Search Results for: meeting

What Does Customer Service in Higher Education Actually Look Like?

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

Customer service in higher education is still new and few are certain how to do it well. Here’s what our panel of experts have to say. Providing good customer service to students has become an expectation in today’s higher education environment, yet customer service in higher education is still new and few are certain how to do it well, or what the term means when placed in the context of students, faculty, and staff. To learn more about how colleges and universities are adapting the concept of service competencies to this sector, and to gather practical advice for how units and departments can navigate this shift in mindset, we turned to three acknowledged experts on customer service in higher education: These three are also the authors of the popular book Elevating Customer Service in Higher Education: A Practical Guide. Sarah Seigle. Hi Heath, Emily, Eileen. Thank you for joining us for this conversation! The first question we want to ask is: How has the way higher ed looks at customer service changed over the past 5 years? Emily Richardson. The expectation of immediate responsiveness was not around 5 years ago, and in the digital age, we now expect a response to a […]

Using Metrics to Support Employee Success and Retention—A Discussion for Advancement Leaders

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 […]

How Gender Bias in Higher Education Leadership Gets in the Way of the Collaboration We Need

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Gender bias in higher education can lead us to prize men’s voices over women’s and to value authoritarian and transactional leadership over transformational, collaborative leadership. Yet collaboration is key to meeting the complex challenges our departments and institutions of higher education now face. So let’s explore: How best can men and women work together to develop this critical leadership trait that has traditionally been considered “feminine”? by Rosalind Spigel, Organizational Development Consultant and Leadership Coach, Spigel Consulting  Previous articles in this series: In this series we are looking at leadership traits, how they are deployed and recognized differently for men and women, and how gender bias impedes women’s advancement within our colleges and universities. In this fourth article, we’ll take a close look at collaboration. We’ll examine: Why Collaboration is So Critical Remember that memo distributed by a now ex-employee of Google, criticizing diversity and defending the skewed percentage of male coders? After debunking the former employee’s false claim that men were inherently better coders for “biological” reasons, senior leaders at Google also argued that the coder “had fundamentally misunderstood what skills were needed…such as collaboration, creativity and teamwork” (Swinson, 2018, p. 332). While there are many differences between the Google campus and […]

10 Critical Lessons I’ve Learned About Implementing a Strategic Plan

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

I have been involved with over one hundred planning efforts on a variety of campuses (including DePaul University, Central Community College, Tarleton State University, Stephen F. Austin State University, The University of the West Indies, Saint Joseph’s University, The University of California, Santa Cruz, Cornell University, Anoka Ramsey Community College). I have had my share of successes and failures with implementation efforts. Both the failures and the successes leave important clues. The success rate for the implementation of strategic plans is dismal, with the percentage of failed implementations ranging anywhere from 63% to 90%. In fact, Robert Kaplan of the Balanced Scorecard fame (1996, 2000, 2008) estimates that 90% of strategies fail due to poor execution. Actually creating strategies and inspiring strategic plans is not hard work. We have many intelligent, dedicated people throughout our campuses who have powerful hopes and aspirations.  But having beautiful pictures of the future is not enough; we must be able to produce them.  That’s the hard, difficult part of strategic planning. We must become world-class at actually executing our strategic plans. This will not be easy. I want to talk about some practices I’ve learned that work. Here are 10 of the most critical. 1. Always […]

How One Institution’s New Approach to Budgeting is Creating a Culture of High Trust

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

Recently, AI’s program manager Grace Spivak and our director of research and publications Daniel Fusch had the opportunity to interview Steve Kreidler, the vice president of administration and finance at Metropolitan State University of Denver, a public institution enrolling 20,000 undergraduate students. Several years ago, Metro State underwent a transformational strategic planning process and instituted an advisory budget task force that operates in an entirely new way. To learn more, we invited Steve Kreidler to speak with us about: Here are the key findings from our interview… 1. Bringing Transparency to the Budget Grace Spivak, AI. Can you describe how the new budgeting task force builds trust through transparency? Steve Kreidler. Previously, Metro’s budgeting process involved three people in a room (the president, the VP of administration, and the budget director). And this isn’t unusual; it’s common for universities have a small group huddle over the budget without gathering much input. What that leads to is the complete belief throughout the rest of the campus that deals are being made, some colleagues are getting preferential treatment, and that there is more money available than is being distributed. Today, we have a budget task force that includes a representative from each of the formal […]

Student Resilience: How One Institution is Helping At-Risk Freshmen Seize a Second Chance

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

If this article proves useful…You can take a deeper dive into this Middle Tennessee State University case study and a case study from Bay Path University in our recorded webcast. We’ve written a lot in past articles about the importance of resilience or “grit” to student persistence, and about what some offices on campus can do to help students—particularly first-generation and PELL-eligible students—build their resilience. Middle Tennessee State University has adopted a remarkably comprehensive and affordable (and therefore replicable) approach to doing so. To learn more, we spoke recently with Vincent Windrow, formerly the University’s Director of Intercultural and Diversity Affairs and now the Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success, and Dr. Rick Sluder, Vice Provost for Student Success at MTSU. They shared with us an in-depth look at MTSU’s REBOUND program: its three key phases, the results it has produced, and practical tips for other institutions that may wish to implement a similar initiative. What MTSU Set Out to Do Enrollment of students at MTSU who identify as either first-generation or are PELL-eligible has increased by 24% over the past five years. Now, nearly 50% of the incoming freshman class each year (1,400 out of 2,800 students) fall into […]

What Happens When Volunteers Are No Longer a “Nice to Have” Resource, But Instead a Strategic Investment?

