Search Results for: meeting

Implementing a Research Mission at Your Teaching-Intensive University

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

When it comes to implementing a research mission, the devil is in the details. Scenario As a dean at Middlestates Territory University (MSTU), you are charged with creating, funding, and implementing a vision and action plan for bringing the “research” portion of the institution’s statutory mission to the forefront.  After many years of negotiation, lobbying, presentation of historical data, and handshaking behind closed doors, the state legislature has finally allowed MSTU to include the words “research-focused” in its official state statutory description and mission. Although the upper administration views this as a victory, the institution has extremely limited financial, laboratory, and human resources, and as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, you know a long slog lies ahead. You oversee a college comprised of 16 small departments with no more than 10 tenured faculty members in each, and of the total 145 tenured and tenure-track faculty (TTF) in your college, only 15% have or have had external grant funding for research. Research productivity is variable in the college, not only because the disciplines represented range from English to Music to Psychology to Chemistry to Women’s Studies, but also because the standard teaching load for TTF is […]

“DECLINED” Can my proposal be revived?

Posted on by Shawn Herbert

Why do so many grant proposals get rejected? Funding rates hover at about 20% across all federal agencies: the competition is fierce. For new faculty who are inexperienced, their chances of getting funded are more like 10-15%. This is due in part to PI inexperience with proposal writing and/or interpreting review comments and constructively utilizing feedback. However, to shelve the proposal without considering the reasons why it was rejected—and if there are subsequent opportunities to improve and resubmit it—is a mistake: the worst thing faculty can do is to never try again. At many funding agencies (like the NSF), it takes somewhere between 2-3 submissions on average before a PI’s first award decision. So, it’s wise as a faculty member to think of the declined proposal as “declined for now” rather than “declined forever.” In this article, I offer a handful of tips that will help you a) interpret your reviews, b) use your critiques to understand the cause(s) for the declination, and c) make an evidence-based decision about whether and how to revise and resubmit. Reviewing your declined proposal: What to look for? Review your ratings carefully. The first question you should ask yourself is, what were your ratings? Can […]

SEM for Community Colleges: Practical Steps

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Recently, I had the chance to speak with Dr. Monique Perry, dean of enrollment services at York Technical College, who will also be facilitating our two-part, recorded webcast series Strategic Enrollment Management for Community Colleges, where she will help participants learn how to make the case for, plan, and implement a strategic enrollment management model at their community colleges. We wanted to ask Perry, an expert on the topic, how shifting enrollment trends are changing recruitment practices for two-year institutions, and how their enrollment managers can be more strategic and data-informed as they move forward. Here is a transcript of our interview. Shifting Trends, Shifts in Focus Sarah Seigle.  How have community college enrollment trends affected recruitment practices at the community college level? Monique Perry. Shifting funding sources for public institutions, demographic changes, and more entities competing in the 2-year space all influence enrollment management. Of these, the decrease in funding for community and technical colleges has been the most impactful trend, as that sets the context for much of our work. And while funding can be out of the average enrollment officer’s circle of control, a college’s ability to transform and adopt EM principles in theory and execution is within our control, and is an […]

Involving Off-Campus Constituencies When Planning Public/Private Partnerships

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Successful P3 partnerships engage off-campus constituencies both early and deliberately. Here is advice from Dale McGirr on how. Increasing demands for capital expansion combined with a continued weak economy make partnerships with private entities an attractive option for financing new campus facilities. These partnerships are often fraught with complexity — and not only because of their legal and tax ramifications. There are also the ramifications of communicating and collaborating with a variety of off-campus constituents. Successful projects engage these constituents both early and deliberately. For advice on including off-campus constituencies in the project in constructive ways, we turned this week to Dale McGirr, senior planner with GBBN Architects, who also oversaw public/private partnerships during his 29 years at the University of Cincinnati (22 years as a cabinet officer). Being Clear on the Stakes “At most medium and large-sized public institutions,” McGirr remarks, “twice as many students live residentially near a campus as live on the campus. The era of treating housing for those students as someone else’s problem is over — developing an off-campus housing policy needs to be a top priority, and the quality of student life in that shadow campus district, as well as the quality of community relations in that district, […]

Perfect Match: A Step-by-Step Guide to Landing a Leadership Position in Higher Education

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From STEM Pathways to STEM Highways

