Securing a principal gift can have an immense impact on the way an institution is able to meet its mission and serve students effectively. However, identifying and cultivating relationships with potential principal gift donors takes patience, intentionality, and compromise. In this useful question-and-answer virtual webcast, our expert instructor, Mitchell Spearman, will call upon his experiences working with philanthropic families who shared transformational gifts with institutions across the country. By engaging with participants and sharing his own insight and advice, Spearman will help advancement professionals to understand how to more effectively approach engaging principal gift donors and their families to secure transformational gifts. As a participant, you will have the opportunity to submit your questions in advance and we will do our best to incorporate these questions into the live event.
Why You Need This Resource As the number or size of your classes grows, you’ll likely find it increasingly difficult to meet the variability of your learners. Since research says neurodiversity is the rule (not the exception), one-off changes and accommodations will become tedious for both you and your learners. If you’re ready for a better way, use these resources to start serving many types of learners simultaneously through Universal Design for Learning (UDL). You will learn simple changes you can make today to both course materials and the overall learning experience. You Will Learn: How to apply UDL principles to digital course materials Simple changes to make your classes more supportive of diverse learners You Will Get: Downloadable Resources Instructional Videos Interactive Activities
READ THE WHOLE SERIES:Developing a High-Performing and Productive Advising Department In this series, “Developing a High-Performing and Productive Advising Department,” I’ve discussed strategies for identifying, assessing, and meeting student, staff, and advisors’ needs. Now I will discuss strategies for positively impacting departmental, college, and university-wide systems and contributing to the effective implementation of change. Be a Voice in Decision Making Institutions vary as to how they deliver academic advising and where the function resides. Sometimes it is housed in student affairs, sometimes in academic affairs within colleges and departments, and other times there is a cross-over or shared responsibility between academic and student affairs. No matter where advising is situated, academic advising is just one small part of a larger unit. If advising is housed within student affairs, there is a challenge contributing to academic decision-making, as the role of the advising department is often thought to be limited to implementing and communicating academic decisions to students. Even when the academic advising unit is located within academic affairs, there is a risk of being considered a limited support service role and thus being excluded from decision-making and change implementation. Let’s examine the implementation of a new curriculum as an example. Typically, […]
The news is filled with accounts of extended pay freezes and tightened departmental budgets. More than ever, it is crucial to identify creative, meaningful, and low-cost ways to reward and retain high-performing faculty. Mary Coussons-Read, professor of psychology and acting chair of the department of physics at the University of Colorado Denver, reviews low-cost practices that can make a difference. Rethink Performance Rewards “Don’t get so caught up in the trees that you don’t see the forest,” Coussons-Read warns. “The forest is the need to help your faculty feel good about the work they do. There are many trees you can shake besides the salary adjustment tree.” While rewarding performance will rarely be free of cost, you can consider a variety of low-cost and one-time expenses that allow you to appreciate faculty. The difficulty of a salary increase is that it is a permanent addition to the ongoing budget. There are many options for rewarding performance for which that is not the case. Look for one-time expenses. Beyond salary increases, you can recognize faculty achievements and, at the same time, use those achievements to encourage a high-performing faculty culture by: Making the most of your faculty awards competition Inviting high-performing […]
Faculty evaluations are one of the most challenging aspects of serving as a department chair. Emotions run high, performance rubrics aren’t always clear, and both parties may become defensive and react more than they listen. Still, these conversations don’t have to be difficult, and they don’t have to take a negative tone. They key is to develop an evaluation process that establishes clear goals, uses objective data to assess those goals, and allows you to treat performance-related issues before your annual meeting. Join us online to learn how to make your next faculty evaluation session easier and more productive by implementing four key steps: Goal Setting and Communication Using and Applying Evaluation Data Phrasing Comments Appropriately Delivering Feedback
Enthusiastic partners can help you persuade faculty and staff of the value of philanthropic giving. Merrimack College was able to use giving ambassadors in a targeted campaign to increase their faculty participation rate from 20% to 59% in just one year. By recruiting the right leader to kick start the program, and by onboarding and supporting the right ambassadors, you can grow interest and convey authenticity to your institution’s ask. Join us online to learn how to create a similar movement on your campus that engages your faculty and staff in philanthropy and demonstrates the impact of their gifts. What You Will Get As part of your registration, you will receive a Campaign Ambassador Toolkit from Merrimack College that offers sample emails, meeting agendas, tracking tools, and campaign FAQs.
Designed for institutions who already have an established, full-time Case Manager, this webcast will present the considerations you need in order to refine and improve the focus and services of your current case management model. Our facilitator will help you answer the following questions: What’s the scope of our current case manager’s role, and how do we assess whether we need to refine or expand the scope or size of our current model? What are best practices and strategies for enhancing the role’s reach and impact? How can we increase the visibility of these resources for both students and faculty/staff on campus? Join us for this online training and learn how to apply new strategic direction to the role of Case Manager to better meet the needs of your students.
As a department chair, you’re stretched between teaching, research, meetings, and overflowing inboxes. Especially if you’re newer to the role, you may feel tempted to field this day-to-day without help – because faculty members commonly work on their own. Even if you’re ready to ask your academic staff for assistance, you haven’t been trained to manage them or discuss their performance. Join us online to learn how to build the capacity of your academic staff, which will help you manage your time and workload and focus on your most important leadership responsibilities. In the session, we’ll cover: How to define staff roles and responsibilities with clear purpose and intention How to set boundaries within your own role as chair How to reinforce performance expectations with affirmation and feedback
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 […]
This article is an excerpt from Sue Ohrablo’s acclaimed book High-Impact Advising: A Guide for Academic Advisors After an academic year begins, advisors can start to breathe a little easier once most of the fires have been put out, questions have been answered, schedule adjustments have been made, and students are mostly settled into their classes. The anxiety that accompanies long, fast-paced days may begin to dissipate. During this time, advisors are left scratching their heads, asking themselves, “Why can’t these students register themselves?”; “Why does this student continue to check with me even though I already gave her the information?”; and, even, on the worst days, “What is wrong with these students?” As things calm down during this period, I encourage advisors to reflect on the nature of student needs, and reconsider the dynamics involved in the student experience and the role of the academic advisor. As an advisor, there are several factors you can address to reduce a student’s continued reliance on you. These are: 1. Readiness Developmental advising involves taking a holistic approach to advising and forming partnerships with students. Students will most likely not expect to engage in a developmental advising relationship, as they often view the advisor as […]
