Erin Gore, vice president for client technology 

It’s hard to believe that we’re just over a month out from the largest ever Slate Summit, where our combined SIG + RHB Slate teams took the stage seven times alongside clients. During these presentations we showcased how institutions can strategically advance their missions in admissions, student success and advancement. While the events may be over, the excitement, curiosity, innovation and inspiration from Summit still resonate.

We’ve taken time to reflect on our Summit experience—from features that inspired us to the mission-driven values of the Slate community to the satisfaction we felt creating lightbulb moments for close to 50 institutions at the fourth pre-Summit RHB Academy training program. A key takeaway for me was Technolutions’ cautious and deliberate approach to developing and expanding AI in Slate.

Does this mean the robots will do everything in Slate?! Will it guarantee higher yield rates and boost annual giving? Well, not exactly. As I noted in an Insights post leading up to the 2024 Summit: “Humans haven’t disappeared and the value of human judgment, empathy and thinking haven’t either.” Slate’s AI tools will do exactly what you ask them to do. That’s why clear, concise and intentional AI prompting is essential to getting accurate and meaningful results.

It’s time for campuses to educate their teams, develop AI policies, and invest in upskilling and reskilling staff. The future between AI and humans is collaborative–and it’s already here.

·  ·  ·

Dom Rozzi, Senior Technology Consultant

The glow of Slate Summit may be fading, but the memories and lessons from late June linger. Technolutions, true to form, threw an incredible event—complete with a mobile shark and custom Slate poker chips. Yet, beyond the impressive spectacle, the real magic lay in the three (or four, including pre-Summit events) days brimming with idea exchange, collaborative learning, networking, and, my personal favorite, community building.

This year’s Summit felt particularly vibrant, perhaps due to the venue or the novelty of being on the West Coast, there was an enthusiasm I haven’t experienced in years. From “Forums Live” to diverse affinity and regional user group discussions, the palpable sense of community was clearly evident each day. It was truly inspiring to witness and participate in the creativity, knowledge-sharing, problem-solving and collaboration that define the Slate community. Simply outstanding!

A highlight for me was co-presenting to a full house (on Friday afternoon, no less!) alongside my colleague from Southern Utah University. We discussed innovative uses of content blocks and a ‘for loop’ to dynamically generate personalized FAQs for students, tailored to their unique attributes and stage in their journey. Joined on stage with colleagues from Loyola Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder, we demonstrated how translation tables and content blocks can streamline complex manual processes, empowering teams to focus on more impactful work.

Leaving Las Vegas, I was filled with anticipation for Slate’s new to be released features, which should prove to be huge quality of life improvements for the users of Slate, and the collaborative innovations we’ll achieve in 2026. I trust you share the same enthusiasm!

·  ·  ·

Alisa Chambers, associate director of design and development

Watching the opening session—literally steeped in illusion and mystery—I couldn’t help but cast a few wary thoughts. One wrong word, and suddenly the AI inserts a block of code in your email or portal where it doesn’t belong. You test. You re-prompt. You test again. Frustration creeps in: “What am I doing wrong?” And just like that, a simple task—adding a new content area—spirals into wasted time with nothing to show for it.

Yet, there’s no denying the excitement. The promise of efficiency and empowerment for Slate users is real. The idea that you could generate a working framework, complete with required and relevant components, in moments is compelling. It opens the door for more creativity and innovation on the human side of the equation.

Still, we shouldn’t rush in blindly. It’s critical to understand what’s happening under the hood of the source code being generated. Alexander’s demo included prompts like use my brand color, follow best-practice UX/UI methods, make it mobile-friendly and accessible. But do you know what those requests actually entail? More importantly, do you know what to look for when testing and refining the results?

Before I learned about WCAG and ADA compliance, I used to strip attributes from my HTML that I mistakenly assumed were just “bloat.” Don’t repeat my mistakes—check the AI’s work. Make sure the code it generates is accessible by conducting your own testing. You may need to brush up on HTML, CSS, accessibility standards, mobile-first development or even prompt engineering.

