Articles: Administration & Management

4/26/2012

Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim has been named president of the World Bank, effective in June. Kim’s career has been devoted to improving the lives of people in developing countries and championing the cause of global health, which aligns with the World Bank’s mission to reduce poverty and support development, serving as a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries across the globe.

4/25/2012

Today’s financial aid director wears many hats: counselor, manager of budgets, supervisor, implementer of regulations, and keeper of data, to name a few. As the role of financial aid director has become increasingly complex and challenging, so has filling this position.

4/25/2012

How much are your employees worth? The struggling economy has prompted many institutions to make serious changes in how staff and faculty are evaluated. While politicians claim education is the key to attracting quality jobs, millions of dollars have been slashed from higher education appropriations. Every budget dollar spent must be justified more than ever.

4/24/2012

I brought my hard hat when I arrived in Terre Haute, Indiana, to begin my freshman year at Indiana State University nearly 50 years ago. I had worked for two years as a steelworker in Gary and the hard hat was a reminder of my roots—I am one of 10 children of parents of modest means—and of the hardy people who made a decent and honorable living operating blast furnaces that transformed molten iron. It also was a reminder of the great new journey I was embarking upon.

4/24/2012

Higher education costs are skyrocketing at a rate much higher than inflation. While states have drastically reduced public university budgets, those universities are constrained from raising tuition costs appreciably. Add to this the fact that higher education is a labor-intensive enterprise, and you begin to understand the dilemma in which we college administrators find ourselves.

4/9/2012

This comprehensive white paper outlines the benefits associated with implementing enterprise content management (ECM) systems for individual departments, the IT department and the higher education institution as a whole.

3/28/2012

Left in the wake of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged crimes at Penn State University are a highly regarded university president, a legendary football coach, and two high-level administrators charged with perjury for lying to the grand jury. The only person left standing is former Penn State Wide Receivers Coach Mike McQueary.

3/27/2012

Wading through compliance rules can be daunting for even the most seasoned administrator. The Higher Education Compliance Alliance, a new online resource, was launched on March 1 to help answer the most burning federal law and regulation questions.

3/27/2012

During his nine-year tenure as senior vice president for advancement at Oklahoma Christian University, John deSteiguer contributed to reaching a record $110 million in donor giving. He’ll put this experience, and his previous experience at Northeastern State University (Okla.), to use as OC’s new president, effective in June. He succeeds Mike O’Neal, president since 2002.

3/27/2012

Justin Gatewood remembers the annoying hurdles he had to jump over to attend an orientation session when he enrolled at Victor Valley College (Calif.). “I had to take time off work and drive over to the campus and sit in a classroom and listen to a counselor for an hour or so and then drive back,” he says. “It had to be all coordinated. It was an ordeal.”

3/27/2012

Community college students are more likely to have extra demands on their time and attention, from jobs to family commitments. Anything colleges can do to relieve administrative burdens means more time that students can concentrate on their studies. At Houston Community College, the Information Technology office teamed with the Office of Student Financial Services and the Finance and Accounting office to move to paperless cashiering.

3/27/2012

The University of Central Oklahoma once had a desktop printer or multifunction copy machine for nearly every faculty and staff member on campus. In 2009, 1,313 desktop printers and 135 multifunction copy machines were being used by 1,500 faculty and staff members. Denise Smith, director of Purchasing, Payment Services, and Travel, shares that UCO saw an opportunity for consolidation that could reduce spending and improve sustainability on campus.

3/27/2012

The idea of students substituting courses in a degree plan is not unheard of, but such requests must be carefully managed. Before the fall of 2011, Texas A&M University was dealing with the challenging and costly issue of processing undergraduate course adjustments within the Degree Audit office in the Office of the Registrar using a paper-based process. Requests were initiated by an advisor, then sent to the department head and dean before arriving at Degree Audit.

3/27/2012

The classic registration scenario of bouncing students from their advisor to select classes, to the Business Office to check for holds, and finally to the Registrar’s Office to stand in line is so 20th century—but hard to escape. Everyone at Catawba College (N.C.) agreed it was time to modernize, but faculty advisors did not want their role in the process diminished or to lose a touch point with students.

3/27/2012

As students “swirl” through higher education, taking classes at multiple institutions either consecutively or simultaneously, the need for institutions to quickly receive and process transcripts becomes more important. To comply with accreditation standards, Houston Community College was supposed to have all transcripts evaluated by the end of a student’s first semester, a goal their paper-based process was not allowing them to meet in 2008.

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