Council of Chairs Retreat

Council of Chairs Retreat

Meeting Minutes
August 22, 2017

9:00am – 1:00 pm – Vallecito Room

Meeting Invitees:

: Austin, Rebecca <>; Blake, David <>; Booth, Paul <>; Clausen, Rebecca <>; 'Honors Program' <>; Mangrum, William <>; Dott, Cynthia <>; Elias, Steve <>; Davis, Ginny <>; Fine, Kathleen <>; Frazer, Lee <>; Fulton, Richard <>; Gianniny, Gary <>; Gilpin, Sandra <>; Greer, Kristine <>; Haaland, Ryan K <>; Knight-Maloney, Melissa <>; Kraus, Sue <>; Labach, Elaine <>; Malach, Michele <>; Martin, Michael T <>; McAlister, Erich <>; McBrayer, Justin <>; McCarthy, Anne <>; Miller, Kenny <>; Mulhern, Dawn <>; Morris, Barbara <>; Peters, Jesse <>; Peterson, Michele <>; Reed, Marc <>; Rodriguez, Theresa <>; Sellin, Amy <>; Shuler, Phil <>; Smith, Carol <>; Talman, Martha <>; Valdez, Michael <>; Snyder, Lisa <>; Barrett, Lisa <>; McCormick, Peter <>

Agenda:

9:00 AM – Arrive

9:15 AM-Mark Jastorff – Advancement, Marketing and Communications

Reorganized alumni relations and annual fund area. Elizabeth Bussian, Director of Pipeline/Annual Giving and Alumni Engagement and Programming. Introduction of Krista Loken, Univ. of Tennessee-New Director of Alumni Engagement.

Focus on personal solicitation for donors.

Elizabeth will be reaching out to alumni and parents, faculty and staff that have philanthropic momentum. Helping students come here and stay here. Supporting student scholarships and grants. Annual giving the lower level of giving. Keeps us going on a day to day basis. Kept the engagement piece also, The Welcome Center, Sponsorships with Devo and the highschools and now have a Nordic Club. The community learners program, amazing interest. Herald wrote an article. Uptick in number of people registered. Designed as another way to engage with community. Group of people excited about continuing education and being on campus. Professors have the decision on rather or not they are let in the classroom. Simple as possible. On website for community learners mention that they cannot have access to anything with lab or studios or group learning. Designed for lecture classes. More than expected. Up to 20 applications/registrations so far. Email any changes you want to the website.

Richard F.-Do they need to be admitted to the college?

Elizabeth B. - No. We worked with IT. They do not have email addresses. They are auditing. Not a pre-admit. No credit. No homework.

Kenny M. - No option for lab based but happy to have them for the lecture part of the class.

Cynthia D. - No classes with group learning? How do you decide?

Elizabeth B. - If you find it is too disruptive or take away from the student experience to have a community learner. Up to the professor. Not screening. Requests will be sent to the professor. Age is 55 and over.

Becky C. - Happy to welcome in anyone.

Mark J. - 2-3 items that will impact campus.

Status on the name change project. At board of trustee retreat, discussion on what direction we should go. Originally planned to research on college to university. Show of hands and quick feedback from community leadership, not going to research in depth rather to move to university but what the name of the university will be. Timeline for October but recommendation for December, depending on the research. Looking at name options. Looking at rather or not Fort Lewis will be part of that name. What this will be from a communication standpoint? Will be as transparent as we can throughout the process. Engaged CBH strategies out of Denver. Part of the Metro State name change. How to craft collection of information. Every school we talked about said process needs an unbiased eye and is why we went with a consultant. Email name suggestions.

Gary G. - What are the names floating around?

Mark J.-Fort Lewis University, Durango State University, University of Southwest Colorado, Fort Lewis Colorado University. All over the board. Talk about our heritage with the right populations to find out how important is Fort Lewis in the name. If all goes smoothly have to get a bill into legislature. Looking at 18/19 before official.

Richard F. - The board said college versus university?

Mark J. - Not a formal action but strong straw poll to recommend university. We already knew it makes sense. National survey shows helps students in the job market. Helps graduates get jobs. Helps us recruit. No school has seen a significant bump in enrollment because of a name change.

Elaine L. - Are we going to be able to start marketing projects or is that on hold?

Mark J. – Coordinate and centralize marketing message and efforts. Build it as we are flying it. If you have programs to market we will not pull back. May change how we approach it. Still need to do that marketing and recruitment. Not going to change who we are. Music had a request for t-shirts and posters. Traditionally admission starting point but now it is Institutional Advancement. We will be getting information out to you about processes. Predicated on how fast moving in other areas. Part of the full plan is centralization of website content. Template for this. A complete refresh, we would like to have. We need to catch up. Focus on content and visual with standardization of information. Departments will have input on what to needs to be said but we will put verbiage to it to be consistent in voice. How to get information to the webmaster for updates. Departments have ownership right now. Outdated information, data does not get done.

