Presidents, CFOs, and trustee finance committee members will not travel too far down any paths related to sustainability until their associated costs are identified and thoroughly assessed.
Articles: Administration & Management
7/17/2012
In June, 15 colleges and universities were recognized by the American Council on Education and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for innovative practices in supporting faculty before, during, and after their retirement transitions. The awards focused on efforts to support the development of a legacy for retiring faculty, help them transition into retirement, and keep faculty involved in the academic community during their retirement years.
Examples of the measures recognized include:
7/17/2012
It’s an increasingly common move by campus officials during challenging economic times: voluntary retirement. Offering these incentives to faculty and staff provides a ready means of reducing personnel costs while not being seen as severe and traumatic as layoffs, salary reductions, and furloughs tend to be.
Although the details of such plans vary from one college to the next, they all rest on the potential for shrinking the workforce during times of static or declining budgets.
7/17/2012
Mel Shiavelli has been named executive vice president at Northern Virginia Community College. The former president and CEO of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (Pa.) since 2002 and a charter member of the Manufacturing Institute’s Education Council, Shiavelli started in his new role July 1.
7/16/2012
Rising high school juniors and seniors are beginning to set their sights on the college admissions process—a long and winding road that typically includes web-based research, counselors, essays, and overnight visits to experience campus cultures.
Sounds good.
Yet, for too many students, these overnights include a different kind of education: underage drinking and intimate sexual behavior, in some cases for the first time.
7/13/2012
When applying for any of the more than 200 institutional scholarships at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, whose worldwide campus is based in Daytona Beach, Fla., students used to complete an online form and then spend time gathering an essay and 15 to 20 pages of additional hardcopy documentation. Financial aid staff then sorted and filed it all away in physical file folders.
7/13/2012
Adjunct faculty members are an important resource on campuses, supplementing full-time faculty course offerings and making it possible for students to complete required courses on time. But until the fall of 2011, adjuncts and full-time faculty teaching additional courses were causing a tremendous drain on resources at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, located in Green Bay.
7/13/2012
Blessed by rising enrollments and increased faculty hiring but burdened by flat IT staffing, Old Dominion University (Va.) officials took a hard look at both its ERP system and itself in hopes of addressing a simple but hugely significant issue. “We framed the basic question as, Is it Banner or is it us?” recalls Bob Fenning, vice president for administration and finance.
7/13/2012
Before August 2011, Texas A&M Health Science Center Facilities & Construction office (FCO) employees frequently used hand-written notes to record and track building problems reported on its eight campuses. Faculty, students, staff, and visitors used a variety of methods to report problems, including phone calls, email, and catching someone in the hall to request help.
7/13/2012
There doesn’t seem to be anything higher education can’t break apart and dump into silos. Even technology, which was supposed to help integrate things and eliminate duplicate, wasteful efforts we all loathe, isn’t immune to the practice.
7/13/2012
The amount of money that gets routed around a campus without cash ever exchanging hands is enormous. Recording those exchanges is vital for accounting, but often cumbersome. “Universities do a fair amount of chargebacks for their operations,” observes Rich Van Den Hul, vice president for business and financial affairs at Western Washington University. “The copy center is a good example. Facilities work. IT work. So there’s a lot of transactions.”
7/13/2012
The purchase of textbooks and other educational materials before the start of the semester has numerous benefits: Students are better prepared heading into classes; faculty can begin teaching from the books immediately; and the bookstore is less crowded during that first manic week. But for students on financial aid at Western Washington University, where funding is disbursed on the first day of class, being well prepared came at a price.
7/13/2012
California State University, San Bernardino used to receive approximately 600 completed scholarship applications for the 200 or so on-campus scholarships. On average, 300 additional applications were initiated but never completed. Those were lost opportunities, in part due to the arduous application process, says Louise Jones, financial aid advisor and scholarship coordinator.
7/13/2012
There’s a reason someone coined the term “too many cooks in the kitchen.” Northern Arizona University’s Extended Campuses division—with 36 locations plus numerous online offerings—has enjoyed rapid growth in enrollment, pressuring the division’s software development team to keep up with rising demand for student services, course management, prospect tracking, and staff support.
6/5/2012
Over the course of approximately 200 conversations and interviews for our book, The Sustainable University: Green Goals and New Challenges for Higher Education Leaders (Johns Hopkins, 2012), it became apparent that while many believe the period for orientations to sustainability has passed and the movem
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