UB Buzz

April Fools'

Many student newspapers publish April Fools' Day editions, and administrators never know quite what to expect. Here's some news from the just-released edition of Brackety Ack at Roanoke College (Va.):

·        RC requires all students to live on Campus—Appalachian Village is made of tepee housing.
·        The new mascot will be a lemming.
·        Profile about squirrels educating students.
·        Sarah Palin to speak at commencement!
·        The basketball coach has resigned to join the Peace Corps.
·        The Commons Dining Hall institutes utensil-free Fridays to further the green effort.
·        Semester Abroad expands to a semester on the Moon.
·        RC Athletics are moving to Div. 1 AND adding croquet to varsity sports.
·        Faculty compete in lip synch to raise money for the endowment.
·        Interviews with “Hannah Montana” and “Heath Ledger”.

How did your campus paper do this year?

An Amazing Feat for Appreciative Feet

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reports that Davidson College (N.C.) basketball player Andrew Lovedale will be returning to his native Nigeria after graduation with a little extra baggage. Lovedale will be bringing 10,500 pairs of shoes, donated by Davidson b-ball fans. The fans also collected money to foot (sorry) the shipping bill for the shoes, which will be distributed free to children and young adults.

Scholarship Contest Deadline Approaching

Here's an interesting scholarship contest that has benefits for everyone--but, with a March 31 deadline, time is running out to get in on it.
WikiAnswers.com, the popular online human-powered answer site, is awarding 20 $1,000 scholarships to high school students who answer questions for the site.
The students must answer 50 questions--of their choice--for the site. A Scholarship Selection Committee will choose the winners based on the quality of the answers. Committee members include college presidents, registrars, financial aid officers, enrollment officers, and individuals from the community with a knowledge of and interest in higher education.
This scholarship is open to students planning to be enrolled in undergraduate classes during the 2009-2010 academic year. Get more information at the links above or apply online here.

March Reads

The "Online Only" section of University Business magazine's website has three new reads for March:
- In "Sagging Economy Lifts Adult Student Programs," Brenda Harms, a client consultant at Stamats, focuses on non-traditional (adult) students going back to college to enhance their job skills and how this group can serve as a revenue stream for higher ed institutions.
- With "Four Strategies for a Difficult Economy," Maguire Associates special consultant Jessica McWade provides tips on how to manage these current financial challenges without compromising an institution’s long-term strategy and sustainability.
- Sally G. Blinken and Ann Thomas examine the recent scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service over institutions with tax-exempt status in "Colleges and Universities: The Next Target of Audits, Investigations and Legislative Reform?". Blinken is a partner in Venable LLP’s Commercial Litigation and Nonprofit Practice Group. Thomas is an associate in Venable’s Association and Nonprofit Organizations Practice Group.

Institutional Taglines on Web

Richard Harrison Bailey/The Agency, a South Bend, Ind.-based marketing consultancy specializing in higher education and other nonprofits, has done the collecting so you don't have to. Its just-launched database of more than 3.500 college and university taglines is searchable by school or keyword, and institutions can add or edit their taglines.

“Our clients rely on our expertise to capture the distinctive character of their organization , and to coherently communicate what makes each one of them unique,” says Rick Bailey, principal of RHB/The Agency. “While we understand that not every college or university utilizes its tagline as a driving force for messaging, we are interested in discovering, archiving, and examining the words and phrases higher education institutions use to describe themselves as a means of continuing to produce the very best work on behalf of our clients.”

HigherEdTaglines.com also houses relevant reading recommendations on taglines and their role in marketing institutions of higher education, including a perspective paper titled “Taglines are Dead."

Not to pick on anyone, but as an editor who avoids using the word "unique" because nothing ever really is, I couldn't help but notice that five institutions use that word in their taglines. Another thing of note: Despite the economic situation, none of the collected taglines include the words "affordable" or "value." So perhaps there's a unique idea for someone?

And in case you missed it, the December 2008 University Business article "50 Best Branding Ideas" features lots of ideas on how to use taglines and other tactics to create and implement branding campaigns. Check it out here.

Two Minutes in an Elevator

It's the kind of opportunity any one with a good idea wishes for: Two minutes to pitch that idea to someone who can help finance it.

Members of 29 student teams from 23 universities will get an elevator ride's worth of time to talk up their business ideas as they compete next week in the Babcock Graduate School of Management's 10th Annual Elevator Competition, held near Wake Forest University (N.C.).

During the two-minute elevator rides, teams will pitch original business ideas to judges, many of whom are real-life venture capitalists. A free public discussion event, “Thoughts From a Serial Entrepreneur,” will be held on campus in conjunction with the competition.

