Search Results for: meeting

Tips for Outreach to Area High Schools

Posted on by Greta Bell

Colleges frequently pursue partnerships with local high schools to improve college preparation and build a stronger pipeline for first-generation students, but these are often focused just on providing brief sessions either at the high school or on the college campus. Really effective partnerships involve more than just a quick one-and-done workshop. We contacted Mary Ontiveros, vice president for diversity at Colorado State University, to share lessons learned from the success of CSU’s Alliance Partnership Program and specific tips for colleges and universities looking to work in tandem with area high schools. More than Just Your Agenda: It’s About Addressing the Schools’ Needs “Don’t go in with a plan. Go in to listen. Find out what’s causing the problem, what barriers are keeping more first-generation students from attending college. Is it money? Is it lack of resources at the high school to provide sufficient counselors? Is it difficulty in getting parents involved? Is it concern over the rigor of the school’s classes and the level of college preparation? Does the school need multicultural training for their staff and instructors to help them better relate to a certain demographic? Find out what that school’s needs are. Then formulate your plan in response.” Mary […]

Encore and Live Q&A: Creating Agile Courses for an Uncertain Year

To continue to meet student needs and plan for shifts in an uncertain year, many institutions are planning courses that are adaptable to online, hybrid, and face-to-face learning environments. Dr. Elizabeth Barrie from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has led an effort to pivot existing courses using Kaufman’s notion of agile learning, most recently introducing 38 new agile courses. The agile model enables faculty to proactively design courses that are adaptable to any scenario. This model allows students to choose their own course path by using the combination of formats that works best for their lives, whether they are working full time, parenting, or pursuing double and triple majors. The framework gives students more control of their educational pace and experience while also allowing institutions to offer quality instruction and readiness for the unforeseen pivots like those we have experienced during the past few years. Join us for a practical and interactive virtual workshop with a question-and-answer period to learn how to prepare faculty to offer every course in face-to-face, hybrid, and online formats. In the re-airing of the workshop, you will: Learn the benefits of agile courses for the student, faculty, and institution Identify ideal courses for agile […]

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

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

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 Good is Your Crystal Ball?

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

with contributions from Amit Mrig (President, Academic Impressions)and Pat Sanaghan (President, The Sanaghan Group) How Academic Leaders Can Reinvigorate Forecasting and Planning Processes on their Campuses The recent surprise in the US presidential election results suggests that those who do not pay close attention to current trends and possible future events may be unprepared for sudden and impactful changes. This is especially a wake up call for those who are in leadership positions on college and university campuses. In today’s volatile environment, predictions that were once thought unlikely may actually have huge consequences. For example, many thought the call for free public higher education that surfaced several years ago was so unrealistic that it could be discounted. Now several states have enacted laws in that area. How many people predicted MOOCs, or even now have a good sense of their long-term implications? The FLSA executive ruling on overtime, originally due to take effect December 1, was stayed by a federal court. Competition from for-profit educational programs looked like it might be on the wane after the recent federal crackdown, but now the founder of Trump University is the POTUS, so what does that mean for the for-profit sector? How do […]

Communicating Conflicts of Interest to the Public

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

According to the Chronicle, one-fourth of private institutions do business with their trustees’ companies. Potential conflicts of interest involving board members or high-ranking officials certainly are not limited to private colleges, however; North Carolina State University’s termination of Mary Easley and the uncovering of the University of Illinois’ previous board’s interference in the admissions process each represent highly publicized examples. We asked Cindy Lawson, media relations expert and vice president for public relations and communications at DePaul University, for practical tips on what and how to communicate to the public when a conflict of interest involves a member of the board, in order to manage the impact on the institution’s reputation. Be Forthright and Specific “From my experience, the chances of an institution’s reputation remaining intact are far better when that institution is forthright and admits the conflict, shares as much information as it possibly can, and most importantly, describes the measures it is taking to ensure it doesn’t happen again, as opposed to trying to hide it, hoping that no one finds out, or worse — trying to deny it or cover it up once it is exposed.”Cindy Lawson, DePaul University In a case involving an unintentional conflict of […]

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

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

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 Kenneth Soldink

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 […]

We Need to Value How Women Use Vision and Conceptual Thinking to Lead

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

It’s no secret that more women in the workforce has not equaled more women in leadership. Women opt out because they don’t feel their work is meaningful, they object to the direction their institution or institutional culture is headed, or they believe their contributions aren’t valued. Countering this requires a systemic approach. by Rosalind Spigel, Organizational Development Consultant and Leadership Coach, Spigel Consulting  In this sixth article in our series in Challenging Androcentrism in the Academy, we’ll look at one set of leadership traits and behaviors we identified earlier in the series: vision and conceptual thinking. We’ll examine: In preparation for this article, I was fortunate to have interview conversations with many women in higher education. In our conversations about conceptual thinking, I discovered a distinction between “big ideas” and “vision.” Big ideas tend to excite. Vision can also excite, but for the women I spoke with, vision also includes more mundane aspects of operationalization which then receive less than enthusiastic responses from their male bosses. I would like to add that there were women I spoke with who did not perceive themselves or others being marginalized for their conceptual thinking. Nonetheless, if an institution is interested in higher levels of […]

Beyond the Acronym: Evolving DEI For Meaningful Change 

Posted on by Brady Stanton

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 […]

How Rush University Established a Mentoring Program for Women Faculty that Can Serve as a Model for Other Universities

Posted on by Brady Stanton

Susan Chubinskaya, PhDVice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Klaus Kuettner Professor for Osteoarthritis Research, Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Orthopedic Surgery, and Internal Medicine at Rush University Amarjit S. Virdi, PhDDirector of the Office of Rush Mentoring Programs, Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Rush University The Challenge As a private, nonprofit healthcare institution offering certificate, undergraduate (very few), graduate degrees, and postgraduate training, Rush University (RU), an academic arm of Rush University Medical Center and Rush System for Health in Chicago, has almost 2000 faculty, and 52% are women. Since July 2006, we’ve been invested in developing systemic mentoring programs for our faculty, beginning with the Rush Research Mentoring Program (RRMP), which helps early career faculty develop and lead independent, extramurally funded translational research programs. Building on the framework of the RRMP, we’ve subsequently developed other mentoring programs, such as Rush Educational Mentoring Program (REMP), mentoring program for postdoctoral fellows through Rush Postdoctoral Society (RPDS), and, recently, our Rush Women Faculty Mentoring Program (RWMP). All these programs provide tremendous resources to faculty, offer continued education credits, and are optional, though participation in these programs is highly encouraged. Gender equity and diversity is one of […]

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