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Improving the Academic Success of Latino Students

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

While many colleges are making investments in recruiting Latino students, Western Oregon University, a public institution primarily serving first-generation students, has made significant investments in supporting and retaining Latino students. Oregon Live reported that WOU raised its completion rate for Latino students 16% between 2002 and 2007 (the 2007 rate was 49%, actually several points higher than white students at WOU). We asked David McDonald, associate provost at WOU, for advice he would offer his peers on where to start in improving graduation rates for Latino students. Start with Your Data “Start collecting the data now. What are the characteristics of successful versus not successful students?”David McDonald, Western Oregon U Among your Latino students, look for which cohorts are achieving success and which are not. This tells you both where you can reinvest funding for current efforts in order to capitalize on current successes, and where your greatest needs are. Factor in: Conduct an Advising Audit “Start with advising. Is your college really doing what it needs to do?”David McDonald, Western Oregon U Because many Latino students are first-generation and lack the support network that may be available to traditional students, advising is especially critical. In auditing academic advising, look […]

Powered by Predictive Data: How Central Carolina Community College Will Identify and Support At-Risk Students through Proactive Coaching

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

For boosting completion rates for at-risk students, how much of a difference can structured student coaching make? Here’s what Central Carolina Community College is trying. SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 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. This was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. Central Carolina Community College set out to improve completion rates for at-risk students by embedding success coaches in targeted departments in Spring 2013, as part of a larger initiative funded by a 2012 Title III grant that included launching a College Success Center, adding the team of success coaches, and implementing an early alert advising system. The addition of coaching has already led to a 13 percent increase in student persistence. Now, with the help of a $9.2 million […]

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

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

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 Kenneth Soldink

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 […]

Retention through Onboarding: How Hiring Managers Can Foster a Sense of Belonging

Posted on by Brady Stanton

Sydney AndringaExecutive Assistant to the Vice President of Institutional Advancement, College of Saint Benedict Valerie JonesExecutive Director of Alumnae Relations, College of Saint Benedict Heather Pieper-OlsonAssociate Vice President of Institutional Advancement, College of Saint Benedict Julie ReitmeierExecutive Director of Advancement Systems, College of Saint Benedict In January of 2014, the Institutional Advancement Team at the College of Saint Benedict, a Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college for women in central Minnesota, faced a unique and complex set of circumstances. A brand new, first time, president was six months into her tenure; the vice president of institutional advancement (IA) had resigned and announced plans for a pair of interim vice presidents to lead the department; the college had just announced a $100 million comprehensive campaign; and the IA department had recently hired or was in the process of hiring four new staff members on a 24-person team. The president gave us, the senior leadership team in IA, a directive: create stability for the department and focus on retention of the current team. To create that stability and retain our workforce, we focused on creating a sense of belonging for all current and future staff members by creating an extended onboarding process. Not only would the […]

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 […]

Challenging Androcentrism in the Academy: Why We Need to Value Empathy More

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Empathy and compassion are critical for high-performing academic leaders, but institutions often undervalue these leadership competencies due to implicit gender bias. Let’s look at how to counter that tendency. This is the second in a series of articles on challenging androcentrism in higher education. by Rosalind Spigel, Organizational Development Consultant and Leadership Coach, Spigel Consulting  In this second article, we’ll look at one set of leadership traits we identified earlier in the series: empathy and compassion. We’ll examine: How Empathy and Compassion are Linked to Leadership and Team Performance As the idea of emotional intelligence has become more accepted in the years since Goleman, Boyatzis, and McGee began publishing their research on it, acceptance of empathy and compassion as leadership competencies has also become more common. As a leadership competency, empathy is defined as the ability to: Compassion moves beyond understanding to action, such as acting in someone else’s interest. In the human systems that are our colleges and universities, managing conflict, coordination, and relationships is paramount. Leading with empathy and compassion inspires trust, and trust strengthens relationships at the individual, team, and system levels. We know that addressing conflict with an empathetic skill set — including listening, openness, and understanding — […]

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

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

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 Kenneth Soldink

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 […]

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