David B. –With more focus on marketing and website management do you see director position popping up in marketing and communication?

Mark J. - On the wish list but using our existing talent and give additional training. I will be much more involved. Really work on the protocols and procedures. Put together a strong budget. Take advantage of opportunities. In a transitional relationship in admissions. Reputation building marketing. Reaching out to alumni that have benefited. Very piecemeal right now then we would like right now.

Fundraising-3 year quick review (hand-out). Raised 2.75 million dollars. Traditionally, FLC for decades raised between 2 and 2.2 million. Growth pattern at 4-5%. Not pleased. Know it can be better. Alumni loyalty and donor interest. Getting a lot of test gifts. Advancement and alumni will start and stop or staff would change. Not consistent. Very exciting things in the pipeline. Will be making announcements. A couple of 7 figure gifts. Need your help. You are talking to people about FLC in the community. How you speak to your friends deeply influences our donors. Be cognizant of your message. When you have contacts. Tell us. We will provide you a form. Goes a long way for what is being said in the community. Keeping communication flow going back and forth. I know you all have shopping lists. Give me your top 3 wishes. Send in an email. Put that together in a meaningful way with donors looking to help in a specific area. Keep your list under $5,000. Anything above that needs approval with Deans and/or the Provost. Priorities on our list are $50 million dollars of requests.

Provost Morris- When you make the small gift list, copy your Dean.

Elaine L. - Is Grad Uway still alive?

Mark J. - Yes. It is a platform purchase and set up to be mentoring network for alumni and students. Holding an open position right now to see if we need to fill this. Demand from alumni base to engage with students in a career and internship way. A couple of years we will step back and see if we can do it on our own.

Concerted effort to involve faculty when they travel to host small dinners or hospitality event at a conference. Please let us know. We fund it. We give you talking points and hand-outs etc. to meet with an audience.

Elaine L. - This may not fit within your purview. Marketing message moving to certificates. Will that dilute the value of a degree? How do we position ourselves? Is that part of the bigger marketing message?

Mark J. - Part of feasibility study, what the marketing looks like. Don’t have that answer. We have a marketing recruitment plan. Marketing communications, strategies for things you already determined. Have not established Marcom as the marketing arm of the institution. We fall into, multi-channel. Not into digital marketing. We ran one campaign. Not been targeted. Trying to put together budget for global. Our budget under $75,000. Does not include travel for admissions staff. We do not invest in this. Looking at every low cost, high impact we can do. Starting with signs across campus. Those are the little things that go a long way. That is how base line our marketing is.Piecemeal right now. Not much money to do this.

Dawn M. - Anyone to identify the potential markets? Where are students already coming from?

Mark J. - Yes admissions does that in particular and shares the data. Overlays with some of the national data. FLC has no feeder schools. We are not a campus of joiners. We need to ramp up our game and be more sophisticated.

9:45 AM-Advising- Sandy Gilpin

Update on professional advising. Power Point.

Spent time this summer and talked about who we are and what we do and where we want to go. Now have a Mission statement. Developed learning outcomes. What do we want them to get out of advising? Not effective if we see them one time a semester for curriculum advising. Does not help with retention and relationship building. Spent time developing learning outcomes. Operate under a team model. Introduced team captains. If you have not received communications from the team captains you will. Located in Berndt 300. Starting September 4th, will have walk-in advising. Some students do not want to make an appointment. Sometimes it is just a quick question. The first week of class, we will have walk-in advising hours 8:30-4. All hands on deck. Large number of students want to add more classes or need to switch or drop a class. Will also still be advising some new students that week.

Alison Flores moved over to registrar. Now associate registrar.

Crystal Fankhauser has now moved to financial aid.

80% and growing. Request you work with your team captain first. We deal with so many students, policies and procedures. We do not want to dilute the message. Please reach out to them.

What do advisors do?

Help students think about a minor

Degree audits. Make sure students on track.

Run a “what if”-thinking about switching majors.

Keep an eye on enrollments

Who has registered- Try and figure out who has not enrolled.

Early alerts-new this fall. TRS courses and comp and math first. Any time you have student concerned about call Sandy or team captains. Try to make it more user friendly. More follow through.

Have cancelled 17 courses. Make sure they get a soft notice to students. Look to see if students can take something else. Research individual students for impact.

Individually advise every new student in person or by telephone. Help them register.

Help with scholarship applications/paperwork

Help student with appeals

Achievement coaching for students on probation

GPA/Pace plans for financial aid

Research requests for departments

Grad check appointments

Connect students to resources

Waitlist/capacity analysis

Course troubleshooting (overlapping sections within and across departments)

Proactive looking at course schedules

Repeated course outreach

Meet with departments regularly

Advisor assignments for FAC departments

Help with group mentoring sessions

Visit classrooms as requested to talk about advising/curriculum/policies and procedures

Who must get Curriculum Advising?

