managers in higher education, as well. Mid-level academic leaders are often promoted to leadership positions with limited management experience and without the benefit of training and professional leadership development. Yet mid-level leaders face significant barriers to the use of coaching. To build leadership capacity at the mid level, it’s critical that senior leaders take action to address this coaching gap. To learn more, we turned to David Kiel, who worked for 15 years as a faculty leadership developer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is now a consultant to leadership development programs in higher education. Dr. Kiel has conducted extensive research on coaching in higher education, and the article that follows adapts and reworks material from an article the author published in the Journal of Excellence in College Teaching’s special issue “Coaching and Leadership in Academia,” James Sibley and Susan Robison, Editors, that came out in February 2018. The title of the original article is “In Search of Good Coaching for Mid-Level Faculty Leaders” (The full citation can be found in the reference section at the end of […]

7 Myths that Limit Innovation in Higher Ed

by Melissa Morriss-Olson, Ph.D.

This article continues a series focused on Creating an Innovative Institutional Mindset. The previous articles in this series are: Innovation is all the buzz these days in higher education circles, and it is no wonder.  Many mainstream media observers have noted that higher education is now ground zero for disruption due largely to what they believe is a broken business model. The significant challenges facing colleges and universities were illuminated by Moody’s December 2017 decision to downgrade its outlook for the US higher education sector to negative due to softened revenue growth prospects. Some have gone so far to suggest that we are living through an era of total disruption to the age-old model of higher education and that “reality” as we now know it will completely change. According to these same experts, the institutions that are able to reinvent themselves, to create and embrace change, will have the best odds for survival and resiliency. And yet, despite the urgency for change, many institutions find it difficult to innovate. I discussed some of the barriers to innovation here. Besides the barriers listed in that article, though, one of the major roadblocks in the way of our success is that over […]

Anticipating the Future: Following the Lead of Community Colleges

by Daniel Fusch

The world of work is changing rapidly, creating new pressures and new opportunities for higher education. It’s critical that university leaders act as conveners, assembling representatives of local industry, nonprofits, and community to do the tough work of anticipating the future for their region—both the threats and the opportunities. Some community colleges have been doing this extremely well, and other institutions can learn from their example. The Challenge Before Us The world now sits on the precipice of a fourth industrial revolution, defined by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital, and biological worlds. Technological breakthroughs in processing power, artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and more will fundamentally change the way in which we live, work, and interact. Such technologies are poised to destroy millions of current jobs while creating entirely new ones. The stakes are high: researchers at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute have predicted a 50% chance that machines will be capable of taking over all human jobs in 120 years. The implications for higher education are staggering. Beyond the job losses, millions of new jobs will simultaneously be created. In fact, it’s […]

What Establishing Alumni X-Teams Can Achieve

by Joe L. McGonegal

We need to reshape a 19th-century alumni office to meet the demands of a 21st-century audience. “Alumni associations were rendered obsolete by Facebook and have since been dying a slow death.” “Why get off my couch on a weeknight to connect with fellow alumni from college, one of a dozen institutions to which I have some faint sense of allegiance? “Given the amount of virtual networking to be done, why connect IRL (in real life) at all?” The answer to these loaded questions is the reason my job in alumni relations still exists. We still crave a live networking event, seminar, or raucous public debate. Alumni associations, for hundreds of years the conveners of such events, aren’t going anywhere. But I don’t rest easy, nor should my peers in alumni associations the world round, even those of us at the most elite institutions of higher learning. To meet these demands, we must form “x-teams” – cross-functional teams from various verticals in an organization who share a common goal. X-teams in advancement shops must be students of the marketplace, audience, and the whimsical trends among students, alumni, faculty, and the public. Taking a page from the best tech companies out there, […]

Reimagining the Academic Library: A Peek Inside Payson Library

by Daniel Fusch

Among the more fascinating library revitalization projects we have seen recently, one that stands out is Payson Library at Pepperdine University. As we took a closer look, we realized that much of the thinking that informs the Payson Library renovation is replicable and scalable for other institutions, even institutions with quite small library facilities. To learn more about this fascinating project, I interviewed Mark Roosa, Dean of Libraries at Pepperdine. Here is what Mark shared with us. (And you can see the Payson Library yourself—with both a tour and learning activities—during a site visit at our upcoming conference.) The Genesis Lab makerspace at Payson Library. Image property of Pepperdine University. An Interview with Mark Roosa Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions: Mark, thanks for joining me. First, what was the guiding philosophy behind this renovation? Mark Roosa, Pepperdine University: There were three drivers for the renovation: Daniel Fusch. In light of that, could you tell me about the study spaces and “living” rooms throughout the library? What is unique about their design and placement, and what drove the decision to approach them in this way? Mark Roosa. We made a tactical decision early on to remove some of the stacks to permit […]