Search Results for: meeting

Advancement/Academic Partnerships: Identifying Areas of Untapped Opportunity

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

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 […]

How Do We Relaunch Research Operations?

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Re-opening academic labs for research is critical but fraught with opportunities for confusion, miscommunication, and risk. Representatives from an array of research institutions met recently in an Open Space virtual meeting to discuss solutions. As a research professional in higher education, you are likely thinking about or in the process of relaunching operations after COVID-19 closures. You are coordinating to bring researchers back on campus, establishing guidelines for human subjects and animal research, and organizing communications to your stakeholders. Before you go further, have you considered consulting with others who are in your position or have already taken the next step? On May 21, 2020, leaders in academic research from just under two dozen campuses met online to discuss the issues entailed, using an Open Space format to surface the most critical questions and working collaboratively to produce solutions. This virtual workshop was unique in its format, the second in an ongoing series of Group Collaboration workshops held by Academic Impressions. (You can read about the first in the series here.) The Group Collaboration is a format you don’t usually see in a virtual professional development event; each of our virtual workshops provides an active learning environment where participants can explore […]

Graduate Enrollment Marketing: Non-Digital Tactics That Work

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Marketing graduate degree programs is both an art and a science, and we wanted to take a deep look at who is doing this well — and how they’re doing it. In this series of four articles (you’re reading the fourth), we ask an expert panel four questions to explore the changing landscape of graduate enrollment marketing: We invite you to use these brief articles to start critical conversations on your campus. Additionally, you can explore graduate student recruitment tactics in depth with these same experts at the upcoming Graduate Enrollment Management conference. We hope to see you there! Here are our panelists’ answers to the fourth of the four questions. Q: What Non-Digital Marketing Strategies Have Been Effective? Sarah Seigle, Academic Impressions. Other aspects of a graduate recruitment marketing strategy that we haven’t yet talked about are print communications and recruitment travel—grad school fairs, on-campus events, etc. What role do non-digital strategies such as these currently play in your own graduate recruitment marketing strategy? How heavily should other schools be utilizing these tactics? Julie Gacnik, Creighton University. While the overall investment in print has declined, and has shifted to digital, print will never go away. As for recruitment travel and events, we […]

Rethinking General Education: Too Many Options?

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Series: Costs Down, Quality Up Historically, initiatives to improve quality have also meant added cost—smaller class sizes, more faculty who conduct research, etc.—but this is no longer a sustainable model for all institutions. What are the innovations that can actually drive the cost to educate a student lower while driving critical outcomes like student success and completion higher? This series offers provocative questions that challenge the cost-quality paradigm and the old ways of managing institutional strategy and growth. Also in this series:Why Good is Still the Enemy of Great for Most Colleges and Universities After a visit to a university campus, I received the following inquiry from one of its academic leaders: Bob, when you visited, you mentioned that we have too many GE course options. We are taking a look at this. What are the advantages of decreasing the number of options? Is this a resource question? What if the course is part of a major? Is there a problem including it as a GE distribution as well? This inquiry deserves a serious response and, as it also affects academic sensibilities on other college and university campuses, I thought I’d write a fuller response. In this article, I will speak briefly to: 1. […]

4 Lessons Learned from Campaign Volunteers at Gettysburg College

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

THE SUCCESS AT GETTYSBURG COLLEGE This article is the first in a series by Ashlyn Sowell, Gettysburg’s associate vice president and campaign director. Here, Sowell reviews 4 lessons about campaign communications and volunteer management that she and her team at Gettysburg learned — from their volunteers. “Leveraging these key lessons,” Sowell adds, “we have successfully engaged over 100 volunteers in the quiet or leadership phase of the campaign and are tracking ahead of our goal.  I believe with volunteers leading the way we will involve more Gettysburgians in the public phase of the campaign, exceed our goal, and groom the leaders needed to be successful in the next campaign for the college.” We hope you will find this article useful and share it with your colleagues. As we embarked on the largest campaign in our school’s history, our campaign consultant gave us some important advice. She said that our campaign must be owned by the president and by the volunteer leadership, not by the staff. We took her advice to heart. With our board chair, we carefully selected each volunteer that would help us during our planning phase. The board chair personally recruited each volunteer, and I believe that got […]

How MIT Plans to Develop Scalable, Differentiated Instruction

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Here’s how MIT and several partners are developing a Fly-by-Wire system to provide high-quality, differentiated instruction at scale and to better equip graduates to enter the workforce. 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. MIT, partnering with edX and Arapahoe and Quinsigamond Community Colleges, is developing a Fly-by-Wire system to provide high-quality, differentiated instruction at scale and to better equip graduates entering the workforce with skills valued by employers and industry. Funded by a $2.9 million FIPSE First in the World grant, the Fly-by-Wire system is a digitally-enabled, differentiated blended-instruction intervention that is both scalable and cost-effective enough to meet the needs of learners at a range of institutions. […]

4 Strategies for Closing the Coaching Gap for Mid-Level Academic Leaders

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

While executive and administrative leaders have had a longer history of working with coaches, there is growing awareness of the benefit to middle managers in higher education, as well. Mid-level academic leaders are often promoted to leadership positions with limited management experience and without the benefit of training and professional leadership development. Yet mid-level leaders face significant barriers to the use of coaching. To build leadership capacity at the mid level, it’s critical that senior leaders take action to address this coaching gap. To learn more, we turned to David Kiel, who worked for 15 years as a faculty leadership developer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is now a consultant to leadership development programs in higher education. Dr. Kiel has conducted extensive research on coaching in higher education, and the article that follows adapts and reworks material from an article the author published in the Journal of Excellence in College Teaching’s special issue “Coaching and Leadership in Academia,” James Sibley and Susan Robison, Editors, that came out in February 2018. The title of the original article is “In Search of Good Coaching for Mid-Level Faculty Leaders” (The full citation can be found in the reference section at the end of […]

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 — […]

11 Things You Can Do Right Now to Set Your Phonathon Up for Success

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

MORE RESOURCES FROM THIS AUTHOR Jessica Cloud, CFRE, is the author of Successful Fundraising Calls: A Phonathon Scripting Workshop, in which she critiques and revises 6 real phonathon scripts submitted by institutions across North America. In this book, you will learn the pillars of writing effective scripts; review sample LYBUNT, SYBUNT, young alumni, and future donor scripts; explore Cloud’s in-depth critique of the samples; and view revisions of the sample scripts. You can also read more of Cloud’s advice for phonathon managers in these complimentary articles: A Quick Assessment for Your Phonathon ScriptsHow Data Mining Can Increase Direct Mail AcquisitionHow Data Mining Can Increase Phonathon AcquisitionScripting for Acquisition Calls Here are 11 things you can do right now to set your phonathon up for success this fiscal year: 1. Cultivate your relationship with Advancement Services. The database folks are crucial allies for any fundraising professionals, but as a phonathon manager you are even more dependent than most other fundraisers upon the cooperation of this group for your success. Good data gives you a head start in phonathon. Bad data can hold you back all year. I recommend reaching out to gift processing and other advancement services staff now. Start by asking them […]

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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