I’m guessing you don’t need one more person telling you how to manage through the COVID-19 pandemic or the economic downturn. I’m also guessing you’re close to your wit’s end wondering exactly what to do right now. The unknowns may be keeping you up at night. The knowns may be upsetting your stomach. My inbox…Read more
Tag: Executive Counsel
Commencement in the Time of Pandemic
There’s been a lot of discussion about postponing commencements ceremonies or moving them online during the current pandemic. The need for rites of passage is a real one, one all humans have. And, really, our campuses need them, too. The need for communal activities marking important moments doesn’t stop even when we have to remain separated. We might even need them more than ever.
Thinking Anthropologically About Faculty, Brand and Marketing
Anthropologists can drive people crazy (I’ll be telling you more about why an anthropologist is working at RHB soon!). People will ask us a question they imagine has a straightforward answer, and then we respond, “Well, it depends…” We respond that way because it’s true. It does depend. For my first Insight, I’m tackling something…Read more
You Don’t Know What You Have
I often refer to that classic story of the man who spent his life in search of riches only to discover that his own home sat over a diamond mine. The lesson from the story popularized in the late 19th century by Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University, suggests that what we seek, particularly in…Read more
The Dilemma of Determining Total Marketing Spend
It’s logical then that a university president or board of trustees would ask the following. “How much are we spending on marketing across the entire institution? Is it the right investment? What’s the outcome?” When expenditures are distributed across a college or university, these questions are not easy to answer. Central marketing leadership is held accountable for the institution’s total marketing activity but may only manage a quarter of the total marketing spend across the enterprise.
If I Had a Few Minutes With Your Board…
Securing an excellent relationship with your board may be the most valuable investment you can make. Of course, relationships with major donors may yield worthy substantial results, yet developing shared understandings with board members will advance the institution toward a successful future. We are called upon from time to time to present to trustees about…Read more
Common Obstacles Higher Education Must Work Around
One of the benefits of consulting is the opportunity to see patterns among a cross section of the industry. Higher education shares common opportunities and obstacles across the spectrum of institutions: public/private; two-year/four-year; liberal arts/vocational; colleges/universities and the like. I heard Howard Gardner, the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of…Read more
Takeaways from the 2019 CIC Presidents Institute
Like every good learning experience, I walked away with questions. Here we are at the start of 2019. IMHO, 2018 passed entirely too quickly. Still, it’s great to have yet another opportunity to celebrate a fresh start. Assuming you are reading this on a college campus, you may celebrate “new year’s” more significantly on July…Read more
Resistance to Marketing in Higher Ed: The Faculty Perspective
In a recent Chronicle article about the “crisis” of higher education, Lisa Schoenbach wrote that “the days are gone when scholars and teachers could afford to work in ignorance of or disdain for their universities’ decisions about budgets, outreach and lobbying. We need to understand the interrelations between the life of the mind and the…Read more
CRM as Technology and Strategy: A Core Value of Student Success
A few months ago, the Chronicle highlighted recent efforts by the University of Maine to centralize its processes and programs through an initiative called “One University.” This initiative not only creates system-wide efficiencies, but also breaks down barriers to student success. As Lee Gardner wrote in the piece, “bringing more students into a traditional ecosystem of individual state universities that duplicate the same sorts of programs and resources,” might tentatively improve enrollment, but it could never fix systemic issues relating to student recruitment, persistence and overall satisfaction…Read more