There have been several stories in the news lately about colleges with growing enrollments that are planning for campus expansion (including Loyola and New York University), and these stories have highlighted both the importance and challenges of strong town-gown relations during the capital planning process. We asked Mark Beck, director of capital planning at the University System of Maryland for insights into how institutions can more effectively invite town participation in a campus expansion planning effort. Engage Your Community Early and Often “It’s not so much what you do to engage your community, but how you do it.”Mark Beck, U System of Maryland The most important investment you can make is to engage your community as often as possible. Beck suggests that you can’t simply go through the motion of holding meetings and communicating via the web and newsletters. You have to actually listen and engage your community in the planning process. He points to examples of public meetings that he convened early in his career that weren’t successful because the university approached the discussion as an announcement of their plans rather than as a listening opportunity. Beck suggests making the meetings more regular, less formal, and more focused on dialogue. Equally […]
Giving every student an assessment and 50-minute counseling session is no longer sustainable given the high volume of students needing mental health services. You are likely looking for new ways of delivering quality care to meet your students’ needs and manage your resources. Join us online to learn how the Urgent Care Model may be one possible solution for your counseling center. Dr. Will Meek from Brown University, creator of the model, will guide you through its key components and share tips for how you can implement the model on your campus. We will share a counselor’s typical daily schedule in the Urgent Care Model to illustrate how quality care is delivered to various students.
Given voluminous research on the impact of individualized attention on at-risk students’ academic performance and persistence, more institutions are innovating new ways to leverage both peer mentors and professional academic success coaches. To learn more about the second approach (which has not yet been as widely adopted), we reached out to Derek Moore, a key player in the success coach program at Pulaski Technical College. Pulaski has success coaches on seven campuses, and the coaches report to the institution’s dean of enrollment. The program has seen some success, and Moore shared with us some of its key features. Smaller colleges especially, as well as institutions serving nontraditional student populations, may want to take note. Much of the program’s features are replicable, and it is possible to start on a small scale — with just a few coaches and a brief questionnaire to serve as a needs assessment — and then build up over time. Here is one model for providing effective academic success coaching. The Triage Approach Moore outlined for us the thinking behind Pulaski Technical College’s academic success coach program. The program takes a “triage” approach, offering three levels of coaching: The case management approach involves the coach partnering […]
Listening recently to Melissa Kaufman, executive director of The Garage at Northwestern University (which incubated 147 start-ups in its first year), and David G. Broz and Todd Heiser, principals for Gensler, speak about academic incubators at our recent webcast (you can obtain a recording here), I was especially struck by the research showing the hunger for entrepreneurship among today’s traditional-aged college students: This generation of students has an entrepreneurial and creative spirit. We just need to create the spaces—innovation centers, makerspaces, academic incubators—that foster their learning and growth as young entrepreneurs. Illustrating this, Kaufman describes the culture of Northwestern University before the institution converted a parking garage into The Garage, a central incubator for the campus: “Students were incubating in their dorm rooms, in their homes; faculty were connecting in classrooms and lab spaces. But there was no one space where all these people could connect. We needed a space where they could work on their schedule, that would be available 24/7 and where they could meet creative entrepreneurs from elsewhere on campus. We needed to give innovation on campus a home.” What is an academic incubator? “We want to help students develop an entrepreneurial toolkit, but I don’t believe you can […]
Learn a process for developing creative and customized stewardship plans for your highest-level donors. How can you learn unique information about your donors and use it to form stewardship plans that create meaningful moments and encourage subsequent gifts? Join us online to get a collection of creative ideas for your top donor stewardship plans – ranging from campus visits to speaking opportunities to meetings with gift beneficiaries. Since not every idea is appropriate for every donor, we’ll help you map the ideas to important donor preferences so that your plans have maximum impact.
The main element missing from most peer leader programs is training rooted in outcomes-based learning strategies. Without this, your peer leaders may clearly understand what’s expected of them, but be ill equipped to meet those expectations. Join us online to learn how you can reconfigure your peer leader training by utilizing outcome-based, active learning strategies that model how peer leaders can develop productive relationships with their mentees. Our expert instructor will share ideas for applying this approach to peer leader trainings before and during the term.
Whether you’re a new research development professional (RDP) or an RDP new to your institution, you need to orient to your institution’s structure and research landscape. Where can you gather tools and intel that will further your institution’s research mission, and how can you share them widely? Join us online to learn the fundamentals of communicating across institutional silos to connect the people and resources needed for high-quality research – especially interdisciplinary research. You will leave with concrete tips on how to gather and share useful information, including: Publications you should read Meetings you should attend Key people you should connect with
A PROCESS THAT WORKSIf the case study below intrigues you, you can learn the 5-phase Collaborative Strategic Planning process that Anoka Ramsey Community College undertook in Pat Sanaghan’s book Strategic Planning: 5 Tough Questions, 5 Proven Answers.Case Study: Anoka Technical College & Anoka Ramsey Community College by Andrew Aspaas, Patrick Sanaghan, Donald Lewis, and Kent Hanson “Collaborative” Strategic Planning (CSP) has a nice ring to it, sounds a little like mom and apple pie, inclusion, and lots of participation. Who wouldn’t want that? In reality, authentic collaboration is a difficult process for leaders to undertake and do well. The challenges of conducting a collaborative planning process are many: you can get lost in too much process, where seemingly endless loops of engagement become confusing and exhausting for stakeholders; in an attempt to be inclusive, way too many people are informally involved in the planning effort, with no real ownership for the outcomes; the process can lose focus quickly, or people become overwhelmed by all the data that is gathered, and sense making becomes almost impossible. In this informal case study we want to show how you can actually conduct a large group collaborative planning meeting with 200+ faculty and ensure […]
ByAnand R. Marri, Dean and Professor, Teachers College, Ball State University Paaige K. Turner, Dean and Professor, College of Communication, Information, and Media, Ball State University Susana Rivera-Mills, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Ball State University While the COVID-19 pandemic has presented numerous challenges for higher education institutions across the world, it also offers an opportunity to reflect upon how this moment can prepare academic leaders for a changing landscape. The lessons we learned at Ball State University are organized into three areas, those that can take higher education forward into the future, those that are applicable for that moment, and those that did not achieve the intended objectives. Ball State University serves over 22,000 undergraduate and graduate students both on campus and through our numerous online programs. Currently, over one-third of our undergraduate students receive Pell Grants and over 25 percent of our undergraduate students are first-generation college students. The COVID-19 pandemic presented a new set of challenges and exacerbated existing challenges across higher education while providing an opportunity to affirm commitments to institutional values. Beneficence is Ball State’s iconic statue that represents the beneficence and tenacity of the Ball Family and our community. Ball State […]
As the Technical Project Coordinator, Enya is focused on supporting the development team to keep projects moving efficiently and ensuring technical solutions are delivered on time. She works closely with our cross-departmental product team to organize project development, manage timelines, problem-solve, and handle task management to meet both internal and external objectives. With a diverse background in real estate, marketing, and a BA in Business Administration from Creighton University, Enya is learning Agile Methodology frameworks to optimize project flow and support the team’s success. When she’s not at work, Enya is helping launch her family’s hydroponic container farm in Nebraska, playing tennis, and values spending quality time with friends and family.
