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Including Social Media in Your Crisis Communications Plan

In a 2009 interview with Academic Impressions, Cindy Lawson discussed some of the risks presented by social media in the event of a crisis, such as the potential for the rapid spread of misinformation. This week, we spoke with Lawson again to learn more about the opportunities social media channels present in the event of a crisis. Handled appropriately and well, social media channels can empower campus communications professionals to disseminate critical information widely and virally during and after an emergency. “Social media is the new inbox, with multiple channels linked to mobile devices. Social media allows you to be your own publicist, bypassing traditional media to communicate directly with your constituents. Politicians and celebrities are already doing this regularly.”Cindy Lawson, U of North Carolina Wilmington Lawson recommends adding these items to your crisis communications plan: Create social media “blind sites” that can go “live” in the event of a crisis During a crisis, assign staff or volunteers to monitor social network sites, just as you would monitor traditional news outlets Have a plan in place for using social media channels (housed on external servers) as a back-up in the event that other communications infrastructure fails Being Proactive For these […]

Branding Your Community College

August 2011. As more community colleges compete for a limited pool of students — and for the students most likely to complete degrees — a growing number of two-year institutions are looking into branding efforts. However, given the constraints on the marketing budget of a community college, most institutions have faced significant obstacles in launching a new or updated brand. We turned this week to Mike Barzacchini, the director of marketing services for Harper College, who offers the following practical tips for branding your two-year institution — on a budget. You Don’t Need a Huge Budget “Look at your brand as an asset you invest in, just like any other intellectual asset. Too often we default to “We don’t have the budget” or “We don’t have the time,” but it doesn’t take a big budget to communicate how your college is different. It doesn’t take a big budget to achieve consistency, discipline, and relevance in your marketing messages.” Mike Barzacchini, Harper College The secret to branding on a budget, Barzacchini suggests, is that “you don’t have to make a whole new logo, a tagline, an entire marketing campaign. Make your brand visible and practical, and apply it in the communications you already do. Tell […]

Moving Your Marketing Office from News Bureau to Strategic Partner

August 2011. Institutional marketing departments are increasingly asked to be all things to all people and are frequently under-resourced and under-staffed. In order to be effective and meet the competing demands of various campus constituents, department heads need to think creatively and strategically about structure, staffing models, and resource allocation. We turned this week to Elizabeth Scarborough, CEO of SimpsonScarborough, for her advice on leading an effective marketing department. She frames the challenge in terms of moving from operating simply as a service provider to operating as a communications strategy partner. “Ten years ago,” Scarborough notes, “most marketing departments were thought of as a news bureau or as the internal Kinko’s. Now, offices are beginning to shift from operating like a print shop to operating like a strategic marketing innovation center.” Scarborough offers these four recommendations for marketing and communications departments in higher education: Stop taking orders for publications, and instead work with other offices to address their marketing challenges in more strategic ways Set strategic goals and measures for your marketing operation Ensure that the marketing office owns the functional responsibility for the website Staff your office with “marketing strategists” Stop Taking Print Orders “On many campuses,” Scarborough notes, “marketing […]

Make Your Threat Assessment Team Effective: Part 2

This is the second of two articles offering practical advice on making behavioral intervention teams effective. You can read the first article here. August 18, 2011. In today’s difficult economic climate, most institutions of higher education are facing significant reductions in counseling and mental health budgets at a time when the mental health needs of students, faculty, and staff are on the rise. In a recent survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, 77 percent of counseling center directors indicated that the number of students on campus with severe mental health issues had increased in the past year. And while most available studies focus on student mental health, last year’s shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville offers a tragic reminder that faculty and staff may also face mental health issues. We asked Gene Deisinger, deputy chief of police and director of threat management services at Virginia Tech, for his advice on pitfalls to avoid when establishing early behavioral intervention teams or threat assessment teams. Deisinger is both a police officer and a clinical psychologist, and has been involved with such teams for over 15 years. He notes these five pitfalls that you can avoid with a little careful planning: First Pitfall: Focusing Solely […]

Lessons Learned from Piloting the iPad: Part 2

August 2011. A growing number of colleges and universities have launched pilot projects to test how the iPad might be used to produce a positive impact on student learning and engagement. Pepperdine University has just completed the first two terms of its three-term iPad Research Initiative (consisting of classroom observations, surveys, and focus groups), looking at how students are actually using the iPad in class when given the opportunity, and what opportunities exist for faculty to use the tool to improve teaching and learning. For the preliminary findings from the first term, check Part 1 of this article (January 2011). To gather their lessons learned from the second term of the research study, we returned this week for a second interview with Dana Hoover, assistant CIO for communications and planning for IT, and Hong Kha, project manager for pedagogy development and special projects. Hoover and Kha offer their advice for: Selecting the right faculty for piloting iPad adoption Providing instructional design and guidance Inviting faculty to bring a vision to the table Incentivizing student usage of the tool Selecting Faculty Hoover suggests that the most important criterion in selecting faculty for your pilot project is the faculty members’ willingness to change. “Don’t introduce any new technology if […]

