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Strategies to Promote Student Resiliency: What to Do When Students Blame Faculty for their Lack of Success

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

This article is an excerpt from Sue Ohrablo’s acclaimed book High-Impact Advising: A Guide for Academic Advisors, which you can find here. When working with students, advisors are likely to encounter students who blame others for the academic challenges they experience. It is the responsibility of the advisor to provide a sympathetic ear and refrain from judgment while creating a non-threatening environment.  The advising session should be a safe place for students to express their concerns without fear of retribution or rejection. In such an environment, students are apt to be more candid in their assessments about faculty and peers. Scenario: The Hard Professor Advisors know the reputations of many faculty members, especially those who are considered “hard” or “demanding” by students. Although, in the back of our minds, it might be tempting to think, “Yeah, he’s a real hard-nose,” buying into that characterization of the faculty member does not provide the student any assistance. Instead, the advisor can add value by providing strategies to the student. For instance, a faculty member may be known to criticize students’ academic abilities by using what is interpreted to be a condescending tone when communicating with students. The faculty member may point out deficiencies […]

Leveraging Parents as Allies in Student Success

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

by Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions), interviewing Marjorie Savage (University of Minnesota) While some colleges are seeking positive ways of managing parent involvement throughout the college years, others have established farewell rituals near the start of a student’s first term to deliver the message that parents are expected to let go and step back. These separation programs range from a formal ceremony at Morehouse College to sessions on “Letting Go” during orientation at other institutions. Not Just About Letting Go Although introducing programming to encourage parents to “let go” may be a way to define the separation process for both students and student services staff, this approach (especially if adopted in isolation from a more holistic strategy for parent engagement) precludes opportunities to leverage parents as key resources in promoting the academic and social success of your students. Marjorie Savage, researcher on the topic of parent/college relations and author of the books Not Helicopters but Allies: Partnering with Parents to Better Support Students (Academic Impressions, 2016) and You’re on Your Own (But I’m Here if You Need Me) (Simon & Schuster, 2009), suggests that parents can be an asset to the institution and play a key role in student success — if that role and the […]

Designing for Student Recreation and Wellness: A Look Inside the U of Utah

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

As institutions strive for new enrollment and increased retention, it is no surprise that many institutions are focusing on recreational facilities in their immediate capital plans. If designed well, a new recreation and wellness facility will serve as more than an immediate invitation for prospective students and families. The physical, social, and communal aspects of the facility can help to boost student enrollment and improve the overall engagement across the campus community. Recreation facilities have transformed from just places to work out to facilities that cater to the whole student. Institutions across the country are adding in wellness aspects, such as health services, counseling services, and demonstration kitchens. As institutions look at the design and construction of these facilities, some key considerations come to mind: The University of Utah’s new Recreation and Wellness building is an excellent example of this kind of inclusive design and comprehensive thinking. To get an inside look at the facility and its design process, we reached out to Mary Bohlig, the university’s director of campus recreation services, for an interview. Interview with Mary Bohlig Michelle Sponholz. Mary, thanks for joining me. Can you talk a little about how to move beyond just a “space is at […]

Practical Approaches to Information Literacy for the First-Year Student

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

As research on gaps in college preparedness continues to emerge, fueling debates in both academic and public forums, most postsecondary institutions have taken some measures to assist undergraduates in developing a higher degree of information and digital literacy, and to prepare students better for conducting academic research. To learn where you can see the highest return on these efforts, we turned this week to Anne-Marie Deitering, the Franklin McEdward Professor for Undergraduate Learning Initiatives at Oregon State University. A forward thinker on integrating information literacy into different stages in the student experience, Deitering offers the following tips for her peers at other colleges and universities. Integration Beyond Research-Based Coursework “A truism among our colleagues pursuing information literacy efforts is that the best place to integrate information literacy is in courses with research assignments,” Deitering notes, “and that the best place to embed concepts and content on information literacy throughout the curriculum is to embed it where students are already motivated to do research and access library resources.” In this model, academic libraries often hold an information literacy or library services tutorial for students, or — in the case of a few institutions — embed a librarian within the research course. However, Deitering […]

Encouraging the Success of Online Students

Posted on by Greta Bell

July 28, 2011. The past decade has seen a plethora of research studies attempting to document the impact of online learning on measures of academic success and student persistence. The studies often produce widely divergent results, in part because institutions vary dramatically in the level of support and preparation they offer to both students and faculty. To inquire into best practices for preparing both faculty and students for online courses, we turned to two online learning veterans to learn more: Kristen Betts, director of the Center for Online Learning at Armstrong Atlantic State University, and Mark Parker, interim assistant dean and collegiate associate professor for communication, arts, and humanities at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Betts and Parker suggest that the most critical steps in encouraging the academic success and persistence of your online students involve setting and managing faculty and student expectations around workload and interaction within the online course. Here are some examples. Managing Expectations for Students Betts and Parker advise institutions to be more proactive in setting expectations both: When marketing online programs to students (while promoting the flexibility of an online program, it’s important to also set expectations around the program’s rigor and the quality of student work that is […]

