At Juniata College in Pennsylvania, students took Arabic for the first time last fall by enrolling in a course at Gettysburg College via video conference. Amherst College students, meanwhile, can major in architectural studies by taking classes at four neighboring colleges. And at Cabrini College near Philadelphia, students from five institutions researched viruses last summer […]
Creating new academic initiatives with other institutions relies on three key ingredients: interest in the program from faculty and students; commitment from each campus administration; and a reasonable opportunity for success. This advice comes from Neal Abraham, a physics professor and executive director of the Five Colleges, Incorporated in Massachusetts. It's the second largest consortia […]
Two- and four-year colleges across the nation have plugged the black hole of remediation with a range of programs designed to keep students enrolled while steering them toward greater levels of success. Some institutions have upgraded their assessment process to ensure incoming students take placement exams seriously and aren't assigned a higher (or lower) level […]
What's the biggest misconception administrators outside the facilities department tend to have related to heating and cooling campus buildings? "Administrators believe [that] just because they have invested a lot of capital in an expensive energy efficiency upgrade to a facility, the opportunity for behavioral energy conservation savings is minimal. The reality is, energy efficiency upgrades […]
In recent months, students have confronted societal problems such as climate change, race relations, social class inequity and sexual violence with protests and sit-ins at colleges across the country. It's a chaotic process, and how an administration responds to a protest is vitally important to a school's ability to alleviate the issues that spark it. […]
With a student population of over 40,000, managing scholarship applications and processing supporting documents was more than a daunting task for the financial aid team at the University of Ottawa. The Canadian institution had been using an obsolete online system, which did not support the automation of supporting documents and created a burdensome student application […]
When Winter Storm Jonas dumped nearly three feet of snow on Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in January, Dickinson College turned to outside contractors unfamiliar with the campus to aid its massive snow removal effort. Guided by geographic information systems (GIS) mapping, the contractors coordinated efforts with Dickinson's regular maintenance staff to clear the grounds efficiently. Specialty maps […]
Course scheduling technology providers were asked: What are the biggest hurdles colleges face when trying to implement the scheduling options that students may want? "Most institutions add new programs and course offerings at a much higher rate than they remove them. This leads to many programs and courses lacking the enrollment required to make them […]
Students don't quite run the show when it comes to course scheduling. But colleges and universities are striving to make it easier for them—with their ongoing juggle of work, family and school commitments—to take the classes necessary to meet educational objectives in time to graduate. Course scheduling policies and practices tend to date back—way back—to […]
Lack of diversity among faculty and administrators compounded the racial tensions that drove a wave of student protests—and a handful of high-level resignations—on campuses across the U.S. in the fall of 2015.
