News

Report: Developing Leaders in Higher Education

by Amit Mrig

June 2011. Nearly one-half of higher-ed administrators gave their institution a C, D, or F letter grade when assessing their campus’s commitment to their development as a leader. Higher ed institutions are facing impending waves of retirement at all levels of the institution and across all sectors of our industry. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, how institutions capture and transfer knowledge and identify and develop the next generation of leaders will be key determinants of their futures. Recent research by Academic Impressions suggests that institutions have yet to meaningfully address this problem. In a survey conducted of a broad range of administrators, 40 percent of respondents indicated that their institution was not actively preparing for the upcoming retirements. Many industries with aging workforces face similar challenges. Fortunately for higher education, the private sector is much further along in tackling the problem and has many lessons to offer. That’s why we’ve asked experts from both higher education and the corporate sector to share their insights and expertise on these critical issues. We hope their advice will be useful to you. In This Issue Read this full report (PDF). See Upcoming Leadership Workshops

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 to your institution’s success. Larry Goldstein and Pat Sanaghan offer the following tips to guide you in identifying emerging or potential leaders at your institution. Avoid Comfortable Cloning “We tend to hire and promote people who remind us of ourselves, who think like us. The courageous and effective act is to choose people who have different background, different perspective. You learn through diversity, not through looking at yourself in the mirror all the time.” Pat Sanaghan, The Sanaghan Group The practicing of replicating the demographics (in terms of race, gender, and socioeconomic background) and the leadership philosophy of current leaders can be referred to as “comfortable cloning.” It’s comfortable, but ultimately not as effective as establishing a more diverse talent bench. “We need to look instead to people who are very different from us,” Sanaghan advises, “who can provide new, unexpected solutions to adaptive challenges.” A […]

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 the two years since, not only has the University of Winnipeg recovered, but its food services operation — which now focuses on organic, locally sourced food — is the most requested caterer in the local community, its head chef has won an Iron Chef Award, and the return on investment has been so high that the university is preparing to expand its operation by launching an off-campus restaurant. This week, we spoke with the University of Winnipeg’s president, Lloyd Axworthy, to ask what other institutions in the US and Canada could learn from the success of his institution’s transition to locally sourced foods. He offered several key takeaways worth noting: Conduct thorough research into student demand Consider public-private partnerships that can help manage costs and mitigate risk Recognize that your purchasing program can actually impact the market in ways that will allow you to negotiate lower prices […]

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 case studies to guide institutions in developing a working plan. It’s becoming more widely recognized that online programming entails far more than just providing electronic correspondence courses; with the new mode of course delivery come new demands on instructional design, technological infrastructure and student support services, staff and faculty training, and new challenges for your marketing and recruiting efforts. The investment required demands that institutions adopt a deliberate approach to developing online programs. The potential for increased tuition revenue and increased access to higher education is significant — but to see success, you have to look before you leap. Joel Hartman, vice provost for information technologies and resources and chief information officer at the University of Central Florida, suggests that those initiatives that have failed in the past share some or all of these characteristics: “Conceptualized by administrators who made the assumption that there was a market […]

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 rates, more institutions are beginning to assess their strategies for recruiting and retaining first-gen students. We addressed the issue in Higher Ed Impact recently, interviewing Mary Ontiveros, Colorado State University’s vice president for diversity, who suggested four tips for boosting application rates for lower-income, first-gen students. This week, we turned to Thom Golden, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Vanderbilt University, for four additional tips — this time for boosting yield. What Keeps First-Gen Admits From Enrolling? When asked why first-generation admits opt not to enroll, Golden several barriers: Concerns over affordability Lack of clarity about financial aid (how it’s applied for and when; what the award amount means, etc.) Lack of clarity around aid eligibility The American Council of Education has released several studies indicating that over 1.8 million low-income and middle-income families who would have qualified for college aid failed to apply. Golden […]

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 California are just one example of an obstacle that several high-profile online initiatives have encountered over the past decade. “If you look closely at those initiatives that have failed to succeed,” suggests John Ebersole, current president of Excelsior College and responsible in past years for creating Boston University’s successful online program, “the common missing piece in all of them was that faculty were not at the table during the early planning. Their concerns were not addressed at the outset, and in fact it was perceived that it was the intent of the organization to go around them. This led to intensified skepticism and the eventual ire of the faculty.” Ebersole also cites other common issues — most significantly, insufficient market research to determine the student demand for a program and the lack of a systemic, institution-wide plan for growing online programming. Focusing on the issue of faculty […]

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 the humanities connect with desirable careers, college career centers need to invest in programming and services that: Provide self-assessment tools to help humanities majors define their career path Connect students with industry experts who also studied in the humanities, and who can serve as mentors and role models Educate students on the power of professional networking Defining the Pipeline “It’s too easy to just focus on strengthening services to majors who have an easy and direct pipeline to careers (chemical engineering, accounting). Students in the humanities have marketable skills, but they have to define their own pipeline.” Andrew Ceperley, UCSD Ceperley suggests identifying high-yield opportunities for exposing students to self-assessment tools that can help them better understand their skills, values, and personality traits, and to educational programming that can help them translate those skills and traits into a variety of career options. For example: Offer […]

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 have been seen over the past decade. To learn more about what’s changing and where institutions need to be proactive in order to manage their Title IX liability, we turned to Betsy Alden (who has conducted many Title IX reviews for higher ed institutions) and Jeff Orleans (who helped write the original regulation for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972) with Alden & Associates Inc. A Shift from the Past What became apparent from the OCR representative’s remarks at the NCAA’s Gender Equity Forum earlier this month, Jeff Orleans comments, “is that schools that have been can no longer rely on the ‘third prong’ standard that if you show that you are satisfying the interests and abilities of student athletes regardless of the counts, you were in compliance. Under the Bush administration, you just had to survey and account for student interest in […]

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 using data from 2007-08, remedial education for college students costs the United States $5.6 billion a year, including $3.6 billion in tuition. One in three students require a remedial course. While much of the attention is given to teacher preparation and reform for the K-12 system, it’s also critical for colleges and universities to examine what they can do to improve the developmental education programs that are needed at the post-secondary level. To trim costs and prepare students for academic success, colleges need to continue improving success rates in developmental courses and need to be able to move students through developmental courses faster. In November 2010, on the heels of an earlier, more regionally-focused report that demonstrated that the state of Georgia spends $22 million annually to provide developmental education at colleges and universities, we turned to Nick Bekas, professor of English and project director for the […]

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, the University of Colorado has just launched its $1.5 billion capital campaign (although without a projected finish date). If your institution is preparing for a campaign as the economy (and donors) bounce back, it will be important to consider thoughtfully — and as early as possible — how you will make use of social and interactive media channels and tools to support your campaign goals. This week we interviewed Rob Moore, president of Lipman Hearne and a nationally-recognized expert on branding and marketing in higher education, to learn more about some of the opportunities and caveats in the use of social media for campaign branding and messaging. AI: Rob, what is the first thing you would want to tell fundraisers about the use of social media in branding a capital campaign? Rob Moore: Know where it is useful. It’s important not to oversell social media. There’s a […]