As we move forward, let’s stay curious but critical: test thoroughly, understand what’s being generated, give feedback early and always bring a human eye to AI-assisted work.

·  ·  ·

Jolene Monson, senior technology consultant

It was a wonderful reset to return to Summit this year. I was particularly appreciative of all of the new features that became immediately available in our Slate Databases, and how quickly the Slate community has come together to add fast improvements to them. While this isn’t an exhaustive list of the new abilities in Slate, these are what I’ve been able to utilize in my projects so far: 

• Materialized Views: This is so useful for repetitive calculations that you have to do to present data throughout Slate! I already have a handful running overnight to calculate applicant counts and award dollars spent, which takes a data table in a portal and a portal report from barely running at all to loading in a few seconds. But it’s not just reporting  – now that you can independently join into your materialized views, you can use the data on dashboards or even query libraries so that your end-users can pull the calculations without pulling the full calculation subquery that would make their whole query slower (and would allow them to edit the calculation). Also, the new materialized view query base shows up automatically on your CJs user permission settings for both base and join access, so you can add/remove them from specific roles/users easily.
• Rich HTML editor and full-screen HTML view: This has already been a game-changer when working with content in so many different places in Slate, from portal builds to emails to form content. It’s becoming my default click whenever I open up any text editor throughout Slate.
• AI query analysis: I haven’t used too much of Slate’s AI helper abilities yet, but an excellent use is simply pulling up the Slate AI and asking it questions about a query you just ran. What’s the average GPA of all these applicants? How many science majors are there and what’s their average GPA? List the applicants who haven’t filled in the enrollment form yet. I could see this being so useful for Slate managers when working with end-users who automatically want/need to download queries in order to assess their results or ask a simple question or two. This could be a way to avoid downloading application data so often.

·  ·  ·

Joshua Henry, director of technology support and training 

For the fourth year in a row, our week at Summit began with RHB Academy. We introduced the pre-Summit training event for Slate users in 2022, in Nashville, and it has become an annual part of the Summit experience since. This year, attendees convened in Las Vegas from 48 different institutions, choosing from 12 different course offerings to create personalized training experiences and level up their Slate skills in configurable joins, portals, reporting, datasets and entities, communications and more.

Engaging with our RHB Academy attendees and showcasing what’s possible in Slate is always a personal highlight of the Summit experience for me. The instruction we provide and strategies we share hopefully empower our audience to identify opportunities and create new solutions for their institutions. It’s a learning opportunity for us as well. While co-leading a course on building sustainable communications with my colleague Megan Miller, Megan demonstrated two capabilities with content blocks in Slate, back-to-back, that I had no idea were possible. I’ve been using Slate since 2017, and have a comprehensive knowledge of the system at this point. And yet, there’s still plenty left for me to learn.

And that’s what Summit is about—sharing solutions, learning new techniques, finding inspiration and engaging with the Slate community. RHB Academy has become such a special part of Summit for us because it allows us to accomplish all of the above before we even acquire our Slate-printed badges. I’m already looking forward to planning next year’s RHB Academy, back in Nashville, thinking through what will be the most pressing challenges in Slate on the road ahead (effective uses of AI?), and how we can provide the training and support the Slate community needs.

The post Leaving Las Vegas: Reflections on Slate Summit 2025 appeared first on RHB.

It’s been energizing to see all the social media posts from people who are committing to telling the story of higher education in new ways. I feel such a sense of togetherness in this work, seeing all the institutional and agency colleagues pulling in the same direction. At the same time, I’ve had some recent experiences that have concretized how marcomm, advancement and strategic planning can build on each other’s rootedness in institutional mission, core values and constituent needs to make sure the right stories are told at the right times to the right audiences.  

