Search Results for: meeting

The College Store: Encouraging Customer Loyalty

Posted on by Greta Bell

As college bookstores face increased competition from chains such as Barnes & Noble, peer-to-peer sites, and popular online retailers such as Amazon and eBay, many stores are seeing fewer students come through their doors, meaning not only declines in revenue from textbook sales but also from sales of other items — apparel, electronics, and campus memorabilia. A feature in The Chronicle of Higher Education emphasized that bookstores at many colleges are responding to their changing industry with new services they hope will keep students coming: performance spaces for in-store concerts, multimedia stations for printing digital photos, and even dry cleaning. However, diversification of services can be an expensive investment, and many stores are neglecting their best opportunities for increasing customer loyalty around their core services. This week, we turned to Mark Mulder, past auxiliary services director at Pacific Lutheran University and a key planner for the Garfield Book Company, and Dennis Mekelburg, associate director of Arizona State University Bookstores, to learn some practical tips for encouraging customer loyalty for the college store. Positioning Your Campus Store in a Changing Industry Before leaping into adding new programs to strengthen your customer base, Mulder suggests beginning with key strategic questions: At the end of […]

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 […]

Summer Bridge Programs: Impact and Tips for Success

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Amid growing pressure on student retention and completion rates, much of the current research on factors in student success emphasizes both the importance of early intervention with at-risk students and increased attention to obstacles that confront students in the first weeks of their first term, including academic underpreparedness and the transition from the rigor, study hours, and study skills needed in high school to those needed in college. More institutions are turning to summer bridge and mentoring programs to help bridge the gap between senior year at high school and freshman year at college. To learn more, we turned this week to Wayne Jackson, director of multicultural academic and support services at the University of Central Florida. Jackson is a two-time national retention award recipient: the 2010 National Association of Academic Advising (NACADA) Outstanding Institutional Advising Program Certificate of Merit for his leadership in directing the Seizing Opportunities for Achievement and Retention (SOAR) summer bridge program, and the 2003 Noel-Levitz Retention Excellence Award for his work in directing the Minority Mentoring Program at The College of New Jersey. SOAR is worth examining as a model of an effective program. One of the oldest summer bridge programs in the US, SOAR […]

Feasibility Checklist: The Science of Bringing New Academic Programs to Life

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

The best ideas in the world can easily fall off the radar unless you have a process in place for evaluating, vetting and bringing them to life. Also in this series: Is it Time to Launch that New Academic Program? The Art and Science of Answering that Question Financial Modeling for New Academic Programs Once you have generated an idea for a new academic program, how do you sustain and implement that idea? As Jim Collins suggests in Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, organizational ‘luck’ and success can be leveraged by cultivating a discipline around process and metrics.  Indeed, he suggests that this discipline is key for maximizing whatever ‘luck’ might naturally come one’s way. This has certainly been the case at Bay Path University, where we have developed a rigorous process and template for evaluating the feasibility of new program ideas that we use across all divisions of the University. This process has enabled us to remove some of the subjectivity that accompanies new academic program decision making, relying instead on a set of objective key elements and metrics that are applied equally to all new program possibilities. When a new program […]

Financial Modeling for New Academic Programs

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Also in this series: Is it Time to Launch that New Academic Program? The Art and Science of Answering that Question Feasibility Checklist: The Science of Bringing New Academic Programs to Life Developing a 4-Year Financial Proforma In my previous article, Feasibility Checklist: The Science Behind Bringing New Academic Programs to Life, I discussed the importance of cultivating a discipline around process and metrics to new academic program development and success. Gaining a clear and accurate sense as to what it will take to launch and sustain your new program before you enroll your first student is a critical prerequisite and a helpful exercise for surfacing and testing important assumptions. At Bay Path University, all new academic program proposals must include a four-year financial proforma, which is typically developed jointly by the dean, the chief financial officer, and the provost. Through this process, we invariably surface financial assumptions, strategies and program operational plans or outcomes that when checked more thoroughly prove to be unworkable or in need of revision. For example, in developing a new graduate program a few years ago we discovered that our “creative” approach to structuring the curriculum was not financially viable without some major tweaking. The financial […]

