Search Results for: meeting

Discovering and Acting on Your Students’ Post-Pandemic Online Preferences: An Update

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

Introduction Like a great many other institutions, we emerged from the pandemic knowing that the disruptions of the last few years would inevitably lead to changes in the preferences and desires of our student population around the educational model and how education gets delivered. We also knew that, to remain successful and competitive as an undergraduate program of ~2,900 students in a typical college of business at a large, public land-grant institution, we needed to keep in close touch with how those preferences were evolving. This article serves to tell that story: how we went about understanding our students’ changing attitudes about the educational model, what the data pointed to, and what changes we made in response. Students now clearly prefer to have online classes in all areas of their curricula, and they prefer asynchronous offerings over synchronous – a large change from what our data was telling us just one year ago. We hope that by telling this story, we urge and inspire other units to do the same: not only is it important to continually monitor and adjust to best meet your constituents’ needs, but those who are willing to adapt quickly have a distinct opportunity to take […]

Higher Ed is Facing Adaptive Changes: Why This Conversation? Why Right Now?

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

The Changes You Face Now Are Different From the Changes in the Past We’re well-equipped, in higher education, to meet technical change head-on. We’re often less well-equipped for adaptive change. This is a distinction Ron Heifetz drew, first in his thought-provoking book Leadership without Easy Answers (1998) and later with Martin Linsky in Leadership on the Line (2002). With technical challenges, situations arise where current knowledge, expertise and resources are enough to deal effectively. A technical problem is not necessarily trivial or simple but its solution lies within the organization’s current repertoire of resources (such as updated technology, takeaways from past experience, or decisions to invest more money or people). With adaptive challenges, there are fewer clear answers. Adaptive challenges cannot be solved with current knowledge and expertise, but require experimentation, risk taking, creativity and the ability to use “failures” as learning opportunities. The problem is that we too often treat adaptive challenges as technical ones. On top of this, many people tend to resist or deny adaptive challenges (e.g., Khan Academy, MOOCs, mobile technology in the classroom) because these challenges could dramatically change the way they think and act. Often, these people expect their leaders to come up with […]

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

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

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 […]

Bridging the Gap Between Advancement and Academic Research: The 3 “C” Strategy

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

A SERIES ON INNOVATIONS IN FUNDING ACADEMIC RESEARCH We hope you will join us for this innovative series: The “3C” Strategy for More Effective Fundraising Advancement and research offices can optimize their strategies to compete successfully for external funds by utilizing the “3C” approach. The “3C” approach is: Strategies for Enhanced Communication Over several decades, advancement and research offices have developed distinctly different approaches for fundraising. Advancement’s role is to procure gifts from donors who have very specific interests in funding priorities. Research works with faculty to compete for grants for specific scientific, outreach and training programs. Also, there are distinct “global” perspectives on each office role in working with their constituencies. Planning, facilitation and open discussions are vital to creating enhanced communication between the two offices. This is a new endeavor for many institutions, so take the time — whether it is 3 months or 1 year — to develop good rapport between your offices. To bridge this gap: Effective Collaboration Strategies Improved communication between advancement and research offices creates opportunities to pursue new funding sources. An effective collaborative model is composed of: Coordination Strategies for Advancement and Research The goal of successfully coordinating grants and gifts is to […]

Naming Opportunities for Athletics: 4 Tips

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

Because the marketplace for public arenas and sports stadiums is now saturated with corporate namings and sponsorships, many corporations are turning increasingly to the higher education sector for naming opportunities. At the same time, many athletics departments in higher education are striving to become more entrepreneurial, particularly at institutions that have recently cut athletics budgets to preserve funding for academic programs. Yet often athletics directors focus almost solely on fundraising, neglecting the growing marketplace for athletics sponsorships. Though sponsorships are usually far smaller in dollar amount than philanthropic naming gifts, it’s important to realize that: “More corporations are seeing the value of aligning themselves with like institutions to build awareness of their brand. These opportunities deserve more than a cursory glance.”Vincent Duckworth, ViTreo We turned to Vincent Duckworth, partner and chief marketing officer at Vitreo, to learn more about how institutions can take advantage of this changing marketplace. Duckworth offers these four tips. Tip 1: Do You Have a Naming Policy for Your Athletics Naming Opportunities? Duckworth advises that your naming policy needs to provide guidelines around: This policy needs to be transparent and publically available. This ensures both that corporate sponsors can find you — and that you can […]