Thank you to Dr. Melissa Morriss-Olson for her thoughtful discussion of rebuilding public trust in higher ed as someone who was a first-generation college student who then became a university provost and trusted educator of other higher education leaders. I read Melissa’s piece as more inspiration to work for a paradigm-shifting moment, in the Kuhnian sense of a radical break from past habits of thought and practice, moving us toward a greater sense of duty to speak about why higher education matters. 

Melissa’s piece also reminded me of a brief but painful interaction with my father several years ago. We were sitting on the porch at his house. I thought we were enjoying a delightful, shared silence observing a nearby mountain range as the morning sun lit its peaks.  

He was having a completely different experience. He turned to me and with great emotion said, “I don’t know how to talk to you anymore.” I had completed a master’s degree and was in a Ph.D. program. He dropped out of college to join the Army during the conflict in Vietnam.  

I inhabited a different world than he did. I spoke differently and talked about different things and had a different set of beliefs than the ones he taught me. 

I was stunned. I didn’t feel that different to me. We know higher education opens up the world to us. For some people, it also creates new cleavages and conflicts.   

Coming from the experience of standing on the edge of one such cleavage, I perceive that the path forward has to be a deeply interdisciplinary one. If we are to create greater connections with audiences to help them understand the transformation that higher ed creates, we’ll have to work beyond our imagined functional boundaries and settle more comfortably into spaces where we share expertise. 

The experience you share with your colleagues 

This summer, I attended the 2025 CASE Annual Conference for Marketing and Branding (CASE ACMB) where I co-presented with Maria Elena Kuntz, the director of content marketing strategy and communications at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Office of Advancement.  

Our presentation explored how institutions make space for alumni to talk about themselves in their preferred terms. Maria presented a brand storytelling case study that dove into the complexity of using the word “legacy” in a story when it’s claimed by an alumnus to talk about the Baca family’s relationship to this beloved university, but “legacy” is a word many predominantly white institutions avoid for strong ethical reasons. 

I brought both an anthropological and industry-wide consultant’s perspective about how we negotiate with others which stories get told, how to tell those stories and when it’s best to engage in collaborative storytelling. This is a method for doing research or creating relationships with communities that requires us to think about why certain stories might be important or useful in which contexts.  

We also have to be clear about the language choices we make to tell stories. Maria and I collectively discussed how brand standards are one way in which identities can be validated or ignored. Documents like style guides provide useful clarity about institutional principles and priorities but also can make some things, like self-descriptors, unspeakable. 

I also just finished a year in the 2024-2025 cohort of the Society of College and University Planning (SCUP) Emerging Leaders program. As a cohort of professionals from a range of institutions and architecture and design firms, we learned to implement the principles of integrated planning: a sustainable, unified model for institutional planning and plan activation in which constituent voices are well represented and unit-level plans feed into the institutional plan.  

These professional development experiences covered higher education functions that seem different on the surface, but there are some definite similarities: 

• First, the work of marcomm, advancement, alumni relations and strategic or integrated planning requires knowing the institution’s mission, values, goals and constituent needs. The work you do in one of these functions should shape your organization’s future by correctly identifying your present position in the landscape and the places where you’ve historically found both success and challenges. You are also responsible for identifying solutions to those challenges and the best ways to track and report on your progress. Strategic marketing and communications plans can be great models to adapt in other units or divisions. (And we’ve advocated for having marcomm  and advancement leaders present in the early planning stages for these reasons and more.) 
• There’s also a parallel wherein some of your colleagues may think they know what your job entails. Some may also think that they can do your job themselves or that historical practice will always be better than an innovative or different practice. Others may think it’s not worth understanding what your role is. Or, they create unnecessary obstacles to collaboration because they are afraid that means ceding territory. So, it can feel like a lot of your work is explaining the work, why it matters and why you don’t want to own a colleague’s territory. You just want to help maximize what they can do within it. (We’ve written about the gift embedded in comments from people who believe they know marcomm as well as you do.) 
• Finally, these activities reinforced the importance of intelligently chosen and articulated core values in figuring out how you should do your work. Core values point us toward what is important and how to behave and treat each other as a collective. Our strategic planning research shows that discussions of core values are becoming a more frequent feature in strategic plans. Core values are frequently discussed in brand style guides, campaign case statements and messages to alumni to increase their affinity for your institution. We can make a choice to act in accordance with our values, even if we can’t control the context in which we operate. 

