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Life Cycle of Alumni: Part XIV – It Takes an Institution to Develop Successful and Satisfied Alumni

Alumni development can’t be delegated to just a few people. It takes the whole institution to develop successful and satisfied alumni. For more than 40 years, I was involved in the oversight of admissions offices and the processes of recruiting and admitting students. Since my earliest days in the admissions area, I have believed that one of the most important tasks of an admissions office was to begin the task of developing satisfied and successful alumni.

At that time, college education was definitely a family decision. The most significant people in helping prospective students with their college selection process were the parents. You must remember that this was more than a half century ago. At that time, students were different than they tend to be today. The over-whelming majority of students were traditional age (18 to 25 years old). Most of those students started college immediately after high school or a short stint in the armed services. My first administrative position was in a traditional liberal arts, residential college, with almost no commuter population. One of the largest tasks of the admissions office was to sell the campus experience.

I wanted our recruitment efforts focused on two ideas or pictures. The first was to help prospective students picture themselves as students on our campus. They had to see themselves on campus. What would that look like? How would they fit in? In developing these pictures, we could not forget the parents of these prospective students. Parents needed to see how our institution would assist their students in furthering the process of development that the parents had begun.

The second picture that I wanted to help prospective students develop was the picture of themselves as successful alumni. What did they want to do with their lives? What was the ministry, vocation or career to which they felt called? How would our college help them achieve their goals? I also wanted to plant the seed of the question: “As a successful alumni, how could they give back to their institution so that others could have the same experience?”  Not forgetting the parents, the institution needed to also show them the possibilities of what successful alumni were doing and could do. If their students were successful, these parents would become powerful allies, in their communities, as well as their social and professional circles, for not only the admissions effort, but also for the advancement office.

As I noted in a previous post in this series, the selling job does not stop once a student applies, has been admitted, or even enrolls. College admission did not guarantee graduation. The path from matriculation to graduation has been a hard journey for many students. Retention very much depends upon students seeing that their goals are stronger than the challenges that they incur. To assist in that process, we had to put faces on the successes of our alumni. Students needed to know that others had previously trod this path and successfully traversed it. It could be done. Success stories are an ecnouragement to those still on the journey.

To help paint the picture of successful and satisfied alumni, I recruited alumni to assist our efforts. I asked alumni to distribute materials and talk to their family, friends, neighbors and colleagues. I asked alumni to host admissions parties for other prospective students and their parents to meet real alumni and students, as well as the paid recruitment staff. Sometimes, I was even able to convince faculty to become involved in these efforts.

Once the prospective students became enrolled students, I continued my effort to involve alumni. I recruited alumni to become volunteer career counselors via telephone contact or campus and off-campus visits. At this point of time, email was a fledgling idea and not a practical option.  I used alumni in internships and practicum placements. I encouraged faculty to invite alumni into their classes to speak about the career opportunities in their fields or to give guest lectures about specific topics. This did two things. It kept the alumni involved with the institution, and made them feel good about giving back to the institution. It also planted the seed in the minds of students of the possibility of doing the same thing after they graduated.

The selling job on alumni is not even finished at commencement. The institution has to keep meeting the needs of the alumni. This definitely involves maintaining vehicles for the communications network that students had begun to develop while enrolled. This could also involve the maintenance of a placement office for career assistance. Another option is the provision of life-long learning opportunities involving faculty, staff, and other alumni as instructors and participants.

In the next post in this series, I will address some of the substantial educational questions involved in helping and guiding students from matriculation to graduation, and hence to alumni status. Happy, successful and satisfied alumni are much more eager to be involved alumni at all levels.

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Life Cycle of Alumni: Part XIII-Fundraising Law #10

The tenth of Richardson and Basinger’s laws of fundraising was:

Law #10: The Law of Uncertainty. People will do whatever they please. To paraphrase an old expression, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink or give.” Likewise, “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

This post will consider how this fits into the process of student recruitment, retention, and alumni development.

Recruitment: For many years the student recruitment industry used the concept of an admissions funnel to describe the process of recruiting, admitting, and enrolling students. At this time, some admissions experts are saying that the new electronic communication age has made the concept of a funnel obsolete. I will agree that some aspects of how institutions worked the funnel previously are no longer applicable. However, I believe that in talking about the numbers of people interested and in contact with your institution at any one time, the funnel is statistically still a viable concept.