Make Your Threat Assessment Team Effective: Part 2

Posted on by Greta Bell

This is the second of two articles offering practical advice on making behavioral intervention teams effective. You can read the first article here. August 18, 2011. In today’s difficult economic climate, most institutions of higher education are facing significant reductions in counseling and mental health budgets at a time when the mental health needs of students, faculty, and staff are on the rise. In a recent survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, 77 percent of counseling center directors indicated that the number of students on campus with severe mental health issues had increased in the past year. And while most available studies focus on student mental health, last year’s shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville offers a tragic reminder that faculty and staff may also face mental health issues. We asked Gene Deisinger, deputy chief of police and director of threat management services at Virginia Tech, for his advice on pitfalls to avoid when establishing early behavioral intervention teams or threat assessment teams. Deisinger is both a police officer and a clinical psychologist, and has been involved with such teams for over 15 years. He notes these five pitfalls that you can avoid with a little careful planning: First Pitfall: Focusing Solely […]

“George”: How RIT is Encouraging Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Institutions seeking to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration in research and teaching are pursuing an array of approaches: hiring faculty into multiple departments based on shared interdisciplinary interests, launching research initiatives that provide additional funding to get interdisciplinary projects off the ground, and providing shared research spaces. One of the challenges that often remains is that faculty often work in a relatively isolated manner, with little awareness of research, faculty work, or even faculty interest outside their own department. “At first, we thought the problem was related to idea sharing. We learned that the problem existed earlier in the collaboration lifecycle − people didn’t really know what other people did across campus.”Deborah Gears, RIT The Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY has struck on a creative and unusual approach to bridging this knowledge and communication gap. RIT’s new project, dubbed “George™,” uses Scholar Trading Cards™ and a searchable faculty database to enhance networking among faculty. It is a deceptively simple idea. Intrigued, we talked with Deborah Gears, RIT associate professor, College of Computing and Information Sciences, to learn more about: George™: Be Inquisitive, Be Inspired RIT’s project begins with Scholar Trading Cards™: physical cards that feature RIT faculty and that can be shared […]

Due Process and the Likely Gap in Your Title IX Investigation

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Series: The Compliance Issues You Need to Know About Welcome to the third in this series. You can read the first two articles here: Daniel Fusch. Bev, thanks for joining me for this conversation. There have been several cases recently in which a judge has ruled against a post-secondary education in a suit brought to court by a student (or former student) accused of assault: the University of Southern California; University of Southern California, San Diego; the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; and George Mason University, to name a few. In these cases, the judge cited the institution for lack of due process. I can’t help thinking that this may be just the crest of an oncoming wave of similar cases. Could you tell us a little about the need for due process in Title IX investigation? Bev Baligad. First and foremost, institutions must understand that the hallmark of due process is fairness: fairness for all parties, whether they be complainants or respondents. This isn’t just a best practice; institutions have to be fair. In fact, this isn’t just about a “need for due process in Title IX Investigation.” There is a need for due process to be embedded throughout an institution’s processes. Period. […]

Tailoring the RCM Model to What Works For You

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

In an era of public scrutiny and requests for increased financial accountability, higher-ed leaders are looking for ways to show the public that they are addressing the issue of rising college costs. Many have turned to responsibility-centered management (RCM) as a way to reduce costs and encourage financial responsibility within individual academic departments. While many institutional leaders see RCM as a way of decentralizing financial decision-making, allowing vice presidents and deans to take responsibility for their own budgets, they may not realize that certain principles of this financial structure can be tailored to fit the distinct culture of their campus, even without wholesale adoption of an RCM model. The University of Notre Dame recognized how they could adopt some principles from RCM to meet their institutional needs and goals. Here is what they did, and what you can learn from it. Adopting Elements of RCM – Not the Whole Model Linda Kroll, associate vice president for finance at the University of Notre Dame, states that when their institution looked at some of the fundamental elements of the RCM model, university leaders liked that the model allowed for: Distribution of responsibility to unit leaders Creation of a culture that rewards lowering […]

Make Your Threat Assessment Team Effective: Part 1

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

This is the first of two articles offering practical advice on making behavioral intervention teams effective. The second article, which will focus on five pitfalls to avoid, will appear in late August. An abbreviated version of this article appeared in an earlier edition of Higher Ed Impact. August 4, 2011. In today’s difficult economic climate, most institutions of higher education are facing significant reductions in counseling and mental health budgets at a time when the mental health needs of students, faculty, and staff are on the rise. In a recent survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, 77 percent of counseling center directors indicated that the number of students on campus with severe mental health issues had increased in the past year. And while most available studies focus on student mental health, last year’s shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville offers a tragic reminder that faculty and staff may also face mental health issues. We asked Gene Deisinger, deputy chief of police and director of threat management services at Virginia Tech, for his advice on how to establish early behavioral intervention teams or threat assessment teams when challenged to do more with existing resources. Deisinger is both a police […]

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