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Higher Education: Your Life May Depend Upon It

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

also by Robert E. Johnson, Ph.D. (Learn more in the recorded webcast: The Future of Work and the Academy) Higher education and the coveted bachelor’s degree was once the essential launch pad to economic stability. Now, it seems it is something more. In to a new report published by Brookings, “Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century,” Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton explore the patterns and trends that have led to a decline in the life expectancy of middle-aged white people without college degrees since the late 1990s. Spoiler alert: education is the key distinction, and differences in life expectancy do not appear due simply to an economic division. In this paper, we will take a look at the changing landscape of work and what this means for higher education. We’ll look particularly at manufacturing. Note: All segments of our economy are in some form of disruption. Manufacturing is an obvious and easy industry to use as an example as the devastation can be seen and understood. Rising automation and machine intelligence will creep into and replace the knowledge workers with the same voracity with which the physical workers have been supplanted: How We Got Here We lost a […]

7 Ways Advisors Can More Effectively Engage Online Students

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Online students are at significant risk for attrition as they experience isolation and a sense of disconnect from the institution, as well as find themselves lacking resources and information. Advisors can greatly impact students’ perceptions of their online experience by providing ongoing support and information to students. Advising online students can be challenging, however, as academic advisors are responsible for providing quality advising to students they may never meet, relying on phone and electronic communication as an alternative to face-to-face advising. Advisors who have traditionally worked with students in a face-to-face environment may experience frustration, dissatisfaction, and a lack of connection with the students with whom they work. Advisors run the risk of eliminating critical, comprehensive developmental advising strategies as they attempt to manage a seemingly unmanageable amount of emails and phone calls. It’s important for advisors to remember that online is not a type of student, rather, it is a mode of delivery for academic coursework. Students study online for a variety of reasons, including geographical limitations, learning style, work, and personal commitments. The needs of these students are no different from those of any other students, although students in an online environment often perceive a sense of isolation, […]

Share This Advice with Your First Generation College Students

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

The first generation college student often feels alone in navigating the processes and procedures of higher education. Here is some advice from staff at Academic Impressions who were first generation themselves. Share this with the students on your campus! by the Staff at Academic Impressions “My interest in higher education is a deeply personal one,” our president at Academic Impressions, Amit Mrig, relates. “My family is here in this country because my father had an opportunity many years ago to come to this country and be afforded a scholarship. He didn’t have any money, any resources to warrant that opportunity other than his intelligence and his hard work. In my mind, that is what the American dream is. Anyone who has the determination, the drive, and the intelligence should have an opportunity to move up the social ladder. The engine that drives that is higher education.” Today, November 8, is #CelebrateFirstGen Day. One of the amazing things about higher education in the U.S. is the doors it opens for families who have never been to college; our hope is that higher education will remain the engine of social mobility in this country. In that spirit, our team shares the following stories […]

What College Leaders Need to Know About Responding Rapidly to a Crisis

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

How do you manage a crisis in a world that expects instant response and immediate communication? Colleges and universities all too often face a series of challenges in responding actively and speedily to a crisis or emergency on or affecting the campus, but they needn’t reinvent the wheel: there are proven models developed in the government and military sectors that can be applied to the higher ed context. To help senior leaders in higher education improve their crisis preparedness, we’ve assembled and interviewed a panel of experts, including Dr. Connie Book, provost and dean at The Citadel; Major General Jim Boozer, US Army (Ret.); and Colonel Cardon Crawford, US Army (Ret.) and Director of Government and Community Affairs at The Citadel. Resources: You can read an interview with this panel in this earlier article. And here — in this article — you can listen to a brief audio interview with Colonel Cardon Crawford about the need for “emergent crisis management,” and how emergency crisis management differs from the crisis communications planning of the past. A transcript of the interview follows. You can also meet Colonel Cardon Crawford and Major General Jim Boozer in person for an in-depth training at the […]

Shining a Light on Diversity & Inclusion Lessons from a small, residential, liberal arts college striving for big change

Posted on by Brady Stanton

Jennifer Bonds-RaackeProvost & Vice President of Academic Affairs, St. Norbert College Billy Korinko(Content Expert), Director of Cassandra Voss Center, St. Norbert College Introduction The need to reevaluate our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) work at St. Norbert College came into focus as systemic racism, violence and outrage led to devastated cities, communities, families and lives all around us in 2020. For some, these events were an overwhelming representation of their lived experiences while for others, headline after tragic headline revealed our collective failure to advance equitable opportunities for all people. In response—just as many organizations and communities have done over the past year—we at St. Norbert have begun to take an honest look within and around these issues. In partnership with our newly formed Faculty and Staff Coalition of Color (FSCC), we are asking ourselves tough questions and engaging in dialogue in new ways. We’re challenging our current programs and practices and putting new cultural, strategic, operational, and educational practices in place to help redefine the future of DEIB for our students, faculty, and staff. As we’re actively exploring these questions, it occurs to us that the answers we’re finding may be all too common in higher education. While […]