It’s time to share what hasn’t been shared 

This is what’s been on my mind as I reflect on how important it is for higher education to be clear in its purpose and to speak about it with purpose.  

Morriss-Olson writes, “The relationship between the university and the public is shifting. Trust is shaky. Expectations are changing. And let’s be honest—some of that is on us. Higher ed hasn’t always been great at listening, adapting, or communicating our value.” This is work we must do to “rebuild the social compact.” 

It’s interesting, from a certain distance, to observe that I lived the part about not being “great at listening, adapting or communicating” at a micro level. On some level, the distance between my father and I was due to things I didn’t say. If we extrapolate all the combined micro-level conversations that should have happened but didn’t to the macro level, we observe all the empty conversational space that was left open to be filled by speakers who weren’t there to tell a full story.  

This is the ultimate shared thread between my CASE ACMB and SCUP experiences: we need to pull together our shared expertise to tell the truth about higher education. Thank you to everyone posting on LinkedIn and on institutional social media accounts, claiming space to describe the amazing work faculty, staff and students are doing. To make this a paradigm shift, we must plan to do this endlessly, to make it a core value that guides the choices we make. 

We’re walking that path, too, so if you’re interested in some company during your institution’s journey, we’re ready to meet you wherever you are. 

The post A Shared Effort, a Stronger Story for Higher Ed: Interdisciplinarity Across MarComm, Advancement and Institutional Planning appeared first on RHB.

Let’s run it back. Five years later, AMA Higher Ed returns to Las Vegas on November 10-13. 

A quick flashback to 2019: I was three months into my new role at RHB and serving on the conference committee (a highlight was introducing the Vegas Golden Knights CMO keynote to the electronic beat of “John Wick Mode,” which the Golden Knights blast for player intros). I also recall having meetings at the coffee shop at the bottom of the escalator from the conference space, trying not to get distracted by wedding parties and all the Vegas-style comings and goings. 

Join me for sessions

This year I’m leading a pre-conference session, “From Principles to Practice: Marketing Essentials for Higher Education,” designed for newer attendees and those seeking a solid foundation or refresher on marketing principles—and their application to higher ed and its inherent complexities. 

In addition, Richard Campbell (Auburn University CCO), Kristen Lainsbury (Bates College VP for Communications and Marketing), Robin Oliver (Ohio University VP for University Communications and Marketing) and I will host a panel session titled, “OOO-no! Creative Solutions for the Chronically Understaffed.” We’ll offer a sector-wide perspective on talent recruitment and retention, and these campus leaders will share their approaches to building stronger, more diverse and more nimble teams. 

Flowers to Las Vegas destination marketing

I’m not a Vegas-goer. When I’ve flown into LAS, it’s usually been to head off toward Zion or the Grand Canyon. Yet, I’ve long admired the marketing of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and its success in boldly communicating core truths of the Vegas experience.

You know the campaign and tagline: “What happens here, stays here.” Remarkably, LVCVA launched this campaign more than 20 years ago—on Super Bowl Sunday in 2003 to be exact. The campaign evolved in 2020 to “What happens here, only happens here.” 

A campaign of this duration is unheard of in higher ed. We underestimate the power of continuity—continuity of message, effort and investment. When institutions tire of their own messaging too quickly or when a new president wishes to “launch a new brand,” we set ourselves back. Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, in contrast, has understood that the market does not see us as we see ourselves. While their tactics have evolved along the way, LVCVA has benefited from the awareness, recognition and associations they’ve built up through years and years of consistency. 

