Search Results for: meeting

Fundraising After a Disaster: Learning from the Christchurch Earthquakes

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Ashlyn Sowell: During my recent leave from Gettysburg College, I travelled to Christchurch to speak to the Educate Plus New Zealand local chapter.  I was quite moved by the challenges that my international colleagues face in fundraising after the devastating 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. One woman said to me, “I know we are supposed to have 50% of the money in hand before we start construction on a new building, but we don’t have any buildings!” I followed up with Naomi Wilde, the Community Relations and Development Coordinator at St. Andrew’s College, an independent school, with one question. Her response led to a great deal of valuable information for all of us, and her responses are very worth considering as you look at crisis planning and post-crisis fundraising at your own institution. When I asked her, “What has been the biggest challenge in fundraising since the earthquakes?” she answered: “The biggest challenge is probably building the case for support for your own institution, because of course you’re not the only institution affected, and your donors, especially those that live locally, are deeply affected too, and there are so many unanswered financial questions. The Case for Support needs to clearly mark your […]

4 Ways Academic Deans Can Make the Core Curriculum More Effective

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

EARLIER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES 4 Things Academic Deans Can Do to Help Students Succeed after Graduation4 Things Academic Deans Can Do to Connect Majors and Minors with Careers This is the third in my Academic Impressions series on “Things Deans Can Do to Help our Students after they Graduate.” This time, my focus is on how deans can use career development to enhance general education. Academic Impressions’ 2013 report, General Education Reform: Unseen Opportunities, reviews several exemplary general education programs that are driving increases in student retention and, to a somewhat lesser extent, graduates’ employability. In this article, I will consider more fully how infusing career and life preparation development into general education can support these important measures. The Tragedy of the Commons Since the general education core is not owned by any one discipline, it often finds itself without the required faculty champion. General education usually represents about 40% of a Baccalaureate curriculum that is up for grabs.  As such it becomes an academic example of The Tragedy of the Commons, where individual departments compete in a zero sum game. Disciplines capture curricular acreage that can lead to a degradation of the overall quality of educational grazing land. The […]

Why Well-Intentioned Leadership Development Programs in Higher Ed Fall Short—And What to Do Instead 

Posted on by Sarah Adams

Over the past two decades, I’ve had the privilege of designing and delivering more than 100 leadership development programs in higher education and supporting institutions as they launched dozens more.  These programs have ranged from single, cohort-based initiatives to multi-layered efforts designed to shape institutional culture over time. At Academic Impressions, we’ve worked with first-time department chairs as well as with presidents rebuilding senior cabinets. We’ve partnered with well-resourced research universities as well as with small and mid-sized institutions doing the best they can with very limited capacity.  The good news is that during this time, I’ve seen a growing recognition that leadership development is mission critical. More institutions are investing in helping leaders to build emotional intelligence, resolve conflict more productively, lead teams effectively, and navigate change with greater confidence. Many are also working intentionally to build pipelines for future leaders who will be ready when the moment calls.  And yet, because many institutions have limited experience designing leadership development programs, a predictable set of mistakes shows up again and again. Ironically, these missteps are usually rooted in good intentions—but they ultimately undermine the very outcomes these programs are meant to achieve.  Following are the five most common mistakes I see when institutions launch or attempt to sustain leadership programming.  1. Trying to Do Too Much  In an effort to be comprehensive, institutions often try to cover as much […]

Challenging Androcentrism and Implicit Bias in the Academy

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Higher education is still “a man’s world,” though it doesn’t have to be. But equipping women with tips and tools for getting ahead isn’t enough to level the playing field; deep change requires a shift in organizational culture. This is the first in a series of articles looking at how college and universities can navigate that shift.  by Rosalind Spigel, Organizational Development Consultant and Leadership Coach, Spigel Consulting  Recent studies have documented persistent gender inequities in higher education, including gender gaps in faculty salaries and only slow increases in the percentage of women in leadership positions. Women in higher education (and across sectors) face formidable barriers to advancement not only because gender bias exists on a personal level, but also because these biases are built into our organizational structures. Equipping women with tips and tools for getting ahead isn’t enough to level the playing field; deep change requires a shift in organizational culture. This is the first of a series of articles in which I will be looking at how men and women practice leadership traits, how these traits are often interpreted, and how biases held by both women and men keep women on the margins and impede their advancement […]

The 10 Barriers to Innovation in Higher Education

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Why is it so difficult to nurture innovation and academic entrepreneurship at a college or university? My keen and longstanding interest in innovation was first fueled by my doctoral dissertation research, conducted in the early 1990s with a focus on small college resiliency. I studied the financial performance and management strategies of 100 small resource constrained institutions over a ten-year period to account for why some colleges thrived while others declined. I found that the most resilient colleges employed several strategies that, when taken together, helped explain their success. Most significantly, each of these schools exhibited an innovative institutional mindset, something that has been touted recently by prominent higher education thinkers as a critical prerequisite for thriving in these disruptive times. In fact, my research suggests that at the end of the day, institutional resiliency may depend more on mindset than skill set. Having been in the trenches for more than thirty years, I also know that this is not easy, especially for academic institutions. As legendary management consultant Peter Drucker concludes in his classic article The Discipline of Innovation: “In innovation, there is talent, there is ingenuity, and there is knowledge. But when it is said and done, what innovation requires is hard, […]

What’s Next for Data-Informed SEM?