Advancement/Academic Partnerships: Identifying Areas of Untapped Opportunity

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

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 […]

Spotlight on Innovation: How Central Georgia Technical College Success Coaches Will Provide Collaborative Support to At-Risk Students

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

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 […]

Assessing Student Learning Outcomes: Surveys Aren’t Enough

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

In a recent Academic Impressions webcast, student learning assessment expert John Hoffman polled student affairs representatives from 200 institutions of higher education about their data collection methods for assessing student learning. Participants were asked to select their two most common methods of gathering data. The results were dismaying but perhaps unsurprising: …but, only: The reliance on surveys is telling. Surveys appear easy to design and deploy, but Hoffman cautions that there are a number of shortcomings with using surveys as your primary method of collecting data to assess student learning: KEYS TO EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT: “ROLLING UP YOUR SLEEVES” “Surveys are valuable, but often what we get is the student’s self-report of their learning. Yes, you can test them within the survey, for instance by asking if the student can name three examples of services provided by your career development center — that invites more direct assessment of what they have learned. But to really get the data we need, we have to roll up our sleeves and collect data during interaction with the students.”John Hoffman, California State University, Fullerton KEYS TO EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT: FOCUS ON COHORT LEARNING “You might be asking, ‘How am I supposed to assess learning in a […]

Resources for Organizational Leaders

Resources for Organizational Leaders Leadership doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intentional development, a shared language, and a deep commitment to collaboration. The Five Paths to Leadership® framework offers the flexibility and depth to help you grow individual leaders, strengthen teams, and embed a leadership culture across departments and divisions. This path is ideal for: Senior leaders and executives HR and organizational development professionals Campus-wide leadership and strategy teams Why Embed Five Paths in Your Leadership Strategy Effective leadership strategy starts with the right foundation. Embedding the Five Paths model into your leadership development efforts enables you to: Give leaders and teams a shared language for understanding leadership styles Build trust, collaboration, and psychological safety across departments Improve communication, decision-making, and innovation Support leaders at every level — from emerging supervisors to senior administrators Create a more resilient and adaptive leadership culture Bring Five Paths to Life on Your Campus Five Paths can support institutional transformation through a variety of delivery models. Here’s how you can bring it to life at scale: Self-Assessment Licenses Make the Five Paths self-assessment available across your department, division, or institution. Choose from individual, team, or enterprise-level licenses to create shared language and foster cross-functional […]

Research Brief: The Blockchain – A Review of the Opportunities for Higher Ed

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

What the blockchain does is get rid of the notion that institutions operate as siloed entities, involving them instead as part of a larger system of data transactions. An exclusive report for our members by Alicia Miranda, Senior Research Analyst, Academic Impressions On average, college students will now attend three or more institutions before receiving a degree. Yet the current system for storing student data is designed and operates on the assumption that students will stay at one place for four years, that they will learn all the qualifications they hope to present as potential future job candidate from that one institution, and that this institution will always be in existence. There are several flaws in that assumption: All three of these circumstances can make it quite difficult for a student to gather their own data when they need it. The current model of higher education is both resilient and persistent; many of the same structures have endured since the middle ages. But as we move through the digital revolution, existing systems are proving inadequate to meet students’ (and others’) needs. Current data sharing causes friction because of the need of an intermediary (in this case, a higher-ed institution). It […]

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