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Most colleges treat volunteers as “nice to have” resource, but a well-managed volunteer infrastructure can mean better fundraising, stronger student outcomes, and deeper relationships with donors, alumni, and friends of the institution. by Valerie Jones, College of Saint Benedict The Scenario In October 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted from a rural road in St. Joseph, Minnesota. The event made national headlines and united the community in support of his family. Twenty-eight years later, their worst fears were confirmed. As the grieving family began planning a memorial service in 2016, the College of Saint Benedict (CSB) offered to host. The invitation drew RSVPs from more than 6,000 people, including state and national dignitaries. Logistics such as parking, shuttles, security, media management, hospitality, and more demanded resources. With only two weeks to prepare and with all normal functions of the college already maxed out with the beginning of the fall semester, the college turned to the one resource that would make all the difference: volunteers. Within 10 days, CSB recruited, trained, and deployed roughly 125 volunteers to support the memorial service. Volunteers worked alongside college staff parking cars, ushering dignitaries, greeting shuttles, guiding media members, tending to presenters, collecting condolences and […]

Senior Leadership Transitions: A Coaching Package

Senior Leadership Transitions A COACHING PACKAGE Unlock personalized support for your transition into your next senior leadership position. Overview In today’s world of higher education, senior leaders starting a new position need to quickly get the ball rolling and progress through often-competing tensions, including: Assessing their new situation with speed and precision, while also taking the time to learn about the organization’s culture, history, and context Fostering strong relationships across multiple diverse stakeholders, while also building trust where trust is low or has been broken Assessing competing priorities and responding to acute inherited challenges that require quick and decisive action Negotiating both the knowns and the unknowns as they lay the foundations for their work In this environment, it has become increasingly critical for senior leaders to craft a plan before beginning their new positions in order to hit the ground running with swift and courageous action. Join a pair of expert consultant coaches to engage in a series of 10 one-hour sessions, scheduled monthly based on your personal availability. This coaching solution is an opportunity for you to meet with experienced coaches two-on-one to discuss common issues unique to senior leadership within higher education. Each meeting’s agenda will be […]

Beyond the Acronym: Evolving DEI For Meaningful Change 

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

Over the past year, there have been a number of think pieces and declarations related to the need to maintain DEI as integral to the success of campuses. While many of these well-written and impactful statements offer a myriad of reasons we continue to need DEI programs, effective approaches to maintain these programs beyond “fight for the right to say/keep DEI” are harder to come by. We demand courageous leadership (as if DEI professionals haven’t always operated with courage) and then we define that courage as the willingness to put out a statement affirming their values and/or affirm that they will continue to say DEI. But if we’re being honest, that has always been the problem we’ve never addressed: allowing DEI to simply be platitudes and virtue signals, as if the words people say in public are always translated into meaningful action. And even when the words are truly courageous, the reality is that courage without a strategy is either ineffective or reckless.  As we transition from “fact-checking” to “community notes”, it is imperative that we infuse diverse experiences and perspectives within the overall lived experience. We must help everyone around us think critically about sources of knowledge and the […]

3 Lessons from New Zealand for Advancement Leaders

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

A COLUMN FROM GETTYSBURG COLLEGEThis article is the fourth in a series by Ashlyn Sowell, Gettysburg’s associate vice president and campaign director. The previous articles are:Developing Your Campaign Reports: Getting it Right the First TimeSpring Clean Your Major Gifts Portfolio4 Lessons Learned from Campaign Volunteers at Gettysburg College Today, Sowell shares some critical reminders that are fresh on her mind after spending half a year with her New Zealand colleagues. For the past six months, I’ve had the good fortune to be living in Auckland, New Zealand while my husband is on sabbatical from Gettysburg College. Depending on whom you ask, the Kiwis are about 10-20 years behind the United States in creating a culture of philanthropy and in growing their advancement programs. And there’s nothing like looking at a young country to remind you of some important building blocks for development and alumni relations — building blocks that we might otherwise neglect in the rush of our work. I had the chance to experience these fresh reminders firsthand as I got to know colleagues across this small and wonderful country. Even for those of us with more mature programs, the following reminders from three of my New Zealand colleagues can […]

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