In the old model, the institution would pour a very large number of prospects into the wide mouth of the funnel by advertising or buying names from direct mail sources. That number dropped off dramatically as the prospects either lost interest in your institution or found institutions that were more appealing. You worked your prospects until you had your list of inquiries. At this point, you worked your inquiries to attempt to get them to take the next step of commitment and apply. They were now applicants.

At this point the institution stepped in to whittle this number down further by taking the step of accepting students for admissions. The institution was saying to the student, we want you. Different institutions had different strategies in accepting students. Some institutions are more selective in their choice of students, while others took a more “open door” approach.

With an offer of admission, the process was now back in the lap of the prospective student to decide whether or not he or she would accept the offer of admission and pay a deposit to confirm that decision. However, even with the payment of a deposit, the job of recruitment wasn’t necessarily complete. Not every deposited student would enroll.

With the advent of internet and television, some admissions experts suggest that institutions no longer have to necessarily go out as aggressively and identify the names and addresses of prospects.  Institutions can let the prospects shop anonymously until the prospects make the first move. At this point the institution can aggressively pursue them.

Although the landscape of higher education is changing, I believe that this new process is most effective for institutions with good reputations already established. If your institution is not well-known, you may still have to do some things the old-fashion way. You have to earn the trust of prospective students. You may also have to find ways to make your institutional mark with the general public. Surveys of enrolled students indicate that an overwhelming majority of students had their first introduction to the name of their college before they began junior high. I’ll leave that topic for another post.

Earlier I alluded to the statistical basis behind the admissions funnel. In institutions with which I have worked, it was not unusual for the number of inquiries to be less than 2% of the number of prospects. At these institutions, an average of 10% of the inquiry pool actually completed applications. Of the completed applicantions, on average the institutions accepted 70%. Of the accepted students, these institutions had 65% confirmed acceptance with a deposit. From the deposited students, on average of 85% enrolled. Thus to enroll a new class of 500 students, these institutions had to start with a prospect pool of more than 250,000. From this prospect pool, the institutions had to generate almost 13,000 inquiries. From the inquiry pool, they had to generate almost 1,300 applications, from which they admitted approximately 900. Of this admitted pool, approximately 600 paid a deposited. From this confirmed pool, finally a new class of 500 enrolled students emerged.

Retention: Once a student enrolls, in other posts we have emphasized that the job is not done. An institution must work to keep the students involved and interested. The national average of matriculates graduating is less than 50%. At the institutions at which I worked, I liked to track year-to-year retention.

As an example at one institution, when I arrived the graduation rate was less than 20% and the first-to-second year retention rate was less than 50%. Think of the strain this puts on an institution, if it must replace half of its students every year. With a first-year program in place, the first-to-second year retention rate went up to 85%. With the addition of a second-year program, and then a senior-year program, the year to year retention rates also increase dramatically. The second-to third year retention rate went from 65% to 80%. The third-to-fourth year retention went up to 90% and the percent of seniors that graduated kicked up to over 95%. This produced a matriculate graduation rate of almost 60%, much better than the national average. However, it still meant that 40% of entering students did not graduate. No matter what you do, people will do what they please or what they have to do.

Alumni: If you have done a good job in tying individuals into your institution while they are students, the job of keeping them interested and involved as alumni is much easier. In a major assessment project, I worked with more than 50 institutions in surveying their alumni two years after they graduated. Although there was a great variation in individual statistics, from all 50 institutions we had valid contact information for less than 50% of all graduates. You can’t hope to keep people involved in your institution, if you don’t have contact information.

This says to me that there are several major difficulties. The first is that the institutions didn’t sufficiently meet the needs of these graduates when they were students. Otherwise, I would have thought the graduates would have made an effort to remain in contact with the institution. If the graduates did try to make contact, then the institution either didn’t respond or keep track of contact information. This means the institution has many more problems to fix.

Without a spark of interest on the part of the alumni or proper contact information, there is no hope of developing further alumni invovlement. Even with alumni interest and proper contact information, it is possible that the alumni will refuse the institution’s advances. People will do what they please.

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Life Cycle of Alumni: Part XII-Fundraising Law #9

The ninth of Richardson and Basinger’s laws of fundraising was:

Law #9: Fundraising out of desperation is futile. Most discerning individuals are not going “to throw good money after bad.” It is very easy to spot a desperate organization. Poor results and careless planning are the classic signs of a hopeless situation. A bleak outlook doesn’t make a compelling case for support.

This post will consider how this fits into the process of student recruitment, retention, and alumni development. In terms of alumni development, the law should be restated. Even the most loyal alumni may desert a sinking ship.

Recruitment: Student recruitment out of desperation is normally futile. Prospective students are generally intelligent enough to know when you need them more than they need you. Does a college really want students who can’t recognize failure?

Why should a prospective student commit to a failing enterprise?  Can you really blame them if they opt for an institution that has more stability and a brighter future? After all, they are betting their futures on their choice of college.

Retention: Programs and institutions that try to retain students out of desperation are easy to spot. The first sign of trouble in paradise is a rapid turnover of faculty and staff. Other indications include many cancelled classes after a schedule is published, classes not offered when the catalog says they should be, and other unfulfilled promises in terms of facilities, equipment and programs. Any of these feeble attempts to portray quality and stability is an open invitation for students to transfer to other programs or other institutions.

Alumni: Richardson and Basinger have done an excellent job at explaining why fundraising out of desperation in general is futile. With alumni, this may be true in the long term. However, “short-term emergencies” can be very effective in mobilizing alumni support.

In my more than 40 years of experience in higher education, I have observed that it is extremely “hard” to kill a college. There are three groups of individuals who will “rally around the flag” and “circle the wagons” for a last ditch stand. These groups will unite and will not go down without a fight.

The first of these groups are the loyal alumni and Board members, who have already committed so much of their time and money to the institution, so they don’t want it to fail. If the institution fails that would label them as failures.

The second group is the desperate faculty and staff, who want to keep their jobs and the lives they have built in a particular geographic place. If the institution fails, they will have to pack up their lives  and the lives of their families, find new jobs and probably move to a new location.

The third group consists of frustrated students. Even though a college can’t exist without students, in many ways the students are in the most vulnerable position. They have made a commitment to an institution that has let them down. They don’t know where to turn. Most are worried how their earned credits will be received at other institutions. How much longer will it take them to finish their programs? Will they get the same financial aid package at another institution? How much more will it cost them to transfer to another institution? Will they be able to make new friends? Will they fit into a new environment?

If these three groups can be mobilized, it is possible for a struggling institution to take the first steps toward a resurgence. In most attempts to avert institutional crises, there will be an initial burst of enthusiasm. However, one burst may not be sufficient to carry the day. It may “save” the institution, in the sense that the institution does not immediately close. However, it may continue indefinitely on “life support.”

There are typically two reasons for this result. The first is that the three groups are pushing to recreate the institution from different visions. This can be rife with new conflicts. The second reason is that if the life support only provides sufficient resources to operate at minimal levels, the underlying problems that caused the institutional crisis in the first place will not be address. Within a short period of time the institution will be back in the hopper. To paraphrase  a very effective fundraising slogan, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

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My Head Was Still Ringing Long After the Bells Stopped

The next two Sundays after the experience that I described in the post “Pop Goes the Weasel! Sensory Overload!” capped off a three week run of sensory anomalies and sensory overloads. I woke up the morning immediately following the Five Piano Guys concert experience with very fuzzy vision. Even at 11:00 AM sitting in the Sunday morning worship service, my eyes felt like they were blinking or twitching very rapidly. However, they were hardly moving at all.

During the service, a ladies trio sang the special music. They began the piece with several very high notes that physically hurt my eyes. My eyes felt as if someone was sticking needles in them. For the remainder of the service, I didn’t hear the piano, which was not unusual. However, I didn’t “see” the piano music either. I felt my eye-balls vibrating in their sockets to the tune the pianist was playing. In addition to my eyes vibrating, I felt the organ music vibrating across my forehead. The two instruments were playing the same tune in different registers. The organ notes were lower than the piano notes. I knew that but I really don’t know how I knew that. Were the vibrations that significantly different? Was I remembering how the music should have sounded? Was I really hearing a difference, but my brain was keeping that information to itself and not sending it out to my sensory receptors?

