In your experience, how common is it for financial aid offices to push in to classrooms with messages to students about financial aid, managing student loan debt, and personal finance—and what may be holding them back from doing this more?  “Typically, we only hear of financial aid staff coming in to the classroom as part […]

For seven years, Southern University and A&M College used a complicated document management system that didn’t work with its new student information system from Banner. So departments rarely used the SIS, and students spent time providing the same information to different departments and completing routine administrative responsibilities at the historically black college in Baton Rouge. […]

Solid and productive town-gown relationships can be achieved if they are based in building community and in creating partnerships. Our professional paths came together in 2011 in Bowling Green, Ohio. As the newly elected mayor and the newly appointed university president, we recognized that working together on important initiatives would build the university’s and the […]

Why are metaphors useful? Language is central to our humanity, and the language we use defines how we see ourselves, others and the world. If we see arguments as war we respond very differently than if we see them as dance. Over the centuries, metaphors have been used in daily language and thought (Lakoff and Johnson, […]

Let’s face it—running any department at a university, college, or other higher education institution brings unexpected twists and turns each day. This is especially true when it comes to managing the workforce, which is typically a diverse group of employees including hourly and part-time workers, student workers, employees with varied native languages, and more. Now […]

When we first learned of Hope International University’s (HIU) strategic partnership with Nebraska Christian College (NCC), we were skeptical to say the least. Indeed, we can well imagine that some folks within and beyond the HIU and NCC communities thought that the proposed transaction was misguided. After all, HIU’s main campus is situated in an […]

Whether you call them huddle rooms, breakout rooms or collaboration rooms, small group spaces cropping up in various campus buildings are changing the way academic facilities are used. The trend has extended beyond the campus library, where these spaces were traditionally located. Now small breakout rooms for student collaboration are becoming a mainstay in engineering […]

Why are more institutions moving their key systems to the cloud? When we speak to institutions, their motivations tend to fall into three categories: fundamental, functional and financial. Fundamentally, it may be time for an operating system upgrade from an aging system that’s costing a lot of maintenance and management overhead in space and power. […]