Stan Mandel, executive professor and director of the Angell Center for Entrepreneurship at the Babcock Graduate School of Management, as well as the competition’s co-founder and faculty adviser, says that the competition remains as relevant today as it was when launched in 2000. “The Elevator Competition has consistently evolved to meet the interest of students and the demands of society. We now focus on the rising interest in new ventures that address societal social causes – a real hot button of college students. And we continue to offer our traditional track for those interested in pursuing ventures in biosciences, nano technology, social networking and other domains.”

Teams with the best elevator pitches will proceed to make a 20-minute “board room” presentation on their business plans.  The Traditional-track winning team will be awarded a cash prize of $10,000, while the Social Entrepreneurship competition winner will receive $5,000.  Also, about $65,000 worth of legal and marketing services will be split between the two winners, Morse said.

Besides Wake Forrest, participating universities are: Yale University; University of Illinois at Chicago; Rice University; University of Delaware; Brigham Young University; Illinois Institute of Technology; University of Cincinnati; Cornell University; University of Arkansas; College of Business, University of Louisville; University of Michigan; Carnegie Mellon University); Colorado State University); Johns Hopkins University; University of Virginia, Darden Graduate School of Business; Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management; Texas Christian University; Colorado State University; Baylor University; Kennesaw State University; Georgetown University; George Washington University; and Baruch College.

Big Dig at New Law School Site

Workers at the construction site for the future Thomas Jefferson School of Law (Calif.) have been turning up, or better to say digging up, some amazing prehistoric finds in a half-city block location.
The latest: the bones of a giant sloth.
The fossils are the third in a succession of remains discovered at the East Village site in downtown San Diego. Kicked off in October, the $68 million project will result in a new high rise, state-of-the-art home for the law school, scheduled to be open during the 2010-2011 academic year.
On February 3, the skull, two tusks, foot and legs bones of a Columbian Mammoth, estimated to be about 500,000 years old were found, were found in the site's southeast corner according to a San Diego Union Tribune article. Just over 20 days later, the jaw, shoulder blade, neck bone and upper spine of a baleen whale dating possibly 600,000 years old, was discovered in the same spot, right above the other creature, with 10 feet of earth between them.
School officials signed a contract with a paleontological firm to be on site for the excavation, says spokesperson Chris Saunders. Workmen had to dig around the area of the two findings, but they were able to continue with minimal delay.
The school's website lists updates about the project's progression.
The latest set of bones, part of the sloth's vertebra and tooth and skull fragments, were unearthed in a different part of the property last Friday. All three animals date from the Pleistocene Period -- the Ice Age.

Another Post for Padrón

Eduardo J. Padrón keeps a busy schedule. The president of Miami Dade College (Fla.) recently was appointed as chair of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (see the Behind the News section of University Business magazine's March issue), becoming the first Hispanic, Floridian and community college president to do so.
Padrón also belongs to a number of boards, including the American Council on Education and the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, and sits on the advisory board for the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center and the board of trustees of Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Now, he has been appointed to another post. According to a media release, Padrón has joined the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Miami Branch to fill an unexpired term that will conclude at the end of this year.
Padrón joined Miami Dade College’s faculty in 1971 and served in various roles including assistant professor, director and academic dean before being appointed president in 1995. He started his college education at Miami Dade.

Another Setback for Morris Brown

Morris Brown College (Ga.), a historically black institution, has been fighting a significant financial battle to keep its doors open. Now, the administration has been hit with another loss: a classroom building to foreclosure.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports investors, who financed a $13.1 million construction loan for the building in 1996, bought Frederick D. Jordan Hall for a fraction of that sum at a foreclosure sale on a courthouse's steps yesterday. The building sold for $900,000.
The loss of the building may have little affect on day-to-day campus life, as Acting President Stanley Pritchett said in a press statement that Morris Brown is still in operation and officials are striving toward securing interim funding to relieve this financial strain.
The February issue of University Business magazine featured a news brief on the college's plight, including having to pay the remainder of a hefty, overdue water bill to the city of Atlanta. Read it here.

Good Eats on the Go

When you think of "food" and "convenience stores" together, you might have visions of days old hot dogs slowly turning on rollers under a heat lamp, or a microwave oven encrusted with ... well, never mind.
ARAMARK Higher Education, is out to change all that on college campuses with its new Provisions on Demand (P.O.D.) Market concept.
P.O.D. Market combines the corner store with the style of a modern market. Students can get fresh, healthy alternatives to "mystery meals" on the way to class or any time of the day.
Grab ‘n go food items include freshly-prepared breakfast sandwiches, burritos, wraps, sushi and salads, as well as fresh produce, bakery and coffee selections and traditional essentials found in a convenience store.
Each store will be customized based on the specific needs of the campus community in which the store is located. For example, one campus may offer a wide range of organic and kosher products, while another will feature a more traditional selection.
The P.O.D. Market debuted in a pilot program last fall at Brandeis University (MA), University of Tennessee and The University of Toledo. Additional locations are planned for rollout over the next three years.