The following Sunday was Fathers’ Day. The special music for the day was the Handbell Choir playing “How Firm a Foundation.”  I could hear the bells ringing distinctly. I could easily identify the hymn they were playing, even without the title in the bulletin. As they reached the crescendo in the final chorus, the sound of the bells began echoing in my head. I head the bells ringing for several minutes after they had stopped playing. It took a great deal of concentration to shut out the bells to hear the pastor when he started to read scripture and deliver the Fathers’ Day sermon.

For the remainder of the service, I did not “see” the piano music. Instead of seeing waves or lights, I felt my eyes vibrating in their sockets or blinking in tune to the music. I asked my wife if my eyes were moving. She said that neither my pupils nor eye lids were moving in any unusual pattern.

Throughout the remainder of the day, there were times when the bells came back. By concentrating on what was happening around me, I could stop the ringing!

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Pop Goes the Weasel! Sensory Overload!

Even though the song and tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel!” is a late 19th century/early 20th century labor song supposedly originated by the textile workers of London, England, almost every American child has heard it as a nursery rhyme and can sing at least one variation of it. One version of a stanza that I particularly like, because of the vivid visual imagery, is:

All around the Mulberry Bush,The monkey chased the weasel.The monkey stopped to  pull up his socks. Pop! goes the weasel.

This song is more fun when you don’t know that

1) The Mulberry Bush was reportedly a tavern near the textile mills in London;

2) It has been suggested that monkey was a derogatory name given to the poor textile workers;

3) The weasel was a measuring device on the yarn spinning machine that measured out the exact length of yarn needed to fill a spool;

4) Pop, was the sound the weasel made when the yarn reached the correct length; and

5) The textile worker had to be ready to shut down the spinner immediately when the weasel popped or he/she would be in deep trouble with the mill manager for wasting yarn. Pulling up ones’ socks is a totally unnecessary action, and a huge distraction from the important task at hand.

I think it is funnier to visualize a real monkey literally chasing a real weasel around a mulberry bush, and the monkey stops to pull up his socks (What monkey would be wearing socks?)  At this point, the weasel pops up on his hind legs and starts laughing at the monkey.

If you read my post, “Hallelujah, I Heard the Piano Playing!”  you know that on a recent Sunday, I “heard” the piano playing in church for the first time in more than a year. Via my cross-sensory perceptions, I “see” a piano making music via sinusoidal waves on an oscilloscope screen or via the towers of “tree lights” on an amplifier mixing board. If the music is familiar, I can almost always recognize the tune. I can then either sing the words or hum the tune. Since my voice is a human voice making those sounds, I can “hear” those sounds.

The Saturday afternoon following my experience with the church piano, I had another encounter with a piano. I had spent most of the morning on my computer cleaning up my ever increasing accumulation of emails and several blog posts on which I had been working.  I wanted to take a break so I sat down in my lounger and turned on the television fo find some sports programming. The sports programming that afternoon was very sparse. The French Open women’s final had been completed very early in the morning due to Serena Williams’ masterful play, her very quick defeat of Maria Sharapova and the six hour time difference between Paris and the east coast of the United States. That particular Saturday afternoon was a dreadful weather day for much of the eastern half of the United States. All outdoor sports in that half of the country were rained out. In addition, in early summer, there are no indoor sports events. So there was nothing in the way of interesting sports on the television.

My second and third choices of afternoon entertainment would have been cooking shows or DIY shows. Unfortunately, all of the shows on the food and DIY networks were reruns that I had already watched. There were no good movies on the television that day. We didn’t have a Netflix video because I had just put DVD #5 of the Prisoner series in the return mail so that I would get #6 quickly.

To fill in the void of having none of my normal available entertainment choices, I found what looked like a very interesting concert on the local public television station. It was a concert by a group of five musicians based in Colorado called the Five Piano Men. It wasn’t what one might think it would be. It was not five people playing five different pianos. It began with one man playing a piano and one man playing a regular cello. I “saw” the piano music and I “felt” the vibrations of the cello. Unfortunately, I couldn’t identify the particular piece they were playing.