Ready. Set. Vegas.

Our 2019 recommendations hold up well. My number one Vegas tip is the same: spend some time away from the Strip.

Last time there for AMA, we hosted a gathering at The Mob Museum, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement. Getting off the Strip and supporting a nonprofit organization was a win-win. We enjoyed a journey back to the Prohibition era with an evening in the museum’s Underground Speakeasy and Distillery. We’ll be going back. 

If speakeasies are your thing, check out The Laundry Room too, tucked inside the swanky Commonwealth. The Mob Museum and Commonwealth are both downtown, north of the Strip. 

Looking for more content to get ready for AMA? Mallory Willsea and Seth Odell offer some great travel tips in this recent Higher Ed Pulse episode. 

The post A Guide to AMA Higher Ed 2024 appeared first on RHB.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Sure, the holidays are fast approaching—too fast actually. Or maybe spooky season or PSL season is your thing. For higher ed marketers, it’s feel-good season because we’ll soon get to be among our people. 

The AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, the largest single gathering of higher ed marketers, is November 12-15 in Chicago. First things first, register if you haven’t already.  

Conference Highlight: For the Culture 

I’m a conference committee alum, and the committee sets the bar higher and higher each year. What a great-looking agenda. I am especially looking forward to Marcus Collins’ keynote. Collins is a marketing professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and is also head of strategy at Wieden+Kennedy, New York. His new book, For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be, is an excellent read, complete with tales of running Beyoncé’s digital strategy.

A recent favorite piece by Collins is an insightful article on “How Deion Sanders Brings Wins, Revenue and Cultural Cachet to Colorado,” written before Colorado’s current losing skid when they were the talk of college football. (CU Boulder is on the short list for my high school senior son, so the Buffs are of particular interest. In fact, his first campus visit—and CU football game, pre-Coach Prime—was just before AMA Higher Ed 2021 in Denver.) Collins breaks down the “Prime Effect” with a specific example of Sanders’ trademark sunglasses—the ones he gifted to everyone on his team after the head coach of in-state rival Colorado State took exception to Sanders wearing them during interviews. 

“Coach Prime has given these particular sunglasses—and the University of Colorado, for that matter—new meaning,” Collins explains. “And those who have decided to consume these glasses—and join the Colorado fandom—have done so as a strategy to pursue their own identity projects. That is to say, they use these branded products to signal the meaning they want to project about themselves—confidence—because the meaning associated with the brand is congruent with their ideal conception of self.”

Collins’ perspective on congruence resonates, not just because it’s analogous to coherence. It also offers meaningful food for thought for higher ed marketers. Think of the audiences that matter most to your institution. Do they find congruence between their own identity and the meaning that your campus experience creates for them—as well as between their own identity and the meaning that your marketing signals?

The Future of Integrating Marketing and Communications

Another highlight will be leading a session with Jeneane Beck and Kate Ledger during the Senior Leader Experience. Jeneane is Assistant Vice President for External Relations at the University of Iowa, and Kate is Associate Vice President for Marketing and Outreach for Old Dominion University’s Division of Digital Learning. Our presentation, “Collaboration, Conflation and Complexity: The Future of Integrating Marketing and Communications,” will take a deep dive into the organizational complexities of integrating these two functions and assess pros and cons of different organizational approaches.

Marcomm teams, or blended teams of marketing and communications professionals, are standard for most institutions. Many projects require integrating the expertise of both teams to reach audiences in a variety of ways. Given higher education budgets for marketing and communications, efficiency amongst marcomm teams is often required with many positions crossing traditional marketing and communications boundaries, and many leaders “doing it all” in small shops. 

Intensifying external factors in recent years (COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest, racial inequities), the proliferation of communications channels and other fast-moving challenges across our sector have placed unprecedented demands on strategic communications. Simply put, the increased workload and complexity of issues management, crisis communications and executive communications are taking their toll and threatening bandwidth. 

