At Michigan, Integrated Planning Ferries Student Veterans Through Launch of new GI Bill

At the University of Michigan, top administrators did some environmental scanning and spotted the potential for major problems in implementing the new GI Bill for veterans. So they engaged in cross-departmental, integrated planning and pulled off a very successful program:

“I knew we would rise to the occasion,” says Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs. “Our student veterans earned these benefits, and university staff make sure our students are the priority.”

Initial notification of the new benefits program arrived from the Department of Veterans Affairs in January 2009. Students could begin to apply in May; but the VA’s procedural details were not available until June.

“We could see the potential for a serious logjam,” said Assistant University Registrar Christine Bedz. “With so little lead time, we were concerned about the adverse impact on our students if VA disbursements were delayed. We were determined to make our students’ experience seamless.”

With full appreciation of the operational complexity of the emerging program — including the related Yellow Ribbon tuition supplement, www.ur.umich.edu/0809/Jul27_09/17.php — staff from the Registrar, ONSP, Information and Technology Services, the offices of financial aid, student financial services and the Stephen M. Ross School of Business mapped out what they thought the new system would require.

They hit the bull’s-eye, producing a new process that provided common rules and procedures and, ultimately, a safe harbor for U-M’s student veterans.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

ACUHO-I's 'Talking Stick' Magazine

The Association of College and University Housing Officers International (ACUHO-I) is one of SCUP's sister associations in the Council of Higher Education Management Associations (CHEMA). It's one of those associations which have a dual role on campus, each half of which needs to be integrated with the other, but often presents different issues: Housing facilities and the programming for student life that relates to student housing.

It's magazine is called Talking Stick, and past issues are available for review through a clickable online PDF file. The November-December 2009 issue is here. Among the articles in this issue is They're Back by Neil Howe and Reena Nadler. It's about Millennials, and how more senior staff on campus can best help them adapt (and adapt to them) as work colleagues, now that they've graduated and are no longer students. If you're finding yourself working with Millenials, this is a good read. If your interests or responsibilities relate to student housing, it's worth browsing through Talking Stick's back issues.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

While You're Changing Things, Think About Making the Change Last

This is a thoughtful resource and well worth reading with regard to any institutional planning, not just in the area of its focus: Student services. The author, Robin P. Krakowsky is senior vice president of administration, Johnson & Wales University. Writing in Business Officer, she notes that he found plenty of specific information about the vast changes in student services that have been made on many campuses in the last 20 years, but little about how to sustain those changes once made. He undertook some research and serves up results, analysis, and a model:

The resulting “Model for Sustaining Change in Higher Education Administrative Student Services” (see table) describes the primary and secondary factors that help make change a reality as well as the related commitments and actions that sustain the changes over time. A discussion of the model's application will come later in this article . . .

Not surprisingly, the elements most relevant and critical for supporting continuous improvement, increased effectiveness, and sustainable change center on people and the organizational culture. These three primary factors fall into three categories: leadership; human—both managerial and individual; and cultural.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

A “Greener” Student Move-Out

If you start planning now, you can organize a "green" move-out on your campus this spring - and your students will depart (forever, or just for the summer) with strong memories of being green. Writing in University Business magazine, Daniel H. Weiss, president of Lafayette College (PA) offers some practical advice on how to move your move-outs toward being more green:

Six local charities benefited, including a homeless shelter, a food pantry, and an animal shelter. This “green move-out” helped our neighbors and promoted positive town-gown relations—as well as saved us the costs of hauling these good items away as trash.

Lafayette junior Andrew Carlins says he “was inspired because the project seems like such a simple way to have a large positive impact. There just aren’t many greater opportunities for collecting donations than when students are moving out of college.” Senior Max Bass notes that the majority of donated items “were in extremely good condition.”