Why Colleges Shouldn’t Focus on Failure
When it comes to boosting retention and completion, many colleges engage in predictive analysis to determine which students are “at risk” of failure—then focus most support resources on trying to turn these students’ fortunes around.
Can Blended Learning Boost Retention?
What if blended learning could do more than utilize in-class time more efficiently and increase student interest in a course? What if it could actually boost retention? Retention is a critical concern for schools such as Long Island University (LIU) Brooklyn that work with populations that include at-risk and underprepared...
Preparing for and Managing Scandals
Academic scandals can arise at any institution at any time, and a big factor in how well the institution emerges and moves on from a scandal is largely dependent on the way administrators handle the situation. In an interview with Academic Leader, Rob Jenkins, associate professor of English at Georgia Perimeter...
Hearing the Call: Helping Students Find a Vocation, Not Just a Job
Ask any potential student or their parents about their top concerns when choosing a college, and “employability” will likely be on the list. A host of societal factors have combined to make this true: First, the Great Recession of 2008 made families much more concerned about the cost/benefit rationale for...
Thoughtful Staff Management in Five Steps
Formal reports and general discussions within the academy about department or school productivity focus almost exclusively on the work of the faculty. This accounts for the attention now being paid to the chairs’ evaluations of faculty that target strategies designed to maintain high performance and, in some cases, to drive...
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change
An amazing metamorphosis sometimes affects academic leaders between the time they interview for the job and the time they begin their position. As candidates for the position, prospective administrators are usually overwhelmed by the quality of the students and faculty. They’re impressed by the curriculum and mission of the institution,...
Deans’ Interpersonal/Negotiating Skills
The ever-present “revolving door” syndrome, where education deans leave their posts within four to five years, served as the impetus for our research. We wanted to understand what we were doing as veteran deans that enabled us to exhibit a certain degree of resiliency with our job responsibilities. We adapted...
The Two (Organizational) Cultures of the University
In a now legendary lecture at Cambridge’s Senate House in 1959, C.P. Snow coined the expression “the two cultures” as a way of characterizing what he saw as an increasing rift between science and the humanities in modern academic life. Since Snow’s time, we’ve seen even greater isolation of many...
Food Banks Address Hidden Hunger on Campus
Anyone who’s ever been to college knows the old joke about the “freshman 15.” It’s not uncommon for first-year students to gain around 15 pounds during that first year on campus. But having too much to eat is not the problem many of today’s students face. Instead, they’re up against...
Tailoring the Admissions Experience
I remember that when I started my first job as an admissions counselor, one of the interview questions was, “Do you see the role of admissions counselors more as counseling or as sales?” I had no experience, so I really didn’t know the right answer. Since the word “counselor” was...
