READ THE FULL SERIES Earlier this year, we conducted a study of how institutions are planning for the design and placement of student life facilities over the next 12 months. Our study included: We want to take this moment to share our findings with you. They’re intriguing: Finding 1: Student Life Facilities are Being Planned in Tandem We were fascinated to learn that institutions are now thinking about core student facilities in conjunction with one another in ways that we haven’t seen in the past. These are no longer isolated projects. In fact, 40% of institutions are planning all of these facilities in the next two years, and 50% are planning more than one. FROM OUR INTERVIEWS “Recreational facilities, residence halls, the student center: we used to think about these facilities independently, but student needs have forced us to think about them collectively. How can we think creatively about maximizing finite space in conjunction with student improvement goals? How can we create spaces for spontaneous student interaction and organic student programming?”Respondent from a small women’s college in the West Finding 2: Institutions are Continuing to Push for More Intentionality in Design and Placement The survey validated that the push for a […]
A few years ago, I realized that social had tremendous potential that was only increasing, not just as a transactional communication tool but as a space to have meaningful relationships with prospects, current students, their parents, alumni, community members, even the media. However, up to that time, my campus had focused more on improving old media than on investing in new. The danger of falling behind if we didn’t do something to jumpstart our efforts was real. We needed to cover a lot of ground, both technical and strategic, in a short time. That’s why I brought a team to Academic Impressions’ Social Media Strategy for Higher Education: Beyond the Basics conference (twice, in fact). The breadth of material at the conference and how it was covered allowed my staff and me to plan our work, set goals, and identify the metrics to gauge our progress. We talked the whole way home about next steps and began implementing almost immediately after the conference. Among State University of New York’s 27 four-year campuses, SUNY Oneonta was ranked #1 in social media presence by students in 2015. Engagement with our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts continues to increase, and we’re shifting ad dollars away from traditional media […]
At a 2011 Academic Impressions conference on “Integrated Strategic Planning and Resource Allocation” (San Antonio, January 2011), 50 presidents, provosts, chief finance officers, and other members of senior leadership teams from an array of public and private institutions were asked about the key issues and barriers they saw to making a planning and budgeting process effective — and ensuring its implementation. Thirty-seven of the attendees (nearly 75 percent) cited low trust as one of their primary obstacles. Two of the presenters at the AI conference — Larry Goldstein, president of Campus Strategies, LLC, and Pat Sanaghan, president of The Sanaghan Group — have offered to comment on the issue and offer practical steps for strategic planning in a low-trust environment. Commitment from the Top Goldstein and Sanaghan: First, the president and the cabinet must make a public commitment to creating and implementing an inclusive, participative, and transparent planning process. This applies just as much — and possibly more — to the resource allocation process. Plans are one thing, but trust becomes especially critical when money and other resources (positions, space, etc.) are at stake. Without taking steps to cultivate institutional trust, a president simply cannot lead. In a low-trust environment, every decision becomes a debate. […]
According to a January 2010 Academic Impressions survey of department chairs, 64 percent of department chairs felt that they were not adequately prepared to assume the role when they first began chairing their department. And of the various duties and responsibilities of the academic chair, 43 percent felt least prepared to address advancement and fundraising initiatives. Yet by virtue of the chair’s position, not only are there many times when a department leader will need to be involved in the conversation between a potential donor and the institution, there are also many times when the chair may need to be the only official involved in the conversation. This is because the donor may want to hear from the academic leader in his or her field of interest, rather than from a professional fundraiser. And as more institutions, both private and public, look to ramp up fundraising efforts, the role of academic leaders will become increasingly vital. We turned to Jason McNeal, Ph.D., consultant with Gonser Gerber Tinker Stuhr LLP, for his advice on what those new to the department chair position most need to know in order to take an active and effective role in fundraising. He offers these five […]
A NEW SERIES This is the first in a series of articles from Ken Smith, Virginia Tech’s vice provost for resource management and institutional effectiveness. Smith has both chaired and staffed multiple committees charged with overall improvement of special sessions operations at Virginia Tech. He holds a PhD in Educational Leadership from Virginia Tech. You may also be interested in Smith’s recent podcast, “Approaching the Academic Calendar More Creatively.” More colleges are considering offering special sessions outside the traditional academic calendar. In some cases, institutions are moving beyond summer and winter inter-sessions to provide condensed terms in May (immediately following spring term) or August (immediately preceding fall term). There are even “spring break” sessions that offer opportunity for very compressed but innovative courses. Special sessions not only provide the institution with financial gains by generating additional tuition revenues; they also offer opportunities to improve student success, completion rates, and job readiness. For example: For faculty, special sessions can offer not only extra pay but also an opportunity to try out innovative approaches to teaching a course. Because of the shorter time frame, many special session courses are delivered with a mix of on-line and in person instruction. Certain types of […]
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Have you experienced this scenario? Your faculty members attend a professional development training and return to campus excited to try new ideas. Fast-forward a few months…and little has changed because pedagogical transformation was shunted aside in favor of day-to-day teaching and research obligations. When this scenario happened at El Camino College, a group of faculty decided to change it. “Life’s very, very busy so it’s hard to take this next step,” explains Kristie Daniel-DiGregorio, Professor of Human Development. Along with her colleagues, she noticed that faculty would feel “electrified” by training, but that afterward, techniques were only implemented in an ad hoc fashion. She and a team of her colleagues wondered what would happen if the college continued to support their professional development on an ongoing basis after the training concluded. El Camino’s Faculty Inquiry Partnership Program — FIPP — was created to do just that. And they’ve been tracking the results. Student success rates in courses taught by faculty who participated in FIPP are two percent higher than rates in courses taught by faculty who had not attended. More than 90% of students reported that the strategies faculty in FIPP employed helped them better understand the material and increased their […]
The silo mentality that often exists on our campuses often limits our collective actions, and creates redundancy and replication. Given shrinking resources and the rapid pace of change, the siloed approach to team building and decision making is neither strategic nor feasible. We must work collaboratively to utilize the collective talents of our campus stakeholders. And learning to build high performing teams is one of the most effective ways we can meet the many challenges that confront us. If a senior leader can build a stellar team, the organizational leverage that can be achieved is powerful and can be a game changer for a campus. In this scenario: Stakeholders understand that cross-boundary collaboration is expected and supported by the actions of the senior team, because they model the way. Campuses are able to solve complex challenges because people work together to manage these challenges. People share resources, ideas, attention and effort, recognizing that the team, not just some individuals on it, really matter in serving the mission and vision of their campus. We have had the opportunity to work with scores of senior teams in higher education. Almost always, these teams were comprised of highly intelligent, dedicated, honest, and mission-driven individuals. But […]
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