Search Results for: meeting

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 […]

It’s Not Just About the First and Second Year of College

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Series: Managing the Student LifecycleThis 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 EffortDeveloping a Metrics-Driven Culture within Student AffairsIt’s not just about the first and second year of college. Here are 5 places where students and campuses falter later in the student lifecycle. Traditionally, colleges measure retention as the percentage of enrolling first-year students who return for their sophomore year. No doubt this is an important measure. But equally important are the retention rates from sophomore to junior year, from junior year to senior year, and from the start of senior year to graduation. Colleges committed to promoting student success need to take a closer look at their year-to-year retention and graduation rate trends in order to determine patterns, identify pitfalls, and take steps to make improvements. Only when the obstacles are identified and understood can an institution take intentional and strategic steps to achieve higher student success levels. In this article, I […]

The Current State of Competency-Based Education in the US

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Recently, I had the privilege to sit in on a press release of the very preliminary findings from a joint Eduventures/Ellucian survey reporting on institutions’ level of commitment to competency-based education (CBE). The full report on the survey will not be released until June, and in fact the survey is still open. But as of late April, 261 institutions have responded, representing a diversity of Carnegie classifications and institutional types, and some of the findings are illuminating. The findings listed below were shared with me by Richard Garrett, Chief Research Officer at Eduventures, and Carie Ann Potenza, Director of Academic and Grant Services, Teach and Learning, Ellucian. I have also asked several leaders of innovative CBE programs (who will also be speaking at our upcoming conference Developing and Managing Competency-Based Education) to comment on the initial findings, and their comments are also below. Findings: Everyone is Interested in CBE, Few are Scaling It First, some quick demographics. Of the 261 early respondents: These are preliminary findings only, and the survey’s administrators haven’t yet segmented the data to learn more. However, Richard Garrett has noted that preliminary segmenting by Carnegie classification has revealed very little variance in response across types of institutions. […]

Creating a Safe Space in Your Class During a Crisis

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

You’re in class (online). Your students are in class. And all of your minds are on COVID-19, quarantine, and making ends meet. How can we as instructors step back, break down the sense of isolation and hopelessness, and use the sharing of our experiences of crisis to create a safe space for students to grow and learn?  by Marina Hofman, Ph.D., Palm Beach Atlantic University These are traumatizing times. Discouragement, uncertainty, and loss are sweeping across our nation—and our students are navigating uncharted territory in their lives. How can we connect with our students and bring them hope during this unprecedented crisis? Many of our students are distracted and scared. Many of our faculty are, too. How do we create space in our classes for both faculty and students to speak their stress and fear and find hope in moving forward together amid uncertainty? Faculty connection to students is essential for student learning and engagement even at the best of times. During this current pandemic, it is more important than ever. Safe to Be Vulnerable I made the decision early in my career to share my own story of fear, loss, and uncertainty with students. I do this in recognition […]

Retaining Online Students: 3 Expert Perspectives

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

In the wake of recent declines in online program enrollment across many institutions, renewed attention to online student success and retention has become especially critical. We wanted to hear the best current thinking on improving online student retention, so we reached out to a panel of three accomplished experts in this area: You can read our in-depth interview with them below. These three also serve as the faculty for our upcoming workshop, Improving Online Student Retention and Success, where you will have the opportunity to develop a series of action plans to increase online student success at your institution. In this interview, we asked them for: 1. Examples of untapped opportunities Sarah Seigle Peatman, AI. Looking across the landscape of online programs, what do you see as the biggest untapped opportunities for improving online student success? Kristen Betts, Drexel University. One of the biggest untapped opportunities for improving online student success is to get a better institutional understanding around cognitive and non-cognitive factors associated with student retention, completion, and attrition. Research often links cognitive measures (e.g., GPA, rank, achievement tests, etc.) to academic success. However, for non-traditional students, these measures may be more elusive. According the 2016 Learning House Report, the average age […]

Why (And How) We Need to Improve Faculty Mentoring in Higher Education

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Formally defined, structured faculty mentoring is more critical now than ever – and not only for early career faculty but for faculty throughout their career. Expert David Kiel explains why this is the case and how we can improve faculty mentoring programs. Often faculty members do not learn core skills in their graduate programs. While they may learn how to be good researchers, they often come to campus unequipped for the classroom and have even less experience in community service.  In addition, without thoughtful guidance they may lack the ability to navigate promotion processes. As their careers progress, they may be asked to take on additional tasks for which they also have no preparation. Consequently, it is critical to improve mentoring and faculty development programs at all levels of institutions of higher education. This article summarizes the reasons why this movement has become so widespread and provides directions for academic leaders who want to improve their efforts at retaining and developing their faculty, arguably their most important asset. I will identify five reasons why well-defined faculty mentoring programs are becoming a “must have” feature of campus life. I also offer ten specific precepts that lay out the direction for positive […]

Recruitment In Today’s Data-Driven, Evolving Higher Education Landscape

Posted on by Brady Stanton

It has been said that all the world is simply a struggle between the “Haves” and “Have Nots.” How you view admissions and recruitment at your university probably depends a lot on which type of university you work at, whether you’re at a public, private, or for-profit institution, and—especially—what the mission of your institution looks like. Are you at one of the private “Haves” or perhaps one of the public “Have Nots?” Are your founding and mission based on access for a wide swath of the population, or is your purpose designed to serve the elite students—and only the elite students—who have risen to the top of the pyramid of academic achievement we sometimes call “merit?” It makes a big difference. In my first post in this series, I wrote about marketing, and how all higher-education institutions do it to some degree. I also mentioned that the enrollment management and/or admissions/financial aid departments are leading the charge when it comes to the four components of marketing (price, product, place, and promotion). And in this post, we’ll get down to “brass tacks,” where we actually apply those concepts as we attempt to enroll a class in the next term that is […]

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