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges, universities, and organizations 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. 2015 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. In an effort to better engage and retain STEM students, California State University, Los Angeles is partnering with two other institutions to establish a STEM Education Consortium as a way to pool resources and improve STEM education. Institutions in the STEM Education Consortium will use the $2.8 million First in the World grant to target three issues in STEM education: We talked to James Rudd, Cal State LA professor of natural science and project director, to learn more about how these initiatives will open more STEM career pathways to students. 1. How the STEM Education Consortium Will Test High-Impact Learning Strategies […]

Title IX and Faculty Misconduct: Steps You Need to Take Today

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Here are steps Title IX coordinators can take in the next day, week, month, and year to start changing the culture on campus. An interview with Rabia Khan Harvey, Academic Impressions, recently Title IX coordinator at Columbia College Chicago Daniel Fusch, Academic Impressions. Rabia, thanks for another conversation. There are so many stories emerging over the last year regarding sexual harassment or other misconduct toward students by some faculty. What has struck you as especially critical for Title IX coordinators to pay attention to? What conversations do they need to be having with department chairs? Rabia Khan Harvey. That’s a tough one. That’s a really tough one. I really feel this needs to become a strategic initiative for the institution. That’s what it will take to get the necessary buy-in and engagement with the whole faculty. Because the steps we need to take aren’t small ones. We need to improve relationships with students from historically marginalized populations. We need to talk with faculty about how the academic department is choosing to nurture students to become alumni of the department. If we don’t provide a department and an institution that is safe for them, that will come back to haunt us tenfold. […]

3 Ways to Assess and Build Student Resiliency

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. Currently, higher education institutions are facing a crisis with declining enrollment and student attrition. Higher education professionals are being tasked with student retention on a system-wide level. With the issuing of this directive, student service professionals are scrambling to find ways to outreach to, engage, and retain their students. While formal assessment is important in identifying why students leave and how we can better retain them, there is value in informal assessment, as well. Front-line personnel such as academic advisors, counselors, and student success coaches can identify reasons for student departure as an outcome of their daily interactions with students. Resiliency is one factor which will impact a student’s decision to stay or go. While all students face multiple challenges throughout their academic careers, some of them can become derailed as a result of those challenges. By assessing student resiliency, student service professionals can strategically intervene in an attempt to retain students. Here are three ways to assess and build student resiliency… 1. Help Students Respond to Difficulties in the Classroom Consider how the student responds to difficulty within […]

The Higher Education Business Model is Broken, But We Can’t Lose Sight of Why We Broke It, and Who We Needed to Break It For

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

“The pandemic has forced us to confront higher education’s broken business model more directly. While we can no longer afford to be broken, the fundamental items that caused the problem are not resolved. The very thing that broke us – our missional focus on those who we must serve, though such service is not ‘profitable’ – is what sustains our communities during the pandemic. With a spine of steel and great will, we must reinvent ourselves in order to serve those who need us most.” by Mary Hinton, President, Hollins University “The economic model is broken.” “Your expenses are too high. “ “We can find all the answers through technology and you are no longer needed.” “There’s no real value to what you offer.” As a college president, I have heard these statements and the attendant negative narrative about higher education for far too long. At every opportunity, those of us in higher education are forced to articulate and provide concrete evidence of our value proposition: Again and again, we repeat our value. Having served on the board of a health system, I often heard the president respond to a similar narrative decrying the broken healthcare model, the questionable value […]

How Strategic Planning Can Bridge the Divide Between Athletics and Academics

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Every college and university that sponsors intercollegiate athletics, at any level, must come to grips with how that division fits into the overall mission of the institution. And, at the same time, athletics must work to integrate itself into the university’s culture. One way to achieve that is to embark on a highly collaborative strategic planning process. Part of the Institution, Yet a World Apart The academic community often perceives the intercollegiate athletics division as a separate world: Athletics has “admissions criteria” distinct from the institution’s.  Students will not be recruited to become student-athletes without demonstrating some athletic ability in addition to their academic accomplishments. In many cases, the athletic facilities, which often take up a fair amount of real estate, tend to be grouped together in a remote part of campus creating the impression of an athletics “fiefdom.” While anyone can walk into the library or the student center, it is perceived that not everyone can walk into the athletics department. Although this is a perception and not a reality, it does foster an “us vs. them” mentality. At institutions with higher profile athletic departments, additional challenges like larger marketing and advertising budgets or the continual purchase of big-ticket […]

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