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What Red Bull Can Teach You About Engaging Alumni through Video

by Tim Ponisciak (University of Notre Dame) Red Bull is a company whose primary business is energy drinks; that is the company’s main source of revenue, that is what they are known worldwide for creating. Yet, you may have seen one of Red Bull’s many extreme sports videos. The company sponsors the Air Race World […]

The 21st Century Academic Advisor: 3 Critical Skill Sets

This article is an excerpt from Sue Ohrablo’s acclaimed book High-Impact Advising: A Guide for Academic Advisors, which you can find here. Being an effective academic advisor is like being an expert juggler. It is easy to drop a ball now and then. In this article, I examine strategies to keep all the balls in the […]

The Best and Worst Annual Fund Strategies

YOUR ANNUAL FUND THIS YEARFollow Jim Langley’s advice on what makes for the best and worst annual fund strategies to ensure this is a successful year for your annual giving operation. The 2 Worst Annual Fund Strategies Using the annual fund to balance the annual operating budget.Donors give much, much more in the name of philanthropy than […]

How MIT Plans to Develop Scalable, Differentiated Instruction

Here’s how MIT and several partners are developing a Fly-by-Wire system to provide high-quality, differentiated instruction at scale and to better equip graduates to enter the workforce. SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve […]

How Spelman College Will Use Metacognitive Awareness to Improve Academic Performance

Metacognitive awareness (“thinking about thinking”) is a crucial skill to help students persist and succeed, and here’s how Spelman College hopes to help them master that skill. SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve […]

Creating a Faculty Leadership Development Program

Effective faculty leadership development is important because faculty are the main stakeholders in the university who are committed to the core academic and democratic values that underpin higher education in the US. If faculty members are not effective leaders, then higher education at every level is ineffective and does not fully reflect these core values. […]

The Transformational Small College President

The recent Sweet Briar crisis highlighted the difficulties that at-risk institutions face in ensuring their basic survival. Not only has the feasibility of a women’s college been questioned, but also the viability of small colleges in general. Often, colleges respond to difficulties with incremental improvements and enhancements — short-term remedies that tend not to address […]

6 Destructive Myths About Teams in Higher Education

Higher education will face daunting and complex challenges over the next decade, and campuses will need high-performing teams, especially a high-performing senior team, in order to face those challenges. In this paper, Patrick Sanaghan and Jillian Lohndorf expose 6 potentially destructive myths — myths that get in the way of building and nurturing a great team. Come to the Conference “Leading and […]

Presidential Dialogues: The Changing Presidency in Higher Education

College President: An Impossible Job? The president of a college or university stands in the cross-hairs, operating in an environment where the challenges are complex, there are no clear answers and decisions come in all shades of gray. All eyes are on the institution’s chief executive to navigate the strategic dilemmas facing their institutions. And […]

Managing an Aging Higher-Ed Workforce

by Lisa Cook, Academic Impressions As more faculty, administration, and staff approach retirement age, institutions must be ready to address the challenges that accompany an aging workforce. Most have already addressed financial planning, but many still struggle with other aging workforce concerns such as mental health issues, budgeting for an increase in disability accommodation requests, […]