Why It Was Right for Lincoln University to Throw Its Weight Around

The controversy over Lincoln University’s weight-related graduation requirement surely is unwelcome on the suburban Philadelphia school’s campus. But it offers university communicators across the country as well as at Lincoln a chance to change an important, ongoing conversation about the role of colleges in their students’ nonacademic lives.

Filed under: Crisis Communications, Student Communications , Lincoln University

Communicating Thanks on This Fourth Thursday of November 2009

Those of us who work in university communications are extraordinarily lucky. We take special concepts–things like mission and research and service–and deliver them in understandable ways to a myriad of audiences. We work with words and ideas, and could there be anything more fulfilling than that? This work is done not to sell toothpaste or get someone elected but to advance the most necessary of human endeavors: learning. Talk about something to be thankful for. | TCF

Filed under: Random Musings , Thanksgiving

A Communications Lesson Learned Amidst Mickey and Donald

It’s been quiet around these parts lately, and for good reason: My family and I spent last week in Walt Disney World, and since I’ve been back I’ve been playing catch-up. Whaddya know, though, while in Disney I observed something that has some relevance here.

Filed under: Random Musings , Walt Disney World

Communicating Need to Alumni Who Don’t Want to Listen

Last week I hung out with a friend who said she hadn’t given a dime to her alma mater in the 17 years since she graduated because she felt the school had turned its back on working-class students. Its push to advance its reputation has led the school to reach out to more elite students, to upgrade campus facilities, and to expand academic offerings and the size and quality of the faculty. These advancements, of course, don’t come cheaply, and my friend believes the university has put itself far out of reach of those like herself–first-generation college students with a lot to offer except deep pockets for hefty tuition bills.

Filed under: Advancement Communications, Alumni Communications , elitism

Mount Holyoke College *and* the University of Hartford Take Advantage of a Horn-Tooting Opportunity

Wonder whether Mount Holyoke College and the University of Hartford collaborated on yesterday’s announcement that the latter’s provost was just named the former’s new president. Each institution fronted the news on its respective website and linked to details inside. Mount Holyoke’s page included biographical information, multimedia presentations, and more on Lynn Pasquerella, while Hartford wished its outgoing provost well and linked to Holyoke’s live webcast of the announcement.

Filed under: Internal Communications, Web communications , Mount Holyoke College, University of Hartford

If the President of Harvard University Thinks Communication Is Important, Shouldn’t Your University’s President?

Yesterday’s New York Times featured as the subject of its weekly Corner Office interview Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University. Faust’s thoughts on leadership are interesting, especially when she discusses how she learned, as the new head of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, to secure buy-in even amidst disagreement:

There’s one alum who was an expert in turnarounds, and so I asked him, “What should I do?” He said, “One lesson about change in any organization — communicate, communicate, communicate.” So I still think about that all the time, and the scale of communication from the president’s office is a very much more elaborate one. It’s a bigger scale. You’ve got to communicate in different ways.

This counsel is as true for the president of one of the world’s most prestigious universities as it is for the head of a community college in South Dakota. So much of effective leadership involves talking and, more importantly, listening to those whom one’s decisions will affect. Yet far too many presidents simply don’t get it. As university communicators we have as one of our most important duties impressing upon our CEOs the importance and value of effective messaging in advancing the institution’s mission. | TCF

Filed under: Communications Counseling, Leadership Communications , Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust

How to Answer the “Why Does Your President Make So Much?” Questions

The man overseeing the best-known annual survey of executive compensation in higher education captures perfectly the dilemma for private research university communicators who have to justify the rising salaries of their presidents:

“I think the answer you’d get from the governing boards that set these salaries is that it’s a market and it’s increasingly hard to find these people,” said Jeffrey Selingo, editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has published its compensation survey annually since 1993. “That said, almost every year, presidential salaries have gone up faster than inflation, and faster than tuition, which rankles some people on campus.”

Filed under: Communications Counseling, Crisis Communications, Leadership Communications, Media Relations , compensation