As Carol Moore notes in her article, “Advising: Meeting Student Needs?”, “only 22% of colleges have the advising function staffed by professional advisors.” At schools with professional advisors, students often encounter a well-oiled machine of advising that transitions them from their first years of college with a general advisor to more focused work with a major-specific faculty member or advisor. Students at institutions without professional advisors need that same kind of support and guidance in navigating their academic careers, and if they do not receive it, they may struggle to retain at the institution. At the majority of institutions, meanwhile, undergraduate students are too often left with faculty advisors who are neither trained nor given the time to provide appropriate advising. Join us for a one-hour facilitated discussion on the challenges of faculty advising and how to equip faculty with the skills to be successful advisors. You’ll have the opportunity to discuss how your institution prepares faculty for advising, as well as what changes you’d need to make to incorporate advising as service into promotion and tenure portfolios. The author, Carol Moore, will be present to answer your questions and share her thoughts about the changes needed to ensure student […]
I. Introduction The Great Resignation, the Great Attrition, the Great Disengagement, and the Big Quit are a few of the names for the phenomenon occurring throughout different industries, including higher education.1 Higher education is not immune from this great exodus and is at a turning point as retention of faculty, administrators, and staff is more important than ever.2 What’s joy got to do with it?3 Can it drive those who work in higher education to stay, leave, or return?4 Money is not enough by itself to retain workers.5 Over the last two years, higher education, like other industries, is facing a fundamental shift in how people view their work, their employer, and their life.6 Perhaps this is an opportunity for the Great Joy: to (re)discover joy in your work; reevaluate what you want from work, be open minded, and possibly reinvent how you work, where you work, who you work with, and what you work on. This article explores the challenges higher education faces as the pandemic continues to alter attitudes on work. It then offers some strategies to (re)discover joy in work. Finally, it discusses ways to maximize joy in work. II. The Struggle Exhausted, isolated, disconnected, burnt out, […]
Eric Silva MSE Assistant Director TRIO Student Support Services at Metropolitan State University of Denver Ally Garcia EdD Assistant Dean for the Center of Equity and Student Achievement and the Director of TRIO Student Support Services at Metropolitan State University of Denver Higher education, since its inception, has been exclusive in who can pursue higher levels of learning and engagement. This oppressive truth not only has subjected students to pain and trauma, but also the faculty and staff who work within those ivory towers. In order to interrupt, and hopefully change these marginalizing spaces, it is paramount that institutions of higher learning acknowledge, assess, and devote resources and time to deconstructing practices, policies, and procedures which have been normed on the exclusionary nature of higher education. This position often toys with the theoretical question of the overall mission of higher education and its connection to serving the public good. The following work was our form of resistance to normative hiring structures within Student Affairs. Although not exhaustive, the work below may help guide you and your institution on its own journey of assessing and changing current hiring and promotion structures to truly serve the public good. The process In the […]
Last fall, Academic Impressions launched our inaugural summit for Provosts. Held for 20 participating Provosts, the summit’s focus was on how Provosts can lead in the face of increasing ambiguity and complexity, a topic for which there is a lot more “talk” than “walk.” We wanted to show Provosts that there are proven strategies for doing so, and in particular, for engaging their teams in hard conversations when stakes are high. This is even more important because most senior teams avoid talking about the really hard topics—like allocating scarce resources, cutting programs, etc. At many of the institutions we work with, Deans are more likely to lobby the Provost privately rather than to voice candid opinions in team meetings. But not only does this pattern make it much harder for the Provost to make effective decisions, it also isolates decisions with the Provost and ensures that Deans can easily absolve themselves of any responsibility. What’s more, when the hard issues are only raised in one-on-one meetings, Deans and Vice Provosts don’t get to see the whole picture. The underlying mental models and assumptions that drive decisions can’t be challenged. And it reinforces a zero-sum mindset where there are only winners […]
Testing your campus’s crisis response plans frequently and rigorously is key to ensuring that you can protect campus resources and recover speedily following a crisis, and as of July 1, 2010, annual testing is mandated under the updated Clery Act. Nonetheless, annual testing represents a significant shift in practice for many institutions. Nearly a quarter of higher education administrators polled in an Academic Impressions survey in January 2010 reported their institutions had not tested their campus crisis response plan in over five years. Another 13% said their plans had not been tested within the past two years. “This finding indicates that a sizable subset of colleges and universities may be unaware of their crisis response plan’s actual ability to effectively address a modern campus emergency — a salient gamble in the wake of a series of high-profile campus crises.”Marla Whipple, Academic Impressions To help institutions that are preparing for annual testing of their emergency response plans, we turned to Hamilton College’s director of campus safety, Francis Manfredo, who shared with us lessons learned from his college’s recent drill. We also want to share strategies from Steve Charvat with the University of Washington, Cindy Lawson with the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Eugene […]
