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Presidential Dialogues: The Changing Presidency in Higher Education

by Amit Mrig

College President: An Impossible Job? The president of a college or university stands in the cross-hairs, operating in an environment where the challenges are complex, there are no clear answers and decisions come in all shades of gray. All eyes are on the institution’s chief executive to navigate the strategic dilemmas facing their institutions. And as today’s presidents try to balance the competing demands of an array of stakeholders, they can’t always count on the buy-in and support of the board—leading them to spend much of their time managing the board. With all this complexity, the presidents that succeed tomorrow won’t be the same as the presidents that were successful yesterday. In the first of our Presidential Dialogues, we speak with five highly successful chief executives, asking their advice for new presidents. In this paper, hear from: This is the first of the AI Presidential Dialogues. Through this ongoing series, we will continue to convene leading minds in higher education to uncover those skill sets and ways of rethinking the president’s work that will educate boards and inform and empower aspiring presidents. Watch for future papers from this series. Read the report. Contact Me If you would like to talk with us […]

Managing an Aging Higher-Ed Workforce

by Lisa Cook, Academic Impressions As more faculty, administration, and staff approach retirement age, institutions must be ready to address the challenges that accompany an aging workforce. Most have already addressed financial planning, but many still struggle with other aging workforce concerns such as mental health issues, budgeting for an increase in disability accommodation requests, and how institutions can create possibilities for retirement that allow employees to exit gracefully. We talked to Susan Wheeler, University Counsel at James Madison University, to learn what institutions should be considering. Wheeler advises institutions to: Develop procedures to help support faculty suffering from mental health issues, and to define next steps if an intervention is not successful. Budget for increased employee ADA accommodations. Shape retirement or emeritus status plans to allow employees to maintain a relationship with the institution, thereby creating more possibilities for retirement. 1. What Can Institutions Do When Aging Employees Have Mental Health Issues? Although mental health issues affect both young and old, institutions might find themselves confronting one of the following scenarios as their employees grow older: A faculty member whose students begin reporting that she is falling asleep in class while guest lecturers lead the discussion, missing appointments, and beginning […]

A Plan to Build an Open Source Tool to Assess Student Skills and Predict Success

by Lisa Cook

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, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. This was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. Higher education for most students begins with proctored high-stakes placement exams that may not be the best approach, according to Jason Bryer, director of research and project evaluation at Excelsior College.  Proctored exams can be intimidating, especially at open-enrollment institutions where more than half of students are directed into non-credit remediation courses at an estimated cost of $4 billion per year. Excelsior College hopes to improve students’ early college experiences by developing an open-source assessment tool to measure student skills in academic and non-academic areas. They will use the $1.9 million First in the World grant to address the problem of placement […]

What Starbucks Can Teach You about Equipping Your Staff as Ambassadors for Your Institution

by Tim Ponisciak (University of Notre Dame) Many annual giving departments have an employee program, or at the very least an annual employee appeal. While some schools are quite successful and have a high percentage of alumni making a gift, most struggle with convincing staff to contribute to their employer. But is this the best way to engage university employees in annual giving? Treating Employees as Ambassadors, Not Just Prospects Employees of a school can be the most important ambassadors of their institution. Often, staff are the first people that an alum or donor speaks to when they get to campus. They are the ones that solve problems for alumni when they call the campus. And some employees are the long-time connections to campus for alumni, regardless of what development officer they have been assigned to. Does your school have a brand ambassador program, guidelines, or annual training for staff? Many companies that place a strong emphasis on customer service know that this starts by making sure that their employees, whether they be administration or front line, are completely bought in to their company’s mission. There are lessons here that we can adapt from the corporate sector. Case Study: Starbucks […]

Math and the Liberal Arts: How the University System of Maryland Will Create New Math Pathways for Social Sciences and Liberal Arts Students

by Lisa Cook

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, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. This was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. Both developmental and college-level math courses can often be a stumbling block for liberal arts and social sciences majors, who wonder if they’ll ever use college algebra in their future careers. While many institutions provide supplemental support for these students, officials at the University System of Maryland want to try a different approach. They plan to pilot new math pathways that are more relevant to the quantitative skills needed in arts and humanities disciplines. They will use their $2.98 million First in the World grant to introduce a new statistics curriculum that will provide more real-world applications than traditional remedial algebra courses […]