Under this pressure, what are the implications for key marketing responsibilities such as brand-building, enrollment marketing and other priorities charged to marketing leaders? This pressing question is a consistent theme we encounter when RHB conducts a Future-Ready Organizational Capability Assessment of an institution’s marketing and communications.

Jeneane, Kate and I look forward to exploring innovative practices and discussing future directions of these functions in higher education.

Windy City Eats

The RHB team is not only full of expert advisors and practitioners. We have foodies too, and you can count on us for stellar recommendations for your conference dining.

My suggestion is Alla Vita, where I had a fabulous Italian dinner during the CASE District V Conference last winter—and where ricotta dumplings are always in season. When you’re delightfully stuffed and they ask if you’d like house-made gelato for dessert, just say yes. Alla Vita is part of the impressive Boka Restaurant Group, whose commitment to equity and inclusion is another reason to add a reservation here to your AMA itinerary. 

Aimee Hosemann, Ph.D., Director of Qualitative Research

For variety and an opportunity to catch up with colleagues at a remove from the bustle of the conference, we recommend the Chicago French Market. Cuban, Vietnamese, sushi, smoked meats—you can get it all here. And if you’re missing your dog while you’re away, The Barking Spot Bakery is just the place to pick up a little gift for your good girl or boy.

Amanda Sale, Ph.D., Senior Consultant for Enrollment Management

If you are a fan of Top Chef and James Beard Award-winning restaurants, I would highly recommend Girl & The Goat, the brainchild of Chef Stephanie Izard. As Best Chef Great Lakes in 2013 and the season four Top Chef winner (and the first female Chef to win the honor!), Izard delivers innovative small plates and a welcoming atmosphere, making it a top choice for those seeking a memorable dining experience.

Ken Anselment, Vice President for Enrollment Management

Fans of The Bear can paint their palate with all the colors of the food palette featured in Chef Sydney’s inspiring food tour of Chicago in Season Two, Episode Three (“Sundae”), including Avec, Publican Quality Meats, Margie’s Candies, Giant, Lao Peng You, Pizza Lobo and Michelin-starred Kasama. (Oh, and if you’re looking for the restaurant that started it all, Mr. Beef in River North is the place to go.) 

Rick Bailey, Principal

Don’t get me started here…the beautiful thing about conferences held in Chicago is that it is a foodie’s wonderland. I mention a few faves here, but call me and we can discuss scores of possibilities. 

Right near the hotel in the Streeterville area are some classics. I love a great meat dive at The Purple Pig. It’s usually crowded so go early and get your name in. Beatrix is a great idea for lunch or dinner. If you have a minute to walk a little farther, treat all your senses to some time at Eataly, where you’ll be inspired by all things Italian. It’s like a market on steroids with a variety of restaurants that you’ll love. You can walk home with awesome bread, cheese, prosciutto and a bottle of wine. You could do a little shopping and head back to the Sheraton and be very happy. 

I’m a fan of José Andrés, so I’ll direct you straight to two versions of his Bazaar properties. Bar Mar features wonderfully fresh seafood, while Bazaar Meat will thrill carnivores. Pace yourself. Order dessert for sure. And since Amanda Sale introduced you to Girl & The Goat, you should visit one of my favorite properties in that restaurant group, Cabra (Spanish for “goat”), a Peruvian restaurant with a tapas flair in the Fulton Market area (take Randolph west). Frankly, ask your Uber driver to drop you off at Fulton Market somewhere and you’ll walk into literally dozens of excellent options for dinner. Without reservations though, you may have to wait a while. Totally worth it. Have a blast. Delight your buds.

Sera Radovich, Client Success Manager

A great option for a quick bite, Parlor Pizza Bar in West Loop has both custom and craft pies. Truly delicious for folks who want to eat pizza in Chicago but are opposed to deep dish :). There’s a River North location a half-mile from the conference hotel.

