Jill Gaby currently serves as Associate Vice President of Advancement for Operations Management at Miami University. Since June 2023, she has held the role of Chief of Staff to the Vice President for University Advancement. In this capacity, Jill is a key member of the senior management team, collaborating with senior staff across departments to ensure effective day-to-day operations—all in support of advancing Miami’s historic $1 billion campaign, For Love. For Honor. For Those Who Will., which concludes June 30, 2027. Jill brings expertise in strategic planning, project management, process improvement, executive advising, and board and meeting management. She is known for her ability to influence decisions and foster cross-functional collaboration through trusted relationships and strategic alignment. With a flexible, solutions-oriented approach, Jill excels at adapting quickly to shifting priorities and evolving organizational needs. Prior to her current role, Jill served as Assistant Vice President for Development, Regional Programs, where she led the university’s largest team of major gift fundraisers. Her earlier roles include Senior Director of Development for Regional Programs and Director of Development for the Central and Northeast Ohio regions. Jill has been with Miami University since 2005 and has dedicated her career to higher education fundraising and […]
Eric Silva MSE Assistant Director TRIO Student Support Services at Metropolitan State University of Denver Ally Garcia EdD Assistant Dean for the Center of Equity and Student Achievement and the Director of TRIO Student Support Services at Metropolitan State University of Denver Higher education, since its inception, has been exclusive in who can pursue higher levels of learning and engagement. This oppressive truth not only has subjected students to pain and trauma, but also the faculty and staff who work within those ivory towers. In order to interrupt, and hopefully change these marginalizing spaces, it is paramount that institutions of higher learning acknowledge, assess, and devote resources and time to deconstructing practices, policies, and procedures which have been normed on the exclusionary nature of higher education. This position often toys with the theoretical question of the overall mission of higher education and its connection to serving the public good. The following work was our form of resistance to normative hiring structures within Student Affairs. Although not exhaustive, the work below may help guide you and your institution on its own journey of assessing and changing current hiring and promotion structures to truly serve the public good. The process In the […]
Customer service in higher education is still new and few are certain how to do it well. Here’s what our panel of experts have to say. Providing good customer service to students has become an expectation in today’s higher education environment, yet customer service in higher education is still new and few are certain how to do it well, or what the term means when placed in the context of students, faculty, and staff. To learn more about how colleges and universities are adapting the concept of service competencies to this sector, and to gather practical advice for how units and departments can navigate this shift in mindset, we turned to three acknowledged experts on customer service in higher education: These three are also the authors of the popular book Elevating Customer Service in Higher Education: A Practical Guide. Sarah Seigle. Hi Heath, Emily, Eileen. Thank you for joining us for this conversation! The first question we want to ask is: How has the way higher ed looks at customer service changed over the past 5 years? Emily Richardson. The expectation of immediate responsiveness was not around 5 years ago, and in the digital age, we now expect a response to a […]
A recent national survey conducted by Academic Impressions revealed a surprising and welcome finding that 80% of the more than 300 institutions surveyed have recently completed or are currently involved with reforming their general educationprograms. For years, leaders across all types of institutions have been calling for reforms to general education to improve persistence and quality. Traditionally thought of and treated as core to the idea of educating the whole student, general education programs have become increasingly watered down with: The proliferation of courses that can meet general education requirements marks a missed opportunity to improve student persistence by offering a tightly structured and mission-driven core. This also adds cost for the institution. As Lucie Lapovsky, past president of Mercy College, notes, “General education curricula with lots of choices tend to be inefficient because all of the seats in most of the classes are not filled.” The reasons for this situation are many—general education programs are infrequently reviewed, quality is defined only by internal standards, and faculty lobby to have courses included to ensure credit hours for their department. So it’s encouraging to us that institutions are looking to reform their curriculum—because if done the right way, there are numerous […]
Recent incidents in the news — at DePaul University and elsewhere — highlight the importance of building an effective faculty evaluation and tenure review process. While some problems are specific to faculty evaluation systems at particular institutions, most often the underlying issue is a lack of clarity on the criteria by which faculty are to be evaluated. Avoiding “Connoisseurship” Raoul Arreola, professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and author of Developing a Comprehensive Faculty Evaluation System, and Mike Theall, associate professor at Youngstown State University, offer some advice for academic leaders who want to ensure effective faculty evaluation: In the absence of clear qualifications and standards, faculty evaluation may operate according to what could be called a “connoisseurship model,” in which review depends on the taste and values of the individual committee members. It’s critical to define what type of faculty work is most important to the institution. Define Evaluation Criteria As Specifically As Possible Arreola points to “service” as an example of an area of required performance that often causes confusion. “Letting faculty know that they will be evaluated on service does not give them specific parameters for performance,” he remarks. The faculty evaluation handbook needs to […]
Why, you might ask, should academic deans add this concern about students’ career preparation to their already unmanageably long list of responsibilities? As leaders of the faculty, deans need to serve as the programmatic agents of implementing a holistic undergraduate education. And deans provide the essential perspective of someone who observes the connections on a daily basis between how the university works and how students learn. Students best engage in their learning when they know how that learning fits into their lives. I do not mean to imply that students are selfish or myopic. Quite the opposite. Students implicitly, although naively, understand higher education as important to their whole lives. Our role as deans is to cross the bureaucratic barriers between academic and student services in order to teach students and how to apply these to growing personally and professionally. This has been a major focus of my work over the past 25 years as a department chair and academic dean: to connect academic learning with career development. Here are four practical strategies I have learned: four opportunities for academic deans to partner with career services: 1. Attend national career services and academic organizations with a cross-division team. Offer to attend local, regional or […]
Digital Recording – 60 minute recording
Deb has been with the University of Missouri for the past six years and leading the talent management program for the Advancement team for five years. Prior to this, Deb owned a nationally-known consulting firm for 25 years, Business Class, a company dedicated to training and development options for improving organizational performance. She has been a regularly featured speaker at annual meetings of the National Association of College Stores (NACS) and has presented programs at three of the International Conferences of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), now known as the Association for Talent Development (ATD), as well as numerous CASE conferences including the Strategic Talent Management conference. In June 2003, she joined the faculty of the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organization Management and taught courses at Institute locations nationwide. Mrs. Snellen is also an author on business related skills and topics. Over 100 of her articles have been published including a collection marketed by NACS in a book titled “Lead the Team: Effective and Inspirational Training for Supervisors.” Deb has also served as an instructor for the senior capstone class for the Department of Communication at Mizzou. Her work in talent management at Mizzou […]
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 […]
Until joining the Northern Illinois University’s Higher Education and Student Affairs program faculty in summer 2020, Kelly was the chief student affairs officer at Northern Illinois University. She began her career as a housing professional and stepped into senior level administration at Northern Illinois University in 2009 as the Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs. Over the years as a senior administrator, her portfolio has included a wide variety of student services and auxiliaries. Kelly was promoted into the chief student affairs officer role at NIU in January 2017. In that role, she provided visionary leadership as NIU undertook an organizational restructuring of the Division of Student Affairs, as well as of other large-scale initiatives, including: a multi-million dollar renovation of the student union, establishing a relevant and progressive vision for Fraternity and Sorority Life, re-visioning campus community standards, and developing robust auxiliary operations. These included implementation of a campus dining strategy, e-sports facilities and housing master plan, meeting the increasing need for student support services implementing the “one stop shop” model, and understanding the role of advocacy within a social justice framework. She, along with the Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer, led the Student Experience Team, which strives […]
