Search Results for: meeting

Effective Meeting Design Using the Five Paths to Leadership®

Take this opportunity to rethink how your meetings are designed by exploring the hidden expectations and preferences people bring to the table. Using the Five Paths to Leadership® model as a framework, you’ll reflect on your current meeting practices, collaborate in small groups to design your “ideal meeting,” and share insights that highlight different leadership strengths and needs. Together, we’ll surface practical ways to make your meetings more inclusive, engaging, and productive.

How Community Colleges Are Pivoting This Fall to Meet the Needs of Students

The pandemic coupled with economic hardship has created an enrollment shortfall for many community colleges. In many cases, those who were planning on attending this fall find themselves out of work, working additional hours, and/or grappling with childcare/homeschooling challenges. During this two-hour recorded discussion, you will hear about some of the barriers students are experiencing and how community colleges are pivoting to meet their needs.

5 Steps to Facilitate Your Title IX Hearing Deliberation Meetings

After the live Title IX hearing, as a hearing panelist, you have the responsibility of determining the outcome of the case. You must analyze the facts, assess the credibility of witness testimony, and maintain razor-sharp focus on your sexual harassment policy definitions—all of which require technical skills and knowledge. However, there’s also an art to these meetings. You must be able to facilitate critical conversations in a high pressure and often emotional environment about how to interpret and manage implicit bias, gut feelings, and differences in attitudes and motives. Join us online for a four-hour virtual training to learn how to balance the science and art of high-pressure deliberations and facilitate successful meetings. Our expert instructor will provide you with a five-step framework to ensure you and your decision-making peers are structuring your meetings with efficiency and respect. You will practice the framework by applying the five steps to a mock case and immersing yourself in the role of the deliberation committee. You will also walk away with tips for how to prepare the determination letter.

Developing a High-Performing and Productive Advising Department, Part 1: Assessing and Meeting Student Needs

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

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 […]

Developing a High-Performing and Productive Advising Department, Part 2: Assessing and Meeting Employee Needs

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

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 […]

Finding Your Feet as Chief of Staff

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

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 […]

Strengthening Yield Communications to Prevent Summer Melt Webcast Recording

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.

Is Your Campus Ready for the Influx?

Posted on by Sarah Adams

A Faster Way to Prep Your Team for the Start of the Year For years in student affairs, I managed move-in in residence life, and I can tell you exactly what the week feels like from the inside: a line of cars that doesn’t end, a student in tears because her roommate assignment changed overnight, a parent who wants to speak to someone in charge right now, and a staff of RAs running on four hours of sleep and their own first-week nerves. Every one of those moments is what our Service Excellence Toolkit calls a “moment of truth,” a chance to create magic or leave someone with an impression that sticks for the rest of the year. You don’t get many chances to redo a first impression, and move-in week hands you hundreds of them, all at once. Here’s what I wish someone had told me back then: what your team needs in that week isn’t a month of training. It’s the right five minutes at the right moment. When I was in the role, I didn’t know a resource like this existed. Academic Impressions offers a full customer service certification, and it’s genuinely good: it gives staff a […]

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