-All new freshmen

-Students on any level of probation

-Students hovering around 2.0 cumulative GPA

October 12th from 1-2 pm La Plata Room-Let’s Talk Advising: What’s the Deal with Catalogs?

A number of students on different catalogs.

Cynthia D. - Last year went through a period where not every student had to go through advising.

Sandy- Part of the issue lack of transparency. Proactive box checking. Not adequate communication. We want to see students. Capacity issue. Would take 12 weeks to see every student. Where to focus our resources? Where do we need to work on retention? Reports to look at from Derek. We really want to focus our efforts on these students. Develop relationships. Messaging and communication that needs to go out. Ways to market better to students. Interplay between advisor and mentor. We want you to advise the upper level students that know where they are going. Internships, graduate school, have those with faculty mentor. We want you to advise those students.

Becky C. - Students that do not fit in those categories. Do they still have a box to check?

Sandy G. –Because of Banner system we do have to go through and check those boxes. Will vary term to term. See value add with this. Advising in the past more prescriptive. We want to think about more developmental side. See it in our mission statement. Empower students. We guide, you decide is what we want to have with a student.

Dawn M. - What about transfer students? Are they on the list?

Sandy G. –I haven’t put them in the list. Still finalizing see where they fall. We have 309.

Dawn M. - Issues with those students. Those students need to be advised coming in. How do we get students to come see us as faculty mentors? Right now I have them come for an entrance interview. It is hard to get them to come back. Especially the sophomores. They are not going to just come see us.

Sandy G. - That is tough. Part of training, appointment is showing them website and showing them their faculty mentors. They are encouraged to visit with their faculty mentors. A lot of the students we see, do not know how to talk to faculty. Helping students figure out, questions and introductions with faculty.

Cynthia D. - The students that are proactive do not need help. There are a group of students in the middle. I would like to see us try this and see how this works. There could be potentially a group that are shy and uncertain, have an ok GPA that will not go and see anyone.

Sandy G. - Trying to capture that. We may miss the mark this semester. I am hoping we don’t. Not change for change sake. Look at what research is saying. To try this idea. We will come back and revisit to see how this worked. Last spring we instituted last call advising right before registration opens. All day event. For some of those sessions it was some of those students that do not want to come in and meet with an advisor that attended.

David B. - 80% do professional advising. Who doesn’t do professional advising?

Sandy G. - English, Theatre, Chemistry, Math, GWS, NAIS, Music, Education. A lot of students in the first year are not sure what they want to do. If you are in a faculty advised department we can discuss how to work on a professional advising model.

David B. –Is the plan to make them become professional advising departments?

Sandy G. –We want to have them come into the professional advising fold.

David B. – Senate resolution advising be assessed. Is advising going through an assessment of themselves?

Sandy G.-Working with assessment office on assessment for continuous improvement.

Provost Morris- With evaluation, since the transition happened beginning spring semester by end of this academic year to evaluate. Looking at progress we have made. Communication with departments. Added benefits as moving through. Goal to have evaluation this summer. If it yields, student success collaborative not using as intended. Part of that audit to determine, Willwe continue to utilize that? Other competitors that are cheaper?

Just on a note, remind your faculty that if a student does not show up the first day of class, the faculty member can drop them. Communicate to Sandy that a student is not showing up. Had a number of students that did not show up to class, billed, accrued debt, went on collections. Only way to trace them is through the faculty. They enrolled and registered. Did not fill out late drop. Really important for faculty to communicate. We can parse together that student not here. Help them not incur debt, or be part of retention statistics.

We have an updated retention study. Will send out from Derek.

10:15 AM- Budget

New freshman-10% down from this time last year.

Transfer-15% down from this time last year.

Overall-8% down. Do have growth in concurrent enrollment.

As you know when pipeline in decline it is a long term issue, something we will have to think about. Michelle and Steve will be working on those budget numbers. We do know we have $600,000 structural deficit. Coming out of reserves and other monies that were covering that deficit this is continuing on. We created the real/honest budget. We looked at what all departments/programs spent over a 5 year period. This is what we are actually spending rather for materials, travel or food. Michelle spent a lot of time on that. It was a huge project. We expect that we missed somethings. Will be recalibrating. Most of you have chatted with Michelle. Tomorrow department admins will be trained on changes. What you have in your OCE is pretty small, it is supplies and materials. Not the catch all anymore. Small postage budget. That’s it. You might have fees. Some of the things centralized to Provost or to faculty committees or Deans. Faculty travel and professional development was centralized and dispersed through Faculty Research and Development Committee and Teaching Innovation. Chiara and Ryan Smith will come to next Council of Chairs meeting on September 5th to discuss changes. They sent out some of the changes. Much more calls for requests, added members, representation across groups.You as department chairs and Deans and Provost do not have money. The committees have money.