Search Results for: meeting

Managing Change During COVID-19: Equipping supervisors for change in a time of unending uncertainty

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

By Amanda Morrow, SHRM-CP, Human Resources Business Partner, Rice Universitywith editing contributions from Melinda English, Rebecca Gould, and Susann Glenn Panic Over one year ago, the isolated whispers of a novel coronavirus grew into a boisterous, full-blown pandemic alarm that reverberated across the globe. As a result, universities and colleges worldwide were suddenly tasked with leading their staff, faculty, and students through unprecedented challenges and unforeseen complications. We, here, at Rice University in Houston, Texas, were no exception. On March 5, 2020, our Crisis Management Team alerted the campus that a staff member who had been under quarantine with a possible case of the coronavirus has tested positive for the disease. While swift action was taken to isolate the affected individual and those with whom they had contact, this news catalyzed sudden and wide-reaching action across campus. As the implications of SARS-CoV-2, a highly contagious, airborne disease, began to take form, the Human Resources (HR) team sprang into action. Our team immediately began supporting efforts to close down the campus to only essential personnel; to provide critical guidance to supervisors as they sent most (if not all) of their employees-home to work fully remote; to redesign how work was being […]

The Urgent Care Model as a Solution for Higher Ed Counseling Centers

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.

Disrupting the Status Quo: 5 Counterintuitive Notions for Inspiring Creativity

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

Creativity is an essential aspect of human nature, yet many people struggle to embrace it, either from insecurity or fearing its potential unpredictability. While it is tempting to stick to familiar routines that afford the comfort of not dealing with potential failure or uncertainty, there is no room for personal or organizational growth with this mindset. Today, the need to foster creativity that drives innovation and growth in organizations is a highly regarded requirement for leaders. However, simply telling your team to “think outside the box” isn’t exactly inspiring. To quote Ted Lasso, “Takin’ on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse. If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.” While we all agree that change is scary, what makes creativity so satisfying is the opportunity to see situations from new perspectives. In this article, we will explore five counterintuitive notions that can help to cultivate a creative culture. Embracing creativity is both a challenging and rewarding process. While these examples may appear to be counterintuitive, give them a try and see how they are able to unlock the full potential of your meetings, employees, and organization to help drive innovation. Lean into embracing […]

The Skills Higher-Ed Leaders Need to Succeed

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

2017 Update: Following up on this research, we have published our findings and our best current thinking in the paper “The Skills Future Higher-Ed Leaders Need to Succeed.” In Denver, CO this March, Academic Impressions convened a select group of forty academic and administrative leaders from diverse colleges and universities to address the question: What are the skills and qualities that leaders in the future need to have in order to thrive? Why this Conversation is So Critical Now Leadership matters. As program facilitator Pat Sanaghan remarked, an institution “cannot rise above its leadership.” The circumstances colleges find themselves in today — whether those circumstances are productive or disastrous — are a product of the decisions and actions (or inaction) of past leaders. If your own institution’s outlook isn’t bright, that’s a leadership issue. In a time of significant change and stress in the industry, we need to rethink the kind of leadership we need. How We Pursued this Conversation No one sage has the answers to this complex question. That’s why we called together 40 people from all across an institution’s organizational chart and from diverse types of institutions. We had presidents, chiefs of staff, chief academic officers. We also had several […]

Academic Success Coaching: Keys to an Effective Approach

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

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 […]

The One Issue That’s Bigger than the Demographic Cliff

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

At a workshop I ran recently, I asked the participants to answer the question, “What’s one thing I know about leadership?” when they were introducing themselves. One of the participants, a brilliant researcher who directs three different centers, stated very plainly: “In higher education, you are always promoted into a job for which you have no training.” His comment wasn’t delivered with any cynicism—he was at the training voluntarily for precisely that reason. He wanted to learn more about leadership.  Over the last three years, I’ve worked with more than 75 groups on various college campuses at all levels—from Chairs, all the way up to Presidents and their senior teams. And I find that this exact same phenomenon exists at every single level. There are only two differences: The higher up in the institution, the less likely leaders are to admit that they need help; and the consequences of ineffective leadership are exponentially greater—even greater than the demographic cliff.   Higher education is unique in this way—most other people-driven businesses invest heavily in leadership. Higher ed, instead, has been slow to see the value. Instead, we prefer to prioritize a narrow definition of success—with high-impact publications, grant development, starting new programs, […]

Upping the Ante on Recreation Facilities for Your Campus

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

Campus recreation facilities have evolved into hubs for student academic, social, and physical engagement. Institutions as diverse as the University of Alabama, Macalester College, the University of Wisconsin – River Falls, and DePauw University have taken very intentional approaches to designing their recreation facilities in ways that contribute to an improved quality of life for their campus communities. This week, we interviewed George Brown, the executive director of recreation at the University of Alabama. In the podcast below, Brown discusses how his campus has utilized the trends of modern recreation facility design in an on-campus facility that will meet both current and future student needs — and how this effort will help his institution continue to take positive strides in enrolling and retaining students. Podcast: An Interview with George Brown, University of Alabama Key Questions to Ask Your Design Team To ensure a recreation facility that meets student needs, George Brown recommends asking the following questions during the design process: See Upcoming Facilities Events

Makerspaces and Academic Incubators: Giving Innovation on Campus a Home

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

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 […]

What Does Collaborative Strategic Planning Actually Look Like? An Informal Case Study

Posted on by 25337pwpadmin@ai_azuread

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 […]

Addressing a Changing Landscape in Higher Education Due to COVID-19: Lessons From One Institution for Academic Leaders

Posted on by bradystanton@ai_azuread

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 […]

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