(Another note from Rick: Pizza is a touchy topic in Chicago. It’s kind of a big deal and a signature dish in the city. So, while I fully support Sera’s recommendation, another great bet is Lou Malnati’s, where you will find pizza in all shapes and sizes. And great salads. Trust me, there’s one near you wherever you are in the city.)

The post A Guide to AMA Higher Ed 2023 appeared first on RHB.

Fall is officially underway and many admissions professionals have been on the road since August visiting high schools, attending college fairs and, notably, this month, heading to Baltimore to attend one of my favorite conferences of the year, NACAC.

I love NACAC for a variety of reasons: the opportunity to get inspired by speakers like Jay Shetty; to hear national discourse around admissions and enrollment hot topics through educational sessions like the ones my colleagues, Ken Anselment and Rosa Arroyo Driggers, are hosting; and the chance to connect with friends and peers from throughout the United States for a quick coffee, meal or cocktail.

As you’re getting ready to head to Baltlimore, we offer a handful of recommendations for things to see, eat and drink during your time in the city.

To See:

If you venture outside the Baltimore Convention Center area, we encourage you to take a 15-minute ride to the Baltimore Museum of Art to spend time with their impressive collection–including works by Matisse and Picasso–as well as their array of African and Asian art. If you get hungry while exploring, Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen overlooks the sculpture garden and serves locally sourced farm-fresh food that preserves Chesapeake culinary traditions.

To Eat:

Baltimore has a variety of exquisite restaurants to choose from, featuring Beard-nominated chefs, Best of Baltimore winners, and establishments that serve the community not only through food. While not exhaustive, here are a few of our favorites:

• Cindy Lou’s Fish House: You may find me here one night while I’m in Baltimore, enjoying seafood, views of the harbor and southern-inspired dishes that are as beautiful as they are delicious.
• Ekiben: For a more casual experience with a focus on Asian-style comfort food, I’d recommend Beard-nominated Ekiben. Here you’ll find pork buns, rice bowls and a variety of Asian-fusion sides that are mouthwatering.
• Mera Kitchen Collective: The concept of this restaurant gets me excited. As a worker-owned cooperative, Mera Kitchen Collective started off as a series of pop-ups and now has a brick-and-mortar that empowers refugees to tap into their culinary heritage through cooking.

To Drink:

If you’re in the mood to enjoy a quick happy hour with colleagues, we have a few options for you, too.

• Topside: If the weather is nice, we highly recommend Topside, the rooftop bar at Hotel Revival. It’s a quick walk or ride from the convention center and offers guests great cocktails and beautiful views of the city.
• The Brewer’s Art: If you prefer a brewpub offering a wide selection of beer (and craft cocktails, too), add The Brewer’s Art to your list. It’s a Baltimore favorite with a great atmosphere serving outstanding food and drinks.
• The Bluebird Cocktail Room and Pub: A 15-minute ride will take you to the Bluebird Cocktail Room, a funky bar that focuses on craft cocktails. While you’re there, head downstairs to the pub, a place they describe as “a cozy, candlelit, underground gathering space for lovers of American whiskey, cured meats and classic literature.”

This should get you started, but if you need help—or want some company—please reach out! We’d love to have a conversation with you, catch up and share some of the exciting things that are happening at RHB.

The post A Guide to NACAC 2023: Things to See, Eat and Drink in Baltimore appeared first on RHB.

Minecraft has made it to the Williams home in full force. My two oldest kids, Dougie and Dean, have decided to start capping out their daily screen time limits with a focus on chopping down virtual trees, building bases and wrecking each other’s homes–which isn’t too dissimilar from the real world.

Dougie is more methodical in his approach; he reads books about Minecraft, gets me to Google how many blocks to put together in an X pattern to create something new, learns the tricks and then applies them in the game. Dean watches his brother and there’s a lot of trial and error in his approach. But the other day I heard Dean say to Dougie, “I’ve built my new base and craft table; what’s next?”