Improving Diversity in Higher Education: Beyond the Moral Imperative

by Amit Mrig

Seizing the Moment November 18, 2015. We witnessed a pivotal moment for higher education last week with the resignations of Tim Wolfe, President of the University of Missouri System, and R. Bowen Loftin, Chancellor of the flagship campus in Columbia. Issues of diversity and inclusion have been challenging campuses for years, but I believe we have now reached a tipping point that will place this issue front and center on leaders’ agendas today and into the future. As we think about the importance of last week’s events, one thing is clear: the efforts by the students at the University of Missouri will help fuel the much-needed nation-wide conversation on this important topic. Already, dozens of campuses are hosting diversity forums, hosting town hall meetings, and issuing statements to demonstrate the many initiatives they are investing in to create a more inclusive and diverse environment. My hope is that these conversations are sincere efforts to move the diversity agenda forward. It’s not just the right thing to do; it’s imperative for the success and sustainability of institutions. And there is no time to waste. The Business Case for Diversity The statistics are clear and sobering. Black students and Hispanic students are […]

Do the USNWR Rankings Limit Innovation in Higher Education?

by Amit Mrig

Last month I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Ricardo Azziz, former president of Georgia Regents University, about the US News and World Report (USNWR) higher education rankings. The conversation is especially timely as millions of students and parents are knee deep in the college application season this fall. In our conversation we explored many inherent flaws with the rankings system – but in talking with a former college president, I was particularly interested in exploring how the importance and visibility of these rankings affect how university leaders make decisions. Do the rankings support the innovation and change needed in higher education or do they actually hinder our ability to take risks and try new things? Our conversation was wide-ranging, and we uncovered important insights for boards of trustees, policymakers, and university leaders. In the end, we concluded that the rankings do indeed inhibit innovation in higher education. This happens because the rankings: 1. Credit for Spending More, Not Doing More With Less 10% of an institution’s score in the rankings is driven directly by the amount of resources spent per student. An additional 20% of the score is driven by “faculty resources,” which includes items like the proportion […]

4 Things Academic Deans Can Do to Connect Majors and Minors with Careers

by Stanton Green

In my previous article with AI (“4 Things Academic Deans Can Do to Help Students Succeed After Graduation,” in August 2015), I offered advice on how academic deans and career professionals can collaborate to improve student career mentoring. In this follow-up article, I would like to offer four curricular strategies that can immediately improve student career prospects, by connecting more clearly what a student studies and what they aspire to do after college. Four strategies to make this happen: 1. Work directly with admissions to break the myth that specific majors lead to specific jobs. I have often found myself speaking to groups of prospective students and their parents immediately after an admissions director has literally drawn lines between specific majors and particular jobs. “If you want to be an A you should consider majoring in X,” s/he would exclaim, much to my chagrin. Parents especially like this equation, while students who are often not sure of what ‘they want to be’ usually find it uncomfortable. My subsequent presentation forcefully (and politely) breaks this myth by focusing on three simple notions: WHAT TO DO: Develop a small team that includes an academic dean, an admissions director and a career services director […]

Bossier Parish Community College: Improving Developmental Education with MOOCs, Mobile Apps, and Asynchronous Learning

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, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. This was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. by Lisa Cook, Academic Impressions Developmental education courses have a notoriously high drop/fail/withdraw rate; in our 2013 paper Why Rethinking Developmental Education is a Priority, we profiled several institutions that had reworked their dev-ed curriculum in innovative ways. Now, Bossier Parish Community College is working on a new approach: using analytics-based mobile applications embedded in developmental courses to improve student success. BPCC’s app will serve two purposes: Students will have easy access to support for their classes, anytime, anywhere. The app will also provide analytics data so BPCC can isolate and track which efforts are working to improve student engagement and persistence. BPCC […]

How Farmingdale State College is Engaging At-Risk Students in Undergraduate Research

by Lisa Cook, Daniel Fusch

A pilot project at Farmingdale State College is engaging both freshmen and transfer students in undergraduate research. Here are the details. 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, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. This was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. Officials at Farmingdale State College, State University of New York, hope to boost degree completion of at-risk students by engaging them actively in undergraduate research. Their new project, “Creating Research Opportunities for Students,” will use their $2.9 million 2015 First in the World grant to mentor and prepare students for research and then offer a hands-on research experience with a faculty mentor, conducted both on- and off-campus. They project that the initiative will increase their four-year graduation rate by 20%. Familiar […]