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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 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, and staff are on the rise. In a recent survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, 77 percent of counseling center directors indicated that the number of students on campus with severe mental health issues had increased in the past year. And while most available studies focus on student mental health, last year’s shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville offers a tragic reminder that faculty and staff may also face mental health issues. We asked Gene Deisinger, deputy chief of police and director of threat management services at Virginia Tech, for his advice on how to establish early behavioral intervention teams or threat assessment teams when challenged to do more with existing resources. Deisinger is both a police […]

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 its alumni relationships. At the same time, institutions are trying to meet fundraising goals by calling on fewer and fewer donors. Now is the time for your institution to stop this unsustainable advancement strategy. We turned this week to Jim Langley, president of Langley Innovations, for his advice on how institutions need to rethink their strategy for engaging future donors. A Diagnosis: How Institutions and Alumni Misconnect “The underlying malady,” Langley remarks, “is a loss of emotional engagement with the institution. Alumni remain appreciative of their degree and of their time at the institution, but feel emotionally detached from the alma mater after graduation.” This disaffection can take different forms for different generations of alumni: Young alumni are likely to have graduated with a significant load of student debt and are now facing the challenges of building a career amid a sluggish economic recovery; when […]

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. To inquire into best practices for preparing both faculty and students for online courses, we turned to two online learning veterans to learn more: Kristen Betts, director of the Center for Online Learning at Armstrong Atlantic State University, and Mark Parker, interim assistant dean and collegiate associate professor for communication, arts, and humanities at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Betts and Parker suggest that the most critical steps in encouraging the academic success and persistence of your online students involve setting and managing faculty and student expectations around workload and interaction within the online course. Here are some examples. Managing Expectations for Students Betts and Parker advise institutions to be more proactive in setting expectations both: When marketing online programs to students (while promoting the flexibility of an online program, it’s important to also set expectations around the program’s rigor and the quality of student work that is […]

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 goals For advice on taking fundraising metrics beyond dollars raised, we turned this week to Rick Dupree, assistant dean of development and alumni relations for the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, and D. Scott Peters, director of annual giving at the University of Richmond. A Culture of Incentives “A good metrics system means that development officers know what’s expected, they know what will happen if they meet and exceed goals. It takes away the guessing game. Development officers are entrepreneurs at heart — they have egos, they’re creative, they want to do excellent work and be recognized for it.” Rick Dupree, Indiana U Dupree adds that the 100-point metrics program he put in place a decade ago at Indiana University allowed him to do “two atypical things” — offer bonuses and terminate low performers. He assigned points for achieving specific goals. “If a staff […]

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 (@Doctor_Thom on Twitter). This week, Golden draws attention to the types of bridge programming that higher ed institutions can put in place to help first-gen students enter college better prepared to persist and succeed. Defining the Problem “In enrolling and retaining first-generation students, aspiration isn’t the issue,” Golden notes. He directs attention to findings from several studies from past years: According to the Ad Council’s 2006 study College access: Results from a survey of low-income teens and parents, 91 percent of low-income high school students said they believed that they would complete a college degree According to a 2006 US Department of Education study, The Toolbox Revisited, only 45 percent of Hispanic students attend a high school that offers calculus, and only 59 percent of white students do Outreach to high schools and to high school students, Golden suggests, must focus less on planting seeds of […]

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 Impressions, Ken Udas, CEO of UMassOnline, offers his advice on how academic leaders can promote higher completion rates as their institutions strive to meet a growing demand among adult learners for online and distance education. Where You Can Make the Most Difference Udas suggests that there are two areas where relatively small investments in online student retention can see significant returns: Encouraging Course Completion First, Udas suggests, identify your “warning signals,” your indicators that a student engaged in online coursework may be at a higher risk of not completing the course; then set up a process for immediate response to those signals. Warning signals for online learners might include: For example, suppose that your online calculus course has a 40% completion rate each semester. Once you know this, you can respond by making tutoring services available, whether face-to-face or in the form a virtual math lab. […]

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’ Climate Commitment (APUCC), and hundreds of institutions now employ sustainability coordinators. Yet many sustainability initiatives have yet to see meaningful gains. In fact, at the majority of colleges and universities, sustainability efforts remain limited to disparate, one-off programs, from trayless dining to student-directed recycling programs to “green” capital projects and energy efficiency measures. To move beyond one-off programs, it’s critical to identify how efforts toward a sustainable campus add benefits beyond just cost savings and social impact. Defining the value proposition for sustainability at your campus and mapping the impact of sustainability on a wide array of campus priorities (e.g., student recruitment and retention, stakeholder relations and fundraising, etc.) will empower an institution to more effectively target campus-wide or system-wide investment in sustainable initiatives, and to better engage broader campus constituencies and build alliances beyond the “usual choir.” “The question to address now is: How do you get […]

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 then to prioritize your key projects — “low-hanging fruit” that will show rapid returns in the form of cost savings. The key is to begin a cycle of cost savings and reinvestment of savings in further sustainability efforts. “You can’t do everything. Focus on finding those early wins that allow you to generate support for more robust efforts,” Dave Newport advises. While inventorying current efforts and identifying the next several projects that will generate financial returns, make sure to integrate opportunities for student learning and student engagement into efficiency and cost control initiatives: Connect efficiency programs with faculty and student efforts (for example, invite students to take part in a lighting efficiency project, or involve an architecture or engineering course in the process of designing your next LEED facility) Prioritize tangible projects that you can show to current and prospective students as a real example […]

A Road Map for Campus Sustainability

by Amit Mrig

In this report: A Sustainable Approach to Sustainability Coordinating Sustainability Efforts Across Campus Integrating Sustainability into Curricular and Co-curricular Programs Efficiency and Cost Control Leveraging Early Successes to Increase Funding and Involvement A Letter From Amit Mrig, President, Academic Impressions July 2011. Whether your institution is driven by social values, economic reality, or political and market demand, the trend to become more sustainable is undeniable. Yet, with all of the momentum throughout the industry and society writ large, including more than 650 campus presidents pledging carbon neutrality, most sustainability efforts have a difficult time achieving meaningful gains. Such efforts are often driven more by the individual will of a student, faculty member, or campus president than through smart planning, implementation, and resourcing. This reality was the impetus for the Academic Impressions Sustainability Road Map – a methodology that advocates for an integrated, scalable approach to campus sustainability, and one that can help generate broad-based support and buy-in. We’ve gathered experts from the leading green institutions to share their insights on how to maximize the economic, social, and environmental returns on these investments. We hope their advice will be useful. Read the paper.   See Upcoming Events for Academic Administrators

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 across disciplines, and find ways to scale up efforts that see early success. Involving Students in and out of the Classroom Jack Byrne, director of the Sustainability Integration Office at Middlebury College; Angela Halfacre, director of the Shi Center for Sustainability at Furman University; and Blase Scarnati, director of the University First Year Seminar Program at Northern Arizona University, suggest the following ways of integrating sustainability efforts with student learning in ways that aren’t restricted to a classroom setting: Identify real-world issues related to sustainability in the local community, and invite a class to conduct research and make recommendations Identify opportunities on your campus, and pose questions in the classroom on how to move forward In short, set up situations in which both campus and community stakeholders act as “clients” for groups of student researchers and student consultants. This empowers your institution to both provide real-world learning […]

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