READ THE WHOLE SERIES: Academic advising staff, comprised of both administrative support staff and advisors, may experience a great deal of stress and frustration as they work to manage the expectations of both students and administration. As frontline personnel, they are the first to be confronted when students experience problems and express dissatisfaction, yet they have little authority or control. By including these constituents in decision-making and planning, advising administrators are able to benefit from their diverse perspectives and maximize on the skills that each staff member brings to the department. This is particularly important because when we establish systems and procedures in response to student needs, there is frequently a risk that advising personnel will view these changes in a negative light. Advisors may anticipate that their own needs will be deprioritized as we work to meet the needs of students. For example, an edict such as “Advisors have 24-48 hours to respond to students” may cause additional stress on advisors who are already facing challenges in managing their workload. I recommend examining practices and procedures regularly, observing the impact on advising staff, and soliciting staff feedback proactively, so that you can begin to address employee needs while also […]
READ THE WHOLE SERIES: Ask academic advising professionals what they perceive to be the primary role of academic advising, and you’ll most likely hear responses such as “to help students,” “to serve students,” or “to facilitate student growth and development.” All are appropriate responses which get to the most basic reason that advising departments exist; however, these objectives often remain ambiguous and ill-defined. What does “help” or “serve” look like? How is it achieved? Advising administrators need to assess the specific needs of the students whom they serve and implement a specific plan for meeting those needs. Here are three strategies for assessing student needs and three strategies for meeting student needs. 3 Strategies for Assessing Student Needs 1. Student Feedback: Formal Assessment Formal instruments, such as student satisfaction surveys, can be used to solicit feedback from students regarding their advising experience. When selecting or developing such an instrument, it is important to consider what it is that you most wish to learn. For example, surveys of this type are often designed to collect feedback on the advisor’s behaviors and characteristics. However, it is equally important to examine processes and student expectations in order to obtain a big picture view […]
The chief of staff can be a lonely role. Here is what experienced chiefs of staff have to say about how to find your feet in the role and identify key resources you’ll need. In this series of articles, experienced chiefs of staff offer critical advice on managing the chief of staff role. We will share their answers to questions such as these: Contributors to this series include: We hope you will enjoy the series and share each article with your peers. If you find these articles useful, please consider attending and learning from these and other experts at these virtual trainings: For today, here is our third installment in this series: 3. Finding Your Feet as a New (or Relatively New) Chief of Staff Academic Impressions. We know the chief of staff position can feel isolating at times—there is usually only one chief of staff on campus, so you don’t have peers in the role on campus to compare notes with. And not a lot of training and professional development opportunities exist for chiefs of staff. There isn’t a handbook on how to be an effective chief of staff. You have each been in the position. Thinking back, what […]
Learn fresh ideas for how you can communicate with deposited students to prevent summer melt and increase yield at your institution. During the webcast, you will learn how to: Make your yield communications more successful Use print, digital, and social media channels as tools to prevent summer melt Educate and mobilize cross-campus partners to create a more seamless strategy Throughout this training, you will see numerous examples of effective yield communications. These examples, combined with a practically-focused presentation, will help you apply what you learn to your own institutional context.
Learn to meet your philanthropic goals by partnering effectively with purpose-driven donors.
We have all been to meetings where there is uneven participation among attendees. More vocal participants tend to dominate, while others can all but disappear. This is a substantial problem for meeting leaders and facilitators as it results in fewer ideas and perspectives being considered. Group activities can be a productive way to overcome this issue. We have compiled the following group activity designs to help meeting leaders and facilitators spark meaningful engagement among all meeting participants.
Happy New Year! As we saw in the first installment in my series on international advancement efforts, it is critical to know key international holidays to best inform staff or a delegation about when (and when not to travel). Once you understand those parameters, the planning must begin and adequate time is necessary to create a successful advancement initiative based on strategic outcomes. I suggest working from nine months out. This advance planning with the academic year is necessary and intentional for several reasons: Advancement officers are not holding the responsibility alone for reaching out to constituents abroad. It is critical to keep the institution’s entire international agenda in mind and that requires a coordinated effort from alumni, development, special events, communications and marketing, and other departments such as admissions and graduate schools’ external relations offices. Advancement officers will also need to communicate with campus leadership and with volunteers abroad on a regular basis to best manage the expectations for everyone’s participation and support. Everyone involved is a “brand manager” and will have a piece of the promotional timeline. TWO DETAILED SCENARIOS I want to offer two scenarios — one in this article (below), and one in a follow-up article. […]
Bogged down in implementing your strategic plan? Try this creative meeting design to get things moving. Successful execution of a strategic plan separates the excellent from the “pretty good.” Creating great “visions” and ennobling pictures of the future for a campus is not difficult. There are many smart, dedicated and hardworking faculty, staff and administrators throughout every campus and they have powerful aspirations. The really hard part is the implementation part, and too few institutions are good at it. Problems are inevitable during an implementation process, but they are often covered up because people are reluctant to ask for help, don’t want to appear inadequate, or are “stuck” with what they are doing and lack good solutions. Having worked on strategic planning with hundreds of campuses over the last 25+ years, I have created the following meeting design. The Strategic Planning Implementation Clinic creates the opportunity to surface the real problems and pressing challenges that campus stakeholders are facing in implementing strategic priorities, and allows leaders to tap the thinking & resources of participants to generate constructive and realistic solutions to tough problems. This meeting design: One caution: This design will only work if the campus climate feels safe enough for participants to share real organizational problems. If failure […]
A presidential transition can be a challenging time, and those critical first conversations will set the tone for the partnership ahead. by Sasha Egorova, Academic ImpressionsInterviewing Jake Heuser, Bradley University Welcoming a new president can be an unnerving event for the whole campus. It can particularly be a challenging time for the vice president of advancement and the advancement team. Those critical conversations in the first few weeks of a new presidency can set the tone for the partnership between the president and the chief advancement officers in the months ahead–a partnership that will be critical to the health of the institution. We recently spoke with Jake Heuser, VP of Advancement at Bradley University, about what it takes to ensure a smooth transition. Heuser has been at Bradley for over 10 years, having raised over $100 million dollars while working with two presidents during his tenure. A couple of years ago, Bradley went through a presidential transition. Reflecting back on that experience, Heuser offered some key insights on how to establish a productive VP/President relationship during a presidential transition – and three steps to engage your new president effectively in fundraising. 1. The First Meeting: Overprepare, Have a Plan, But Stay […]