Why Donors Give: It’s Not What You Think

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Series: Creating the Conditions for Support Everyone is trying to raise more money. Rather than simply suggest the next tactic that can boost giving in the short-term, this series offers a more intensive look at the strategic thinking that drives philanthropic support: Why do donors give? How do institutions strengthen their core and emphasize initiatives worthy of support? How do we align strategic plans, strengths, and advancement strategy to create the conditions for ongoing and sustained support? In this series, distinguished current and past chief advancement officers apply their most innovative and creative thinking to this question. Next in this series:More than Dollars: How Many Opportunities Are You Missing with Your Alumni?Engaging Women in Philanthropy: Practical Ways to Shift Our ApproachChecklist: Questions the Governing Board Must Ask Before Launching a Campaign Given that annual alumni support nationally has been declining for 22 years and that less than one in ten alumni are currently giving back to their alma maters, it is clear that our core practices and the philosophies that underpin them need to change. In short, we need to elicit more and solicit less. And foremost among the thoughts we should be eliciting is why our alumni give to […]

Checklist: Taking Support for Online Students to the Next Level

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

“It’s important… to remember that online is not a type of student, rather, it is a mode of delivery for academic coursework.” Sue Ohrablo, High-Impact Advising The changing reality of our student demographics means that the diverse demands of outside employment, caring for children or dependents, and even commuting to and from campus greatly impact how, when, and if students are able to access the very services we promote as both valuable and essential. We continue to wait behind desks and office doors for students to approach us, often left wondering why more students haven’t simply reached out for help when these myriad of offices exist. The competing demands for our students’ time and attention are not an indication that our students are any less invested or engaged with their learning; it simply yet profoundly means that we need to do better at reaching out to them as a partner in their success rather than wishing or hoping they will access something that may not be easily accessible given their daily lived reality. Of course, it is one thing to understand and yet another to do. What might it look like to better engage and support our online learners? I […]

Engaging Women in Philanthropy: Practical Ways to Shift Our Approach

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Series: Creating the Conditions for Support Everyone is trying to raise more money. Rather than simply suggest the next tactic that can boost giving in the short-term, this series offers a more intensive look at the strategic thinking that drives philanthropic support: Why do donors give? How do institutions strengthen their core and emphasize initiatives worthy of support? How do we align strategic plans, strengths, and advancement strategy to create the conditions for ongoing and sustained support? In this series, distinguished current and past chief advancement officers apply their most innovative and creative thinking to this question. Also in this series:Why Donors Give: It’s Not What You ThinkMore than Dollars: How Many Opportunities are You Missing with Your Alumni?Checklist: Questions the Governing Board Must Ask Before Launching a Campaign by Matthew T. Lambert, William & Mary This article at a glance: It is imperative that we first engage women meaningfully in the life of the university. From there we can develop a strong pipeline of women leaders so that we ultimately see great increases in philanthropy. Our mantra is grow engagement, grow leadership, grow philanthropy. Put simply, nearly half of the nation’s top wealth holders are women, they are the […]

Spotlight on Innovation: How Texas A&M – Corpus Christi is Using Online Supplemental Instruction to Boost STEM Student Success

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded the multi-million dollar First in the World grant 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. Texas A&M – Corpus Christi already offers face-to-face supplemental instruction (SI) for many barrier STEM classes and has seen it boost retention and graduation. However, the number of students who took advantage of SI remained low in comparison to the number of students in the courses. Students frequently reported they could not attend face-to-face sessions due to schedule conflicts or jobs. Dr. Patricia Spaniol-Mathews, Executive Director for Programs for Academic Student Support, hopes to eliminate that obstacle by piloting an interactive online supplemental instruction program with the $3.3 million First In The World grant.  It is an exciting opportunity because the online option will eliminate schedule barriers, increase the number of students who can benefit from supplemental instruction, and hopefully boost STEM retention and completion rates […]

What Establishing Alumni X-Teams Can Achieve

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

We need to reshape a 19th-century alumni office to meet the demands of a 21st-century audience. “Alumni associations were rendered obsolete by Facebook and have since been dying a slow death.” “Why get off my couch on a weeknight to connect with fellow alumni from college, one of a dozen institutions to which I have some faint sense of allegiance? “Given the amount of virtual networking to be done, why connect IRL (in real life) at all?” The answer to these loaded questions is the reason my job in alumni relations still exists. We still crave a live networking event, seminar, or raucous public debate. Alumni associations, for hundreds of years the conveners of such events, aren’t going anywhere. But I don’t rest easy, nor should my peers in alumni associations the world round, even those of us at the most elite institutions of higher learning. To meet these demands, we must form “x-teams” – cross-functional teams from various verticals in an organization who share a common goal. X-teams in advancement shops must be students of the marketplace, audience, and the whimsical trends among students, alumni, faculty, and the public. Taking a page from the best tech companies out there, […]

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