Career Services

Announcing Switchboard's New Higher Education Innovation Fellows Program

Higher Education Innovation Fellows

We talk a lot in higher ed about how to better serve our students, alumni, and other constituents. But we seldom focus on how to better help the professionals who serve them.

That’s why Switchboard is launching the Higher Education Innovation Fellowship program.

The Higher Education Innovation Fellowship (HEIF) is a year-long program where fellows will learn from leaders across disciplines (e.g. technology, behavioral economics, nonprofits, and higher education) and practice innovation in higher education.

The fellowship includes six months of curriculum, nine days of innovation workshops at Switchboard HQ in lovely Portland, Oregon, and a six-month applied campus innovation project where fellows will put one of their ideas into action with the one-on-one guidance of a coach.

This program is designed for ambitious emerging leaders in higher education who want to learn best practices to scale innovation at their institutions. Professionals from all experience levels are welcome to apply. With a focus on constituent-facing leaders, the fellowship is designed for professionals who serve  current students, alumni, parents, and friends of their institution.

We know that improvement and innovation in higher ed requires that institutions invest in the people who serve students and alumni. Higher ed is the key to economic mobility for many students and families we serve; they deserve us at our best. We’ve designed the fellowship to that end.

Learn more.

How the Black Box of "Mentoring" Tricks Us Into Implementing Failing Strategies

Mentoring programs for students and young alumni are increasingly popular in the higher education community, but they're not turning out to be all that we hope they are. Mentoring programs promise to tap into the inactive parts of our alumni networks to help students and young alumni advance their careers and engage older alumni at the same time. This promise isn't being realized.

Manufacturing Legibility: Measuring What Is Easy Is Not Measuring What Is Right

Manufacturing Legibility: Measuring What Is Easy Is Not Measuring What Is Right

Alumni engagement is amorphous, something we all struggle to define and measure. It's also something we urgently need to measure better to figure out whether we're successful, whether what we're doing works.

So—what should we measure? And how on earth do we measure it?

Is What We're Doing Working?: 3 Mistakes to Avoid When Calculating ROI

Is What We're Doing Working?: 3 Mistakes to Avoid When Calculating ROI

It's a simple question that every industry struggles to answer: Is what we're doing working?

As the public increasingly asks that question of institutions of higher education, those schools are turning to their offices and asking it in turn. We've all felt pressured to answer it, expected to, as if defining and measuring intangible ROI is easy.

But it isn't easy. Many offices aren't measuring their performance at all. Many of those that are are measuring the wrong things. And that makes impossible to answer the question.

A Platform Is Not a Strategy

A Platform Is Not a Strategy

We all want to find complex problems to have simple solutions.

When alumni relations and career services offices go shopping for digital platforms—or try to implement other new initiatives—they tend to try just that.

Alumni engagement, alumni networking, helping new grads find the right career—these are all complex issues that platforms can help solve but can't solve on their own.

Software can be a part of your strategy, but it will never be a strategy.

It's Time for Advancement and Career Services to Work Together

It's Time for Advancement and Career Services to Work Together

Career Services and Advancement offices have traditionally been separate, neither working together nor reporting to the same leaders. That makes sense, at first glance—what on earth do student services and fundraising have to do with one another?

Well, actually, a lot. That's why some institutions are taking a new tack. These schools recognize that their role in producing positive career outcomes has a major effect on alumni giving down the road. Prosperous alumni are grateful alumni.