Partnering with Student Organizations to Build First-Year Student Engagement: Special Olympics Young Athletes and Merrimack College
Every day, academic leaders make decisions about what kinds of programming college first-year students will find attractive and engaging. Many colleges’ ideas, however, fail to connect to student interest and experience. Part of the reason for this disconnect is generational. The staff and administrators planning these programs are at least...
Celebrating Memories on Social Media to Engage Alumni
Take a moment to think back to the most vivid memories from your college experience. Do it right now: close your eyes and see what comes to mind. OK, what did you see? Maybe it was a high-profile sports game you went to, a graduation ceremony, a girlfriend or boyfriend...
Effective Strategies for Increasing Undergraduate Student Enrollment
In a recent Academic Leader article, we outlined the need for colleges and universities to increase their efforts in undergraduate student recruiting in order to remain fiscally secure in an environment where the student pool is shrinking. The top public and private universities and colleges will continue to prosper on account of...
Exodus or Migration? Faculty Are Leaving
Higher ed is losing faculty. Some believe nontenured faculty are leaving, while others insist that tenured faculty are leaving too. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? It depends on whom you ask. According to an October 2020 Chronicle of Higher Education survey of 1,122 US college and university faculty, more than two-thirds of...
Throw the BUMs out: Higher Education Acronyms Impede Communication
Like a light bulb drawn atop a cartoon character’s head, the bright light that came from the dean of students’ office radiated the brilliance of his idea. Survey data had indicated an issue with first-year students connecting with their advisors, and he firmly believed that it was contributing to the...
Triangulating for a New Approach to Student Success
The signs of a fundamental shift in the attitudes, motivations, and learning expectations of students deciding where to attend college or university are well established. Due to rising costs (e.g., tuition, textbooks, and room and board) and the heavy, long-term debt burden that often comes with an education, many students...
Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Culture for Student Success
I served for several years on my college readiness, transition, and retention committee at a large public university. The committee researched, surveyed, and interviewed students, faculty, and administrators, as well as our feeder community college and high school personnel. Below are the findings from our efforts as well as my...
Five Tips for Making Tenure
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on June 27, 2016. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. While the words “tenure track” make it sound like there’s a smooth set of rails that will take you from hiring through to a position on the permanent tenured faculty, “tenure obstacle course” might in fact...
When Full-Time Faculty and Adjuncts Collide: Ideas to Maintain Departmental Peace
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on December 1, 2017© Magna Publications. All rights reserved. At the most recent Leadership in Higher Education Conference this past October in Baltimore, I gave a session titled “What Your Adjuncts Wish You Knew.” In it, I exhorted the deans and department chairs in attendance...