Make Your Threat Assessment Team Effective: Part 1

This is the first of two articles offering practical advice on making behavioral intervention teams effective. The second article, which will focus on five pitfalls to avoid, will appear in late August. An abbreviated version of this article appeared in an earlier edition of Higher Ed Impact. August 4, 2011. In today’s difficult economic climate, most institutions of higher education are facing significant reductions in counseling and mental health budgets at a time when the mental health needs of students, faculty, and staff are on the rise. In a recent survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, 77 percent of counseling center directors indicated that the number of students on campus with severe mental health issues had increased in the past year. And while most available studies focus on student mental health, last year’s shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville offers a tragic reminder that faculty and staff may also face mental health issues. We asked Gene Deisinger, deputy chief of police and director of threat management services at Virginia Tech, for his advice on how to establish early behavioral intervention teams or threat assessment teams when challenged to do more with existing resources. Deisinger is both a police […]

Do Your Living-Learning Communities Offer a Comprehensive Immersion Experience?

August 4, 2011. Living-learning communities offer high potential for boosting the academic success and the education of the whole student, but they also present your campus with unique challenges because of the coordination they require between academic affairs and student services at your institution. The National Study of Living-Learning Programs (NSLLP) has begun documenting how living-learning programs influence the academic, social, and developmental outcomes for college students, as well as what characteristics are shared by those programs that show the greatest impact. This week, we interviewed two chief researchers from the NSLLP — Aaron Brower, vice provost for teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Karen Inkelas, associate professor and director for the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at the University of Virginia. Brower and Inkelas suggest that while many institutions have organized living-learning programs, few offer a truly integrated, comprehensive, and immersive learning experience for the students. Here is their advice. Intentionality is Key “Depending on the goals you have set for the program, you really have to do the hard work (and the fun work) of thinking through how those goals play out in every interaction within the residential learning community.” […]

Make Your Threat Assessment Team Effective: Part 1

This is the first of two articles offering practical advice on making behavioral intervention teams effective. The second article, which will focus on five pitfalls to avoid, will appear in late August. An abbreviated version of this article appeared in an earlier edition of Higher Ed Impact. August 4, 2011. In today’s difficult economic climate, most institutions of higher education are facing significant reductions in counseling and mental health budgets at a time when the mental health needs of students, faculty, and staff are on the rise. In a recent survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, 77 percent of counseling center directors indicated that the number of students on campus with severe mental health issues had increased in the past year. And while most available studies focus on student mental health, last year’s shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville offers a tragic reminder that faculty and staff may also face mental health issues. We asked Gene Deisinger, deputy chief of police and director of threat management services at Virginia Tech, for his advice on how to establish early behavioral intervention teams or threat assessment teams when challenged to do more with existing resources. Deisinger is both a police […]

What Engagement-Focused Fundraising Looks Like

July 28, 2011. According to a national survey of higher education alumni conducted by the Collaborative Innovation Network for Engagement and Giving and presented to the Annual Giving Directors Consortium (April 2010), only 52 percent of alumni at those institutions with the highest alumni participation rates believe their alma mater keeps them closely connected and values its alumni relationships. At the same time, institutions are trying to meet fundraising goals by calling on fewer and fewer donors. Now is the time for your institution to stop this unsustainable advancement strategy. We turned this week to Jim Langley, president of Langley Innovations, for his advice on how institutions need to rethink their strategy for engaging future donors. A Diagnosis: How Institutions and Alumni Misconnect “The underlying malady,” Langley remarks, “is a loss of emotional engagement with the institution. Alumni remain appreciative of their degree and of their time at the institution, but feel emotionally detached from the alma mater after graduation.” This disaffection can take different forms for different generations of alumni: Young alumni are likely to have graduated with a significant load of student debt and are now facing the challenges of building a career amid a sluggish economic recovery; when […]

Encouraging the Success of Online Students

July 28, 2011. The past decade has seen a plethora of research studies attempting to document the impact of online learning on measures of academic success and student persistence. The studies often produce widely divergent results, in part because institutions vary dramatically in the level of support and preparation they offer to both students and faculty. To inquire into best practices for preparing both faculty and students for online courses, we turned to two online learning veterans to learn more: Kristen Betts, director of the Center for Online Learning at Armstrong Atlantic State University, and Mark Parker, interim assistant dean and collegiate associate professor for communication, arts, and humanities at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Betts and Parker suggest that the most critical steps in encouraging the academic success and persistence of your online students involve setting and managing faculty and student expectations around workload and interaction within the online course. Here are some examples. Managing Expectations for Students Betts and Parker advise institutions to be more proactive in setting expectations both: When marketing online programs to students (while promoting the flexibility of an online program, it’s important to also set expectations around the program’s rigor and the quality of student work that is […]