Search Results for: meeting

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 […]

Developing a Metrics-Driven Culture within Student Affairs

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Series: Managing the Student Lifecycle This new series convenes expert perspectives on student success and predictive analytics. We hope to empower enrollment managers, student affairs professionals, deans, and faculty to think deeper about their student data, predictors of success, and managing the student lifecycle holistically from recruitment to retention to completion. Earlier in this series:Improving Student Success Can’t Be a One-Office Effort Metrics-driven student affairs: Can it be done? Why is it difficult? How do we get there? Enrollment management and student affairs offices tend to agree that managing the student lifecycle to promote greater levels of student success requires collaborative effort. Yet as enrollment and student affairs offices move to work more closely together, there can be cultural disconnects over the extent to which those offices rely on data and analysis in their day-to-day work. Managing the student lifecycle intentionally and effectively will require bridging that gap and adopting a more metrics-driven approach in student affairs. Closing the Gap For enrollment managers, metrics are already a part of their daily work. Enrollment management has been a data-driven culture for more than a decade. In fact, sometimes enrollment managers feel like coaches whose success gets measured by wins and losses. […]

Enrolling and Retaining First-Generation Students: 3 Things You Need to Know

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

As demand for college education rises among lower-income families amid a troubled economy, and as the pressure mounts on completion rates, more institutions are beginning to assess their strategies for recruiting and retaining first-gen students. We’ve addressed the issue before in Higher Ed Impact, offering tips from various experts in enrollment management. This week, we wanted to pull together several disparate research findings over the past several years that, when taken together, tell a story of where some institutions may be missing opportunities to enroll, prepare, and support first-generation students more effectively. Here are three findings to consider when developing a holistic strategy for enrolling and serving lower-income, first-generation students: Let’s take a closer look. 1. Many First-Gen Admits Don’t Enroll Because They Don’t Believe They’ll Qualify for Financial Aid When asked why first-generation admits opt not to enroll, Thom Golden, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Vanderbilt University, cites several barriers: The American Council of Education has released several studies indicating that over 1.8 million low-income and middle-income families who would have qualified for college aid failed to apply. Golden notes that the issue is particularly pronounced in first-generation college families. “We often assume that if a student needs […]

The Urgent Need to Reduce Workplace Bullying on Campus

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

While some colleges and universities are developing workplace bullying prevention programs (we’ll list examples in a minute), it is evident that we have a lot of work yet to do. And this work needs to be done; unaddressed, workplace bullying impacts the processes of tenure and promotion, the collegiality of the department, and the academic freedom of its junior members. In this article, find out what a policy should include, and what institutions have existing policies you can learn from. by Clara Wajngurt, Ph.D. What is workplace bullying? By this term, we’re referring to hostile behavior that includes repeated harrassment, physical harm, verbal abuse, or other conduct that is viewed as threatening, humiliating, intimidating, or sabotaging – behavior that interferes with the performance of the one who is being bullied. (See Namie & Namie, “Risk Factors for Becoming a Target of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing,” in M. Duffy and D. Yamada, Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Press, 2018, 1-17.) These are the characteristics of workplace bullying: What Workplace Bullying Looks Like in Higher Ed Imagine the following scenarios of how workplace bullying manifests itself in an academic setting. SCENARIO AA unit director submits […]

Is it Time to Launch that New Academic Program? The Art and Science of Answering that Question

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Related Articles: Feasibility Checklist: The Science of Bringing New Academic Programs to LifeFinancial Modeling for New Academic Programs The challenges facing higher education in recent times are well documented. Never has it been so critical for colleges and universities to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset.  Especially for resource-constrained institutions (which is most of us), traditional financial management approaches such as resource prioritization and/or cutting one’s way to sustainability are no longer sufficient long term solutions. In this current context, successful institutions are outward-looking and have developed a discipline around driving entrepreneurial growth in ways that live and further leverage the mission. This is what having an entrepreneurial mindset is all about; from my experience, nurturing such a mindset at the institutional level requires both art (intuition, active listening, and keen attention to opportunities) and science (rigorous discipline and process). I consider myself an academic entrepreneur.  Throughout my career in higher education, I have been focused on looking outward and asking key questions such as “How can we do this differently?”; “What do we do really well that might be leveraged in new and unique ways?”; and “What market opportunities exist that we are uniquely equipped to meet?” At Bay Path University […]

What Every Higher Ed Leader Needs to Know About Supporting Women in Leadership

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

How can higher ed leaders support women’s leadership within their institutions? What do leaders need to know? Academic Impressions staff and leaders in the academy offer their advice and perspective. Several times a year at our Women’s Leadership Success in Higher Education conference, we bring together 200 women in leadership positions (or aspiring to leadership positions) in higher education to network, connect with mentors and success coaches, and share perspectives on the challenges of the academy. As we approach our next iteration of the event, we wanted to ask members of our previous faculty panel (as well as our internal team who designed the conference) what advice they most want to give this year to leaders in higher education who are committed to doing more to support women’s leadership growth and success. Here’s what they would like to share with you: 1. What’s one piece of advice you would offer those working in higher ed to support women in leadership roles? Karen Whitney. “If you really want to see more women in leadership, and in particular at the highest levels of leadership, then be prepared to be both honest and clear. “First, if a leader has asked for your support either as […]

5 Questions to Help Restore a Strained Town/Gown Relationship

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

PART OF A SERIES ON RFPs, CAPITAL PLANNING, AND PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS This is the first in a series of articles by Neil Calfee. Currently the principal of NPC Group, specializing in the creation and negotiation of public/private Partnerships, Neil Calfee previously served as Arizona State University’s director of real estate development. He has over 15 years of experience in development and management of complex development projects involving partnerships between government entities and the private sector. This article offers Calfee’s advice for strengthening often-strained town/gown relationships, and is written from his unique perspective in working for both Arizona State University and the City of Tempe. We also recommend his previous articles with AI: You may also be interested in his recorded webcast, “Creating Financial Expectations in the Housing RFP Process.” by Neil Calfee (NPC Group) “Love/hate” may be a little strong in describing many town and gown relationships, but “strained” may not be too far off the mark. The town/gown relationship can be full of drama, jealousy, passive-aggressiveness, and it can take “staying together for the kids” to a whole new level. But the town/gown can also be quite rewarding and mutually beneficial, and given that breaking up is nearly impossible, it’s best […]

How to Become One of the Best Colleges for Veterans and Military Students

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

by Susan West Engelkemeyer, President, Nichols College While the number of recent high school graduates is shrinking, the pool of military veterans eligible for federal education funds continues to deepen. Certainly the presence of these students does their alma maters proud, but there is much more to being military friendly than thanking them for their service. Providing a college education that meets their particular needs takes work, planning, and a long-term commitment to fulfilling what’s expected of military friendly schools. A leading arbiter of how well colleges are doing on this front is Military Friendly (formerly Victory Media), a marketing and advocacy firm that publishes data-driven ratings for post-military education and career opportunities.   Every year, the company compiles a list containing the top 15 percent of the thousands of universities, colleges, and trade schools it surveys.  In 2018, 800 schools—including Nichols College—made the cut in four divisions ranging from pre-Bronze and Bronze to Silver and Gold. Here’s how we achieved that status — and what you can learn from our efforts. We will cover what we’ve done so far, what we’re doing next, and what you can do on your own campus. What We’ve Done So Far Since 2015 we have held our […]

Loading survey...