FREE WEBCAST Using Metrics to Support Employee Success and Retention—A Discussion for Advancement Leaders Live Webcast: Monday, June 13, 2022 | 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Eastern Consider ways to restructure your metrics to meet changing philanthropic goals and staffing needs. Over the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the way many advancement professionals approached their work with donors. At the same time, the pandemic also impacted employee hiring and retention in advancement shops. Today, advancement leaders are searching for ways to stabilize their fundraising and staffing needs and are considering questions like: How do we need to adjust our metrics to meet our institution’s current needs and philanthropic goals in the wake of the pandemic? How can our approach with metrics also support employee success and retention? What steps do we need to take to make these changes and what do we hope the outcomes to be? If you are an advancement leader who is considering ways in which frontline fundraising and other metrics can not only help you achieve your philanthropy goals but also bolster individual and team success and support employee retention, we invite you to join us for this free webcast to examine these and other […]
As our article “The Library of the 21st Century” attests, the academic library continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and library administrators across higher education continue to wrestle with the question of how best to adapt their libraries to changing student and other user needs on campus. There is a lot of uncertainty about how best to revitalize the library space so that it becomes — or continues to be — student-centered, flexible, and reflective of the institution’s academic mission. At Academic Impressions, we have engaged hundreds of library directors in conversation — with us and with each other — in our annual library revitalization conference, which we founded in 2007. Recently, we sat down with two directors — Karen Clay (Library Director of Pierce Library at Eastern Oregon University) and Sara Bushong (Dean of University Libraries at Bowling Green State University) — to learn how they continued that conversation on their own campuses after the event, and what approaches they have taken to successfully modernize their own libraries to meet current user needs. In this interview, Clay and Bushong present slideshows of “before and after” photos of their academic libraries, and discuss in detail how they were able to: We […]
On average, it takes three submissions before a faculty member will get their proposal for funding accepted by a grant agency. To complicate matters, the reviews that accompany the rejection are often complex and contradictory, so it can be difficult to know how to move forward – especially when many faculty get little help interpreting reviews. As such, many faculty members, especially junior faculty, simply give up on the proposal too soon and do not put effort into revising and resubmitting it. When this happens, important research may be left undone, the institution cannot meet its strategic goal of growing research, and faculty find it difficult to publish in top journals and stay on track for promotion and tenure. Join our expert instructor to learn how to review and analyze your declined grant proposals with a fresh perspective – one that will give you confidence in how to best move forward with your declined proposal, as well as all future proposals. Our expert will guide you through the process that will teach you how to: Objectively assess your individual reviews Identify patterns and uncover the most critical feedback Anticipate hidden weaknesses Identify both the root causes and underlying conditions preventing an award Develop a plan for resubmission If you’re looking to better understand the proposal review process and put yourself in reviewers’ shoes, this webcast is for you!
As a result of COVID-19, almost all the interactions you have with your students, alumni, colleagues, and donors are now through webcam in virtual meetings. Environmental factors such as poor lighting and background movement can become distractions and have implications on the level of engagement and potential for relationship building. Your body language and eye contact play an important role too as they can either facilitate meaningful communication or hinder it. Join us online for an interactive training where you will learn best practices for creating a professional and engaging persona during a video call. Our expert instructor will demonstrate simple tips and strategies for improving the quality of your physical surroundings and your presentation style during video calls. We will discuss how to: Place your laptop in the right position to maximize your lighting and appropriately frame yourself on screen Choose a background that does not offend or disturb others Reduce unnecessary movement to minimize distractions Maintain appropriate eye contact and body language that resonates with others online We have deliberately designed this training to go beyond the stock tips and strategies you’ll find online. You will have the opportunity to turn on your camera so that you can […]
Mike is an executive coach and higher education leader with a focus in group dynamics, interpersonal communication, leadership, and second career development. Three questions inspire Mike’s work as a coach: What brings you joy? What are you good at? What does the world need you to be? Mike’s professional career has taken him in many different directions, but always with the same focus, on helping others to grow, change, and become better. As a faith community leader, spiritual director, learning coach, academic counselor, and now as an Assistant Dean for Faculty and Student Success at the MGH IHP in Boston, Mike has developed and honed deep listening skills, asking questions that both challenge and inspire, and he knows how to accompany a client on their unique journey without imposing his own agenda or needs. He is especially skilled in dealing with grief, change of career, LGBTQ+ leaders, and crisis leadership. His own work as a faculty member enables him to understand the unique challenges of faculty who may be torn between the demands of scholarship, teaching, and service, while struggling to meet home and personal concerns. Mike’s educational background includes an MDiv with coursework in counseling, philosophy, and psychology, a […]
