Search Results for: meeting

How Georgia State University Plans to Use Predictive Analytics to Address the National Achievement Gap

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Here’s how Georgia State University is using predictive analytics to identify at-risk students and intervene quickly – and how they’re now testing the approach across other institutions. SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 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. This 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. During the past ten years, officials at Georgia State University have tracked more than 140,000 student records and 2.5 million grades in order to identify mistakes that put a student at risk of dropping out. A decade later, they’ve identified more than 800 different mistakes, and continue tracking all 30,000 of their students so they can quickly intervene. Their next challenge? Using the same approach to track students at 11 different institutions across the country […]

The Great Resignation: How Higher Ed Can Take on Private Industry

Posted on by Brady Stanton

The Great Resignation is hitting colleges and universities especially hard. Even before the pandemic, retention of the best staff and faculty was a growing concern, given the lure of higher pay in the corporate sector, competition between academic institutions themselves, and increased and continual pressure to do more with less in the academic workplace. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened these challenges by severely depressing departmental budgets, demanding rapid transitions in the way higher-ed professionals pursue their work and deliver services to students, and by exposing and deepening workplace inequities, particularly for women and for faculty and staff of color. A recent survey that we conducted found that nearly half of respondents reported feeling clinically meaningful levels of burnout, not far off from the working population at large. Today, when we speak with human resources professionals in higher ed, they frequently share their frustration (and sometimes even fatalism) at what many see as a long and losing battle to hire, retain, and develop top talent for their institutions at a time when higher education is seeing unprecedented brain drain toward private industry and when the prospect of working together toward a common good is no longer enough, by itself, to attract and […]

How Lynn University Uses Block Scheduling to Provide Flexibility for Students

Posted on by Brady Stanton

By Katrina Carter-TellisonVice President for Academic Affairs, Lynn University At Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, the pandemic caused us to challenge long-held assumptions and reimagine everything from classroom schedules and course delivery methods to campus tours. As an independent institution with approximately 3,400 students from more than 100 counties, it was important to increase flexibility and reduce risk during a prolonged period of uncertainty with rapidly changing conditions. We developed a plan for block scheduling as a way to minimize exposure for faculty and students and to enable administrators to implement a quick switch from in-person to remote instruction if necessary. We also sought to provide students with more options to fit their circumstances due to health issues or travel disruptions. After implementing the approach for a full academic year, we are seeing that this innovation precipitated by the pandemic has the potential to become a permanent feature. Reimagining the 16-week semester Block scheduling breaks up traditional 16-week semesters into four-week sessions with synchronous classes four days per week. Students can choose to focus on one course at a time or fast-track with two courses each session. They also have the option to complete the semester early, start late, […]

How One Institution Makes Faculty Development Exciting While Keeping Costs Down

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

A FACULTY DEVELOPMENT CASE STUDY With minimal budget for faculty development, McKendree University has taken a unique approach to: Here is the story of what McKendree University has tried and what is working. At McKendree University, the idea to attach a theme to a week of faculty development activities was initially a bit of a fluke according to Tami Eggleston, associate dean for institutional effectiveness and professor of psychology. She was preparing for a series of professional development workshops offered in conjunction with provost Christine Bahr after classes ended in May, and they decided to decorate the conference room. She bought some beach balls and sand buckets as decorations, and faculty liked it enough that they specifically mentioned it in their post-workshop evaluations. Since then, the university has raised the bar each year to keep faculty development engaging and fun while also addressing specific themes to improve teaching. We talked with Eggleston to learn more about how McKendree spices up their development activities on a small budget — and why she advocates for May as the perfect time to tackle faculty development. Keeping Faculty Development Fun After classes end in May, McKendree faculty are invited to participate in a couple of […]

Yield Rates are Declining – Why?

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Series: Changing How We Understand the Market In this new series by Jon Boeckenstedt, we analyze current enrollment and demographics data, uncovering stories that challenge how institutions often understand their marketplace—or that shed new light on emerging trends. We want to encourage a deeper look at the implications of today’s marketplace data. We hope that you will share these stories across your institution and use them to start critical conversations to drive not only enrollment strategy but discussions of curricular offerings, student support, and course design. While we’ll highlight findings and stories worthy of closer attention, each article includes an easy-to-use Tableau dashboard that you and your colleagues can use to drill deep in the data yourself. Colleges nationwide are suffering from declining yield rates, and everyone wants to know why.  In some sense, it’s the tendency of colleges to chase the measure of prestige known as selectivity, as defined by a low admit rate. People believe the best way to do this is to increase applications, to allow for a lower admit rate.  The problem is that colleges have a natural market, and, for the most part, applications generated on the margin are softer, that is, less likely to […]

Professional Development as a Tool for Succession Planning: The Story of Colorado School of Mines Foundation

Posted on by Brady Stanton

Also Contributing Editors:Rusty Brunner, Human Resources Manager, Colorado School of Mines Foundation Succession planning and robust professional development programs are not often associated with advancement shops in higher education. Some feel that with the high employee turnover rate in advancement, they cannot justify the financial investment. However, an alternative perspective is that professional development leads to increased employee performance and retention, making it a sound investment. At the Colorado School of Mines Foundation (CSMF), leadership values staff development and has implemented a scaffolded skills-based development plan. Supporting employees and creating long-term succession planning has been integrated into their culture. This fundamental belief in how leadership views employment has played a big part in creating a higher-than-average retention rate. During an interview with Rusty Brunner, Human Resources Manager and Steve Kreidler, Vice President of Administration/CFO from the Colorado School of Mines Foundation (CSMF), I learned about their vision and approach. A growth focused and skills-based model The professional development and succession plan, in its current form, began two years ago at the CSMF. It is more than a commitment to provide employees with an annual webcast or two; it is a fundamentally different way of approaching employment. It is a growth […]

Success Coaching: How to Turn Training into Action

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

How do you make sure that what you bring back from a conference gets followed up on and leads to action? How do you get more return on that investment and really build your capacity? Often the missing step is to pair training with success coaching. Here’s what that can look like. Take a moment to think back to the last time you researched a conference or workshop that you wanted to attend. If you are like most, it was probably an exciting experience, an opportunity to get “off campus” and meet new colleagues who are more than likely experiencing the same challenges you are. As you reviewed the content of the offering, you considered the changes you could implement when you returned from the training. After you registered and then attended, that feeling increased to the point where you could almost envision the changes already made and how those changes would impact you, your team, and maybe the entire institution. Having spent much of my career managing and facilitating training and development programs, there have been countless times when I would feel a high level of satisfaction observing participants’ energy and enthusiasm as each program concluded. In most instances, […]

What I Have Learned as a Campus Leader During the Pandemic

Posted on by Brady Stanton

In June 2020, I was part of a group of higher education leaders interviewed by New York Times columnist Emily Bazelon regarding our expectations for what college would be like in the fall in the midst of a global pandemic. In this roundtable conversation, we explored questions regarding navigating COVID in classrooms and residence halls; the risks to students, faculty, staff, and how to limit exposure; how technology can assist us in early diagnosis and contact tracing; and more. Perhaps the numerous interconnected items we discussed should have signaled that leading during COVID, perhaps more than at any other moment, would demand collaborative, connected leadership, but that was not top of mind at that moment. In fact, because I was transitioning between presidencies last summer, I had seen up close how two institutions were responding to the pandemic and felt equipped to make predictions about how COVID would unfold on college campuses. However, as most leaders recognize, for our own benefit and that of our institutions, it is important that we take time to reflect upon our vision, our actions, and our progress. As Steve Jobs famously said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them […]

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