Hi there! I’m Misha, your friendly email marketing guru. By day, I’m crafting emails from Academic Impressions that make institutions and students alike do a happy dance. My mission? To spread the word on how Academic Impressions can transform your institution and boost student enrollment. Fun fact: I once set a goal to meet Sir Paul McCartney, and guess what? I turned that dream into reality. When I’m not busy perfecting emails and shaking hands with rock stars, you’ll find me jet-setting to the Caribbean, lacing up my running shoes for thrilling races, jamming out to some seriously good tunes, and diving into captivating books.
Academic Impressions’ Five Paths to Leadership® Assessment has been leveraged in our leadership programs for years; thousands of leaders in higher ed have benefited from this dynamic model exploring how one’s leadership styles manifest under normal circumstances and how they change under stress. Having a deeper understanding of your own leadership styles in varying situations increases your self-awareness, enhances your emotional quotient, allows you to more effectively plan, communicate, strategize, and ultimately, lead. Join us to learn what your own leadership styles are, how they might change under stress, and how this can apply to your team. During the workshop, we’ll walk through:
CBE programs are becoming more ubiquitous in higher ed, but there is still a lot of gray area around ensuring accountability that experiential knowledge is commensurate with college-level learning. Many are still trying to answer questions like: what’s the best way to award and represent this learning and knowledge? How can we ensure an equitable experience for all students? Join us to gain a deeper understanding of Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) and how to implement it at your institution. Assessment evens the playing field but must meet quality standards. During this webcast, our expert, Donna Younger, will demonstrate how PLA can address high attrition rates and achievement gaps as well as encourage students to kickstart their success outside the classroom.
Department chairs are the “front line” of academic management (whether or not, in fact, their positions are classified as management or as faculty) — yet most department chairs receive little or no training for their positions. There are reasons for this: Yet many problems that rise to higher levels of administration could be avoided or mitigated if they are handled by well-trained chairs in the first place. And institutions that neglect chairs do so at their own peril. Leadership training is especially critical now, given the pressures that tightened budgets, changing modes of delivery for instruction, increased demands for accountability, the growing diversity of the academy, and increased attention to employment law within academic institutions, all place on the expectations for department chairs. Why “Leadership” Training? Leadership training goes beyond other kinds of training. Indeed, the term “leadership training” might well be parsed out as a combination of training and leadership development: Developing a leadership training curriculum must take these features into account. The best training programs will both produce immediate outcomes and develop leadership skills over a sustained period of time. First, Identify Learning Outcomes What do your department chairs need to know, and when do they need to know it?Answering […]
The donor’s legacy and philanthropic goals need to be carried on through their gift to your institution. Before a formal proposal is presented, or prior to a meeting that focuses on outlining the gift agreement, you need to connect the donor family’s values to your institutional goals. This process begins by aligning family engagement strategies into your institutional fundraising goals. Join us in this third installment of our Family Giving Series to potentially unlock millions of dollars in giving by building upon your approach to cultivation and stewardship with your most loyal and engaged families. By drilling into the core value of what a family holds dear, you will be able to continue deep philanthropic partnerships with donor families for generations to come.
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 ear for cases in which there is the possibility to restore harm that’s been done, rather than simply (or only) penalize. If a hearing indicates that restorative justice may be possible and desirable, RJ processes usually proceed to individual pre-conference meetings held with the offender and those harmed in the incident. Ultimately, if all parties are willing, the issue is dealt with through a group conference with trained facilitators. The goal of the conference is to arrive at a mutual understanding of the harm caused and a mutual agreement for how the harm will be repaired. To learn more about how to make a restorative justice program most successful, we interviewed two officials from Colorado State University, which has frequently been recognized for its restorative justice and other student conduct programs. The two officials are Paul Osincup and Melissa Emerson, the associate and assistant directors […]
Christie Maier, M.Ed., Associate Director, Transformative LearningUniversity of Kentucky Doing more with less It’s a message many in higher education have received before: “do more, with less.” Whether it’s a need to expand services with no additional funding or an impending budget cut, student support units often must be creative with their program models to meet student demand with limited resources. This was the case for the learning center at the University of Kentucky back in the late 2000s when the drop-in Peer Tutoring Program expanded to support all 100 level math courses, as well as many 100 & 200 level science and business courses. The resulting demand required professional staff to develop a student leadership position to provide supervision and administrative support for the Peer Tutoring Program. Student Program Coordinators (SPC) are undergraduate students who have worked for the learning center in some capacity, often as a peer tutor or front desk staff, for at least a year. These emerging leaders have demonstrated their ability to successfully balance their time, communicate effectively, as well as work on a team and are ready to take on additional responsibilities. SPCs work 20 hours per week and have three primary responsibilities: on-duty […]
PARTNERING WITH FACULTY – FROM A FACULTY PERSPECTIVE Bernadette Jungblut of West Virginia University recently spoke to this issue — from a faculty perspective — at an April 2015 Academic Impressions webcast. Now, In this article, Jungblut offers further strategies for partnering with faculty effectively. What follows includes both an institutional case study and Bernadette’s own individual responses to questions raised by participants at the webcast.*role=”document”, aria-multiline=”true”, aria-readonly=”false”**aria-label=”Block: Paragraph”* by Bernadette Jungblut, Associate Provost for Accreditation, Academic Planning, and Assessment, Central Washington University,West Virginia University To explore the issue of faculty engagement in early alert in very practical terms, let’s review the key challenges (both that I’ve noted and that participants at the webcast raised), strategies that work, and a case study from West Virginia University. Engaging Faculty in Early Alert: The Challenge Challenges noted by webcast participants: Challenges I’ve experienced: Engaging Faculty in Early Alert: Strategies Here are strategies that we have employed at West Virginia University that make a difference in faculty engagement: Face-to-face meetings: We conducted face-to-face meetings with faculty members – one-on-one, in small groups, and at department faculty meetings. We specifically described our undergraduate student profile – about which some faculty members knew relatively little. When […]
One of the great gifts of working in higher education is that you get to work with leaders who are mission driven. Almost no leader I work with was motivated by climbing the ladder. They were motivated by their research, by working with students, by contributing to a purpose bigger than themselves. Over time, their desire to contribute and their skill have led them to opportunities to lead at higher levels. And in each of these roles, they bring with them their positive intentions, ready to make a difference. Unfortunately, positive intent doesn’t by itself equate to positive impact. In fact, there are times when leaders’ best intentions — paradoxically — lead to worse results. How can this be? Very simply their desire to make a positive impact and contribution leads them to spend their time in ways that on the surface make sense, but that in the end actually work against them. Here are the three most common behaviors I see that start from good intentions, but that end with a negative impact on the leader, their team and the task at hand: 1. Disproportionate Focus on Dissenters Perhaps the most common pitfall I see is the one […]
You’ve embraced the idea of enhancing customer service on your campus, you’ve provided training for your team, and now the hard part begins—maintaining momentum! This free webcast will discuss five key challenges to sustaining a culture of service and how you can overcome them. The five challenges are: Join us for this virtual learning experience developed for higher education professionals who lead service efforts and supervise leaders on the frontline. Whether you are just beginning a customer service initiative or your efforts have lost steam, gain the insight you need to build momentum and increase customer satisfaction! Watch our expert faculty talk about why getting customer service right is key in higher education:
