Category: Blog

Improving Student Success by Providing Adjuncts a One-Stop Shop for Professional Development

by Lisa Cook

Adjunct faculty are teaching ever-increasing numbers of first-year and community college classes, yet receive little faculty development. Studies have shown that rising reliance on adjuncts is having a negative effect on student success, particularly for first-generation and at-risk students. With increased demands to improve graduation rates and other student success metrics, professional development to teach […]

Spotlight on Innovation: How Southern New Hampshire is Replacing Remedial Education with Just-in-Time Academic Assistance

by Lisa Cook, Daniel Fusch

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 24 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 […]

How One Institution’s “Breakthrough Strategies” Videos are Helping First-Gen Students

by Lisa Cook

The success of first-generation and at-risk students is the responsibility of an institution’s entire community, but faculty members are especially on the “front lines” when it comes to making a real impact. And Heritage University in Toppenish, WA has identified a low-cost, time-efficient way to deliver faculty development focused on how instructors can have a greater […]

Partnering with Faculty in Early Alert: A Faculty Perspective

PARTNERING WITH FACULTY – FROM A FACULTY PERSPECTIVE Bernadette Jungblut of West Virginia University recently spoke to this issue — from a faculty perspective — at an April 2015 Academic Impressions webcast. Now, In this article, Jungblut offers further strategies for partnering with faculty effectively. What follows includes both an institutional case study and Bernadette’s […]

The President as Steward

by Jim M. Langley

While virtually every advancement operation has a stewardship function, presidents would be wise to ensure that the totality of the stewardship obligation is not presumed to be the province of a single office (often led by a single person). Presidents can create a culture of accountability by speaking to the importance of private donors, not […]

What Development Teams Get Wrong about Donor Relations

by Erika Bernal

Most would agree that there is no fund development without donor relations. Consider this article a personal perspective—informed by more than a decade of donor relations and stewardship experience—about the missed collaborative opportunities between development and donor relations teams. There is no time like now to create partnerships to address the divide. As an industry, we […]

How Early Alert and Student Success Initiatives Fail

by Loralyn Taylor, Ph.D.

Spoiler alert: The biggest killer of early alert programs is information flow problems. Here’s a model for approaching that flow differently. When Early Alert Programs Lack a Strong Underlying Framework of Data We look to these research-based best practices and bring program after program to our campuses to address the needs of specific high risk […]

You May Be Excluding Some of Your Most Loyal Donors From Recognition

by Heather L. Greig

Over the last decade, many colleges and universities have launched programs intended to encourage annual giving through the recognition of donor loyalty. In every case that I can think of, these societies are recognizing consecutive giving, which makes sense—we want people to give every year. I am a long-time fan of the loyalty society and […]

Giving and Recognition Societies – We Can Do Better!

by Lynne Wester

I frequently say to my friends in donor relations that I would like to find the person who invented giving societies and give them a swift punch or two. I am of the opinion that great donor recognition does not hinge on giving societies. I am also of the probably unpopular opinion that most donors […]

Is Your Professional Development Ad Hoc or Planned?

by Martin Klubeck, Daniel Fusch

A 2014 Academic Impressions survey of over 500 higher-ed professionals found that higher education institutions are divided roughly in half in terms of whether professional development is planned and proactive, or ad hoc and reactive. This gave us pause for thought — and it should give you pause, too. Rethinking Professional Development as a Critical Asset […]