After that opening number they introduced the other three members of their group.  For their first number as a group, the first pianist stayed at the piano keyboard. The original celloist grabbed an electronic cello, and the newly introduced members of the group grabbed regular cellos. They began playing Chopin’s Cello Sonata in G Minor. I “saw” the piano music and I felt at least three different types of vibrations from the cellos.

When the Chopin piece was finished, the group gathered around the grand piano on the stage to “play” the one piano. However, it was not the typical sense of playing a piano. The individual who seemed to be the primary keyboardist sat at the keyboard. An overhead camera showed what every member of the group was doing. Two members were “playing” drums on the sound board of the piano with their hands. The final two members began plucking the piano strings with their fingers or using violin bow strings to “play” individual piano strings or small groups of strings. After making what I assumed was their warm-up noises, they started playing the easily identifiable opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Short-short-short-Long! Short-short-short-Long!

After they finished the first movement, they were joined by the Colorado Youth Orchestra, with strings, wind instruments and percussion, playing the remainder of the symphony. Part way through the third movement, I was subject to sensory overload! Not only was I really actually seeing how the music was being played and really hearing part of the music, I was “seeing” several instrumental sounds and “feeling” vibrations from at least five different instruments. I was hearing, seeing and feeling Beethoven’s 5th, when suddenly “Pop!” went the weasel! I had to turn off the television and go back to the safety of my computer for the remainder of the afternoon.

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Hallelujah, I Heard the Piano Playing!

This past Sunday morning,  I was very excited for a moment. Those of you who have been following my story know that I have been experiencing cross-sensory perceptions for the past three years. I do not “hear” the organ or piano playing in our Sunday church services. My ears are working fine because I hear the choir and congregation singing. I hear the wind instruments in the worship orchestra playing their music. I hear the worship leader or the preacher speaking from the pulpit.

However, in the year that we have attended our current church, I have “heard” organ music only once. All of the other times, I have felt vibrations across my forehead. If the music is a familiar piece, I can recognize it from those vibrations. The only time I literally heard the organ was when the organist switched to a flute register. As the organist played in this register, I could distinctly hear flutes. Obviously, we have an electronic organ in our church. I do not know what would happen if I listened to a real pipe organ where the tones are produced by air forced through tubes like the wind instruments that I hear regularly.

When a pianist plays the piano in our church, I do not hear music. I see one of two things. The first is an oscilloscope screen with a sinusoidal wave running across the screen. The second is an amplifier mixing board with its rows of lights flashing up and down. These images are visual representations of the music that is being played. Again, if the music is familiar, most of the time, I can recognize the music from the visions.

This phenomena occurs not just with physical instruments. When I listen to digitally reproduced music (CD’s, tapes, television, and radio) I have the same results of either feelings or visions. With other stringed instruments, I have similar sensations. With guitars and violins, I see the music. With cellos and basses, I feel vibrations. The only “logical” explanation that I have for the difference is the general pitch of the notes that these instruments play. I was stumped at first with the organ and piano since the two instruments should be playing the same notes.  However, there is still a tonal difference between a “High C” on the organ and one on the piano.

It took me some time to realize that this was translating over to other auditory experiences. I no longer hear robins and the typical song birds. When they are making their music and I recognize the sound, I “see” a bird. However, with ducks and geese, I feel their honking along the temple region on my face. It doesn’t happen with human voices. I hear people singing and speaking. As long as I can recognize the sound, I can live with the cross-sensory perceptions. All my neurologists can tell me is that this is unusual. Two weeks of hospital observations of brain activity have produced no viable explanations.

Now back to the Sunday that I heard the piano! The choir was singing a hymn. The first verse and chorus went as usual. I heard the words that the choir was singing, I felt the vibrations of the organ, and I saw the amplifier lights from the piano. When the choir finished the second verse and proceeded to the chorus, I stopped feeling the vibrations from the organ and I started hearing the piano playing music. I was very excited. The music was back!

However, all it took was a glance toward the piano for me to realize that the instruments had stopped playing and the choir was singing a cappella. When I came to that realization, the piano music stopped. Another hallucination! My brain was inserting the music that it felt should be present. When I knew that there was no instrumental music, the sounds of the music stopped. When the instruments began to play again on the third verse, it was back to my reality. I felt the organ music and I saw the piano music.

At this point, all I can do is thank and praise God that I can still recognize and enjoy good music, whether I hear it, see it or feel it.