College Student Mental Health Statistics and What They Really Mean

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

There has been a lot of media attention to college student mental health statistics and to the upsurge in demand for mental health services. But does the data really suggest a mental health “crisis”? What does the upsurge actually mean for postsecondary institutions? Where do we need to shift the conversation, and what do we need to do next? Learn more in the infographic and article below. What the Upsurge in Demand for Mental Health Services Means (and Doesn’t Mean) The first thing I want to underscore is that institutions are facing an unprecedented level of demand from students seeking help and support for mental health issues. Counseling centers are not new on campus–and mental health services are certainly not new–but the upsurge in volume from students accessing these services is. The two main presenting issues we’re seeing in students are anxiety and depression. The other issue institutions are concerned about but that is statistically much less frequent is suicidality. If you read the press on this topic, there are a lot of articles that emphasize the number of college students committing suicide. That’s obviously a horrible mental health outcome and something institutions are investing prevention and education efforts around, […]

Making Your Faculty-in-Residence Program Successful

Posted on by Greta Bell

A small but growing number of public institutions are adding living-learning residence programs that include the integration of faculty into the residential facility. Recent news has highlighted faculty-in-residence programs at the University of Colorado and the University of South Carolina. What’s clear from the success of programs at USC and other institutions is that having faculty reside with or alongside students in a living-learning community can produce gains in student engagement, persistence, and academic performance, but the effort entails unique challenges. It’s critical to select the right space and the right faculty, and clarify roles in the housing/faculty partnership. We turned to Gene Luna, associate vice president for student affairs at the University of South Carolina and one of the pioneers of the living-learning community, and David Jones, assistant vice president for student affairs and executive director of housing and residential communities at the University of Alabama, for their insights on what academic leaders and housing directors need to consider from the outset to ensure success in a faculty-in-residence program. MORE ARTICLES ON CAMPUS HOUSING Do Your Living-Learning Communities Offer a Comprehensive Immersion Experience?Adding Gender-Neutral HousingThe Physical Campus: A Critical Asset, A Key OpportunityAddressing Housing Overflows Proactively Designing (or Renovating) the Space Luna […]

Adjusting Housing and Dining Operations for the Fall: Ideas from Your Peers

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Every campus with plans to re-open in the fall is scrambling to adjust campus housing and dining services – but often, we are moving so fast and feeling so isolated that we lose the opportunity to compare notes and brainstorm solutions with our peers, or to learn from what other institutions are trying. That’s why we brought a couple dozen housing and dining services leaders together for a virtual brainstorm session. Here’s some of what they came up with. As a student life professional, you are currently planning how housing and dining operations will adjust in the fall under the “new normal” of COVID-19. Assuming your institution will host students on campus beginning in August, you will soon have to implement plans to keep students and staff safe in these shared spaces. Before moving to the implementation phase, have you stopped to discuss your plans with other housing and dining professionals to ensure the very best options are on the table? On May 20, 2020, leaders in housing and dining from just under two dozen campuses met online to discuss the issues entailed. This virtual workshop was unique in its format and was the first of an ongoing series of […]

Identifying Opportunities in Your Department’s DEI Strategy: One Alumni Department’s Perspective

Posted on by Brady Stanton

Are you wanting to create more opportunities for diversity, equity, and inclusion for your constituents, but not sure where to begin? Here’s how one Alumni Relations and Development Office started. We started from the bottom At California University of Pennsylvania, our Office of Alumni Relations has been working collaboratively with departments across campus to paint a true picture of what diversity, equity, and inclusion means for our students, our alumni, and our institution’s history and future. Examining DEI concepts through a variety of lenses is essential to success. For many of us in higher education, our campuses are at times the first, and unfortunately the only, opportunity to have an open, meaningful dialogue around diversity, equity, and inclusion for our students. Our institution has a history of acknowledging and embracing our diverse populations across campus. For example, we’ve always celebrated the legacy of Jennie Adams Carter, our first Black alumna, and her impact on education and her family’s legacy, (Cal U was founded originally as a normal school for teacher education). Other examples include yearly dedicated outreach and programming honoring international students and their heritage. Much of this programming is student-centric. However, as the director of alumni relations, I felt […]

More than Dollars: How Many Opportunities are You Missing with Your Alumni?

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 ThinkEngaging Women in Philanthropy: Practical Ways to Shift Our ApproachChecklist: Questions the Governing Board Must Ask Before Launching a Campaign If Congress passed a law tomorrow making fundraising illegal, would you still care about your alumni? I asked this question to alumni directors and chief advancement officers across the country as part of a research project in 2011. Over the last 75 years, colleges and universities have communicated to alumni almost singularly that the most important thing they can do to support their alma mater is give money. But increasingly, this single focus […]

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