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

More institutions are using small and big data sources across the prospective and current student lifecycle to inform key decisions related to enrollment and retention. To take a look at how Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) is changing and to get ideas for how institutions can better leverage their data, we reached out to a panel of three prominent experts:*role=”document”, aria-multiline=”true”, aria-readonly=”false”**aria-label=”Block: Paragraph”* These three, joined by Laura Jensen (associate provost for planning and effectiveness at Colorado State University), will also be discussing this topic in more depth at our upcoming conference Effectively Leveraging Data in Enrollment Management. Here is what they shared with us today. What Advances are We Making? What are the Opportunities? Sarah Seigle. Real-time data and analytics have become more important across all stages of the student lifecycle. Looking at three of the biggest functions of a strategic enrollment management plan—student recruitment, financial aid, and retention—where have you seen many institutions make recent advances in incorporating data into their decision-making? John Dysart. I have seen more colleges bring analytics into financial aid. In recent years, financial aid leveraging has become nearly commonplace. It seems that the majority of colleges and universities are now using some type of leveraging formula, awarding […]

Adding Gender-Neutral Housing

Posted on by Greta Bell

While most media coverage and public attention to gender-neutral housing has been positive (for example, see this article in the Washington Post), it is critical to manage communications with the local media, conservative student groups, parents, and other campus constituencies with some care. A few proactive steps early in the process can help prevent or mitigate consternation among campus groups or the wrong type of media attention. Solicit Broad Input To learn more about how colleges and universities can prepare for opening gender-neutral housing, we interviewed Peter Konwerski, dean of students at the George Washington University. GWU has just walked through the process of setting up a pilot program for gender-neutral housing. From his recent experience with the process, Konwerski offers these practical takeaways for peers at other institutions: “Spend a lot of time listening first,” Konwerski suggests. “If your community does have strong reservations about including gender-neutral housing in your residential opportunities on campus, you need to know them and address them as early as possible.”“Put the story out early in the process to alert the local community. Find out if there will be any negative outcry at that point, before the decision is made. Test the community’s response.” Peter […]

Tips for Engaging Campus Partners in Recruitment Activities

Engaging Campus Partners in Recruitment Activities You can’t expect people to participate in something they don’t understand. Be strategic in how you communicate with stakeholders so they have a clear image of what you’re trying to achieve and how they can help.   As an admissions professional, it can be tough to get academic leaders, faculty, and other campus partners to readily participate in key recruitment touch points with prospective students and families. They might not think it’s their job, they might perceive recruitment activities like sales, or they may simply feel too busy. In this lesson, we’ll spotlight how 3 large public institutions have found creative solutions for bringing campus partners into the fold while generating meaningful participation for their recruitment events. Kennesaw State University [h5p id=”52″] University of North Georgia [h5p id=”55″] University of Texas at Arlington [h5p id=”58″] 5 Tips for Engaging Campus Partners in Recruitment Activities 1. Make Participation Easy Expand   Make participation easy to get more involvement from your campus partners. Examples for making participation easy include: Providing campus partners with simple strategies for participating like waving and saying hi to visiting students. Sending departments the contact information of perspective students so they can […]

You May Be Excluding Some of Your Most Loyal Donors From Recognition

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Over the last decade, many colleges and universities have launched programs intended to encourage annual giving through the recognition of donor loyalty. In every case that I can think of, these societies are recognizing consecutive giving, which makes sense—we want people to give every year. I am a long-time fan of the loyalty society and the value it can add to a program as part of a comprehensive donor retention strategy but that’s not what this article is about. This article is about what might be missing from the equation. By defining loyalty as consecutive giving, we are in fact, excluding some of our most loyal donors from recognition. Most likely, many of your major donors have not made gifts each year, and while philosophically, we strive to create a culture that promotes annual giving among our top donors, the reality is that there will always be some who don’t give every year. I am not talking about the once-a-decade donor but about the donors that give almost every year. If someone is a seven-figure donor who occasionally misses a year between major contributions, are we serving the best interests of our institutions by not recognizing them as loyal? 3 Ways to […]

Why Honor Rolls of Donors are a Waste of Time

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

In her new book The 4 Pillars of Donor Relations, Lynne Wester of Donor Relations Guru® helps you rethink donor relations practices and offers specific tips for more powerful acknowledgements, stewardship and impact reporting, recognition, and donor engagement. Get this comprehensive guide to donor relations for your shop today, and transform the way you steward, recognize, and engage your donors. The article that follows is an excerpt from Lynne’s book. In all my time in donor relations, I have never heard of a donor who gave an organization a million dollar gift because their name was in a textual list of donors. Yet I must get asked at least once a week what I think of honor rolls and their place in donor recognition and stewardship. I think they have no useful purpose, they provide opportunities to make costly mistakes, they are a huge waste of human resources, time, money, and they are otherwise foolish. Why Honor Rolls Don’t Provide Any Benefit Time and time again, we have asked donors what they want and how they want to be recognized, and the three things that appear most often in their answers are: Donors want handwritten notes from students. They want to meet those that […]

Loading survey...