Lori is the ninth President of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and the first female president in the Texas Tech University System. She joined TTUHSC in 1987, and has held multiple leadership positions during her tenure with the university, including Dean of the School of Health Professions and Provost and Chief Academic Officer. Lori led TTUHSC through an unprecedented global health pandemic. This required the transition of all on-campus academic instruction to online and a workforce of more than 5,000 on six campuses to remote operations. During this time, the university’s team members led collaborative efforts to produce personal protective equipment for its front-line health care team and providers across the region. They also played vital roles statewide in supplying viral transport medium for COVID-19 testing and conducting a national study on convalescent serum as a treatment option for the disease. As President of TTUHSC, Lori oversees a complex, multi-campus institution with Lubbock as the administrative center, and with regional campuses at Abilene, Amarillo, Dallas, Midland, and Odessa. TTUHSC is committed to regionalized, educational experiences provided across six schools that deliver quality education, research, patient care, and community service programs to meet the health care needs of West Texas, […]
At many institutions, the limited resources for external relations have been redirected to grow the office’s fund-raising capacity. Communications professionals, with jobs lost and budgets cut, watch two dynamics: the growth of decentralized communications and the growth of a sister office, development – both occurring at their perceived expense. And yet both demand more public relations and marketing support than ever as campaigns commonly reach the hundreds of thousands to billions of dollars. When not driven by an integrated strategy, decentralized communicators often message independently and can leave the central office scrambling to provide back-up support or clean up confusion. This is not a small issue. It is monumental and a problem that can be made better, if everyone understands that they are not silos, but integral agents in making their universities more successful and their students’ experiences more valuable. The successful advancement offices that are rebuilding, refocusing and recalibrating, are following five steps to deepen the relationships between development, alumni relations, and marcom. 1. Define the mission of public relations and marketing. Marketing’s sister offices have defined missions. Alumni relations serves alumni. Development raises private funds. But what is the mission of communications? Communications offices get pulled in multiple […]
This is a time of great transition in higher education. A gradual decrease in undergraduate enrollments has prompted colleges to focus on increasing retention and graduation rates as a means for stabilizing revenue and marketing for recruitment. At four-year colleges, faculty advisement has historically been limited to course planning, although more recent trends—initiated first by community colleges—have used professional advisors to offer wider-ranging services aimed at improving student success. The establishment of retention centers has played a significant role in reducing attrition, while allowing faculty to continue in their traditional role of ensuring their advisees meet graduation requirements. Changing student demographics and perspectives about college bring with them new challenges. The current generation has struggled through COVID and battled the mental health difficulties that accompanied the pandemic as well as the world around them. Students and parents now have new expectations of colleges and their roles in preparing students for a career. Those expectations include helping students to identify a career path, support for academic preparation, and larger roles in assisting students to find placement post-graduation. Families and students assume that faculty will also assist students with stress and mental health issues (a good thing as according to national surveys, […]
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 […]
A SERIES ON INNOVATIONS IN FUNDING ACADEMIC RESEARCHEd Mason, president of EMNR & Associates, is writing this series to assist academic leaders in finding creative strategies to merge public/private funding for existing and new research initiatives. Mason has studied an array of collaborative partnerships between the two offices most focused on external funding (the development office and research & grants), and he will be sharing some of the models he has observed, as well as directions for the future. We hope you will join us for this innovative series: Universities are faced with challenges that range from uncertain economic times to dwindling public support and declines in federal research funding allocations. To thrive in the future, all educational institutions are going to need more nimble and flexible planning and execution. As I noted in my previous article, there are a number of innovative models for leveraging donor and foundation support to fund academic research initiatives. What you need to do is have a clear understanding of your present areas of academic strength and be able to identify your best future opportunities to procure external funding for research that matters to private donors and philanthropic entities. The three-step process I will describe below […]
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 […]
I partner with leaders to connect deeply with their own values and strengths so they can empower others to move their organizations to the next level of excellence. Sherilyn is Professor Emerita at the University of Washington, a retired academic pediatrician and an ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC) with over 30 years of experience in academic medicine in the U.S. Her deep knowledge of the roles and responsibilities of academic faculty informs her coaching focus and approach. Sherilyn’s areas of coaching expertise include developing leadership skills, optimizing scholarly productivity (including grant writing and manuscript preparation), program development, navigating the promotion process, transitioning to retirement, increasing satisfaction with clinical responsibilities, enhancing teaching abilities and developing long-term career goals. Sherilyn’s coaching approach is person-centered and leverages appreciative inquiry, foundations of contemporary neuroscience and design thinking. She works with clients to identify their core values and individual strengths to co-create a safe space for productive experimentation toward achieving their goals. She is continuously exploring and leveraging concepts and techniques from a wide variety of leadership and coaching fields to meet her client’s needs. Sherilyn has successfully coached mid- and late-career faculty transitioning into new leadership roles, participating in institutional strategic planning, negotiating workplace […]
Tracking post-college outcomes continues to be an urgent issue as students, parents, and lawmakers press colleges to quantify the value of a college degree. Tracking results, however, is only half the battle, says Branden Grimmett, associate provost for the Office of Career and Professional Development at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Institutions that want to make a difference in their post-college outcomes need to transform their career services to better meet the changing needs of students and employers. Grimmett led the transformation of career services at St. Olaf College at the highly acclaimed Piper Center for Vocation and Career. This June he accepted a position at Loyola Marymount University, where he will re-imagine their Office of Career and Professional Development. We talked to him to learn more about why institutions need to re-envision their career services office now, what revamped programming looks like, and what steps you can take to take to move the process forward. Career Services Restructuring Needs to be Done Now Grimmett lists four reasons to reinvent campus career services: Awareness, engagement, and reputation are just as important as knowing where students land when they graduate. At St. Olaf, the economic turbulence between 2007 and 2009 […]
WHERE THIS ARTICLE BEGAN… Ashlyn Sowell was a faculty member at AI’s conference on Strengthening, Strategy and Growing Engagement for Alumni Boards. This article was sparked by conversation among schools at the event who were considering the next steps for adding a board or council to their young alumni programs. Some critical questions were raised; here, we start to answer them. Should You Start a Young Alumni Council? The Answer is Maybe Volunteer groups can be a great asset, but do require cultivation and meaningful work to engage with your institution. Here we will talk more about how Gettysburg College made its decision and what the outcome has been. Gettysburg College has a strong history with its alumni board, dating back many years. Around 2008, alumni relations staff began thinking about ways to engage young alumni who made up a large percentage of the overall alumni population and had unique ways that they wanted to interact with their alma mater. As such, a proposal was made to the Board of Trustees, and we created the BOLD Council (Burgians of the Last Decade), a young alumni council of 25 members. The council’s strategies include ways to engage alumni through communications, interaction […]
Here’s how Central Georgia Technical College is expanding a student success coach program, focusing especially on GED students and students placed in developmental education. SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 24 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. A little more than half of the students at Central Georgia Technical College are first-generation students who may not have the family support they need to successfully navigate college. Officials at the two-year college have spent more than a decade incubating strategies to effectively support first-gen and other underrepresented and academically underprepared students through graduation. This includes an effective model for using success coaches and a college success course to help guide students through their academic career. Now with the help of a $3.2 million First in the World grant, CGTC will expand the success coach model to all three CGTC campuses. They are also […]
