Advising: 3 Ways to Take the Conversation Beyond Registration

This article is an excerpt from Sue Ohrablo’s acclaimed book High-Impact Advising: A Guide for Academic Advisors, which you can find here. After an academic year begins, advisors can start to breathe a little easier once most of the fires have been put out, questions have been answered, schedule adjustments have been made, and students are […]

Spotlight on Innovation: Colleges and Universities that are Making a Difference

Emerging Trends: How Colleges Can Operate as Learning Organizations In late 2014, the US Department of Education awarded $75 million in “First in the World” grants to twenty-four colleges and universities, to fund initiatives to improve college access and completion, particularly for lower-income or first-generation students. Since then, we’ve interviewed those leading the First in the World […]

From Student Affairs Professional to Student Affairs Scholar: Taking Charge of the Change You Want to See

FOR THE STUDENT AFFAIRS PROFESSIONAL:THE CHANGE YOU NEED TO SEE AT YOUR INSTITUTIONS We’re excited to share this article with you because at Academic Impressions, we believe that the change you need to see at your institution is often within your own control, and that your professional development is key to building the skills and […]

10 Tips to Improve Your Meetings

Most meetings simply don’t work and are a waste of precious time. Unfortunately, many higher education leaders spend much of their professional lives in these unproductive meetings. Higher education runs on thousands of daily meetings including committees, task forces, departmental meetings, and so on. When was the last time you participated in an engaging, productive meeting […]

Financing and Planning Student Life Facilities

READ THE FULL SERIES This summer, we released an executive summary of the findings from a survey of institutions looking to add new student life facilities in the next year. You can read our executive summary here. Now, we are following up with lead architects and consultants who work with student life facilities in higher […]

Best Practices in Student Housing Design

READ THE FULL SERIES 1. Executive Summary: The Changing Shape of Student Life Facilities 2. Financing and Planning Student Life Facilities 3. Best Practices in Student Housing Design (this article) by Patrick Cain and Daniel Fusch (Academic Impressions) This summer, we released an executive summary of the findings from a survey of institutions looking to add new […]

This is How We Need to Rethink the Work of Student Affairs

by Daniel Fusch and Caleb Tegtmeier (Academic Impressions) The challenges facing our students and our institutions are more complex than in the past, and no single, siloed office can address these challenges adequately. That’s why some institutions have been forming student affairs innovation hubs to bring together a more diverse crew of creative minds from […]

Leadership Training for Department Chairs

Department chairs are the “front line” of academic management (whether or not, in fact, their positions are classified as management or as faculty) — yet most department chairs receive little or no training for their positions. There are reasons for this: Yet many problems that rise to higher levels of administration could be avoided or […]

4 Things Academic Deans Can Do to Help Students Succeed after Graduation

Why, you might ask, should academic deans add this concern about students’ career preparation to their already unmanageably long list of responsibilities? As leaders of the faculty, deans need to serve as the programmatic agents of implementing a holistic undergraduate education. And deans provide the essential perspective of someone who observes the connections on a daily basis between […]

End of Fiscal Year: Donors Don’t Care

As fundraisers, we’ve just concluded a period of hustling to wrap up the fiscal year: working with donors, securing final gifts, and planning for the new fiscal year. Amid all the rush of this work, it can be easy to lose sight of something key: Most donors give because they want to make a difference […]