In true professional spirit I also heard Rick Bailey whispering, “There’s a blog post in there.”

And so here it is.

As our team (and yours) ramps up for Technolutions’ Slate Summit, we’ve been having numerous conversations with current and prospective clients on where they should focus their energy once they’ve crossed the first cycle in Slate. As expert consultants, a key part of our job is to guide clients in setting expectations for implementation. We want to help prevent clients from applying Dean’s trial and error Minecraft approach to their Slate implementation: jumping in and attempting to figure out all of the incredible elements you can deploy right out of the gate is a bad idea.

But now that you’re here and you’ve made it past the build of your base, we’ve put together five areas for consideration to propel your team and strategy to new levels.

Financial Aid Integration

Whether your institution leverages your SIS or another platform for financial aid packaging and messaging, integrating these data into Slate creates a more transparent experience for students and families. In this recent post from Ken Anselment, VP for Enrollment Management at RHB, Ken discusses the opportunity to leverage these data to design coherent communications and provide clarity to stakeholders in the decision-making process. Tied in with checklists and award letters or data display within a portal, institutions have the opportunity to establish visibility into the cost of attendance to mitigate surprises and anxiety for students and families.

Our team recommends starting with an analysis of the data students and families are most interested in at this phase in the process (and of course, what’s appropriate to share). Having an understanding of how data is structured in other systems will guide decisions on how to leverage (or not leverage) checklists in Slate. From there, you can move into the realm of determining if you’d like to import a PDF of an award letter or design a letter template populated with those data points for a more dynamic experience. Regardless, the outcome creates a more student-centric approach to financial aid and cost at your institution.

Applicant Experience Portal

While we’re on the topic of portals, you’re now at a stage where you have a unique opportunity to enhance the experience for applicants and their families through a beautifully branded, informative and personalized portal. I commonly say during calls with prospective clients that with over 1,600 institutions on Slate, you differentiate yourself with efficient processes (behind the scenes), solid communications and experience. Design is at the core of so much of what we do at RHB, and portals are no exception.

“…we couldn’t be more thrilled with the result. The design is what we were hoping both from an aesthetic perspective as well as an architecture standpoint; we feel enabled and empowered to make any adjustments as we go along.”

— Will Deitte, Senior Director for EM Systems, Data and Reporting, Stevens Institute of Technology

Our Applicant Experience Portal is designed to take students and their families from the point of application submission through matriculation. Because the portal editor allows for complete customization, each portal we develop is unique for that particular institution. RHB’s technology consultants, designers and front end developers will guide your team through optimizing the experience to include various types of customized checklists, the aforementioned financial aid components, alerts, event management considerations and a plethora of other opportunities (and even some fun easter eggs) that will aid in marrying your physical and digital experiences.

At RHB, we tend to view Applicant Experience Portals as more than a transactional status page. We strive to design an experience that is action-oriented, informational and representative of your institutional brand, keeping visitors engaged and coming back for more.

Student Search

If you’ve followed our work at RHB, this should be a no brainer. We’ve written extensively on the reasons why you shouldn’t be afraid to manage search in house. While many institutions are locked into multi-year engagements with search partners, there’s never a wrong time to explore this opportunity, and having a cycle in Slate completed is a great time to assess taking control.

“Our RHB team called us in to coherence and to excellence at the confluence of CRM technology and the human experience. Their support, guidance, and innovative thinking has already transformed the way we approach enrollment marketing and recruitment.”

— James Miller, Interim Vice Provost for Enrollment, Seattle University

There’s a significant level of pride–not to mention value–in being able to see and manage all of your data, control all of your messages and have the ability to augment the experience and messaging at any stage of the journey at any moment in time. Managing search in house allows teams to be more nimble and more responsive to market changes. Who doesn’t like that?

Training

Probably not what you were thinking, right? We all work in education so I think it’s safe to say that we appreciate the mantra of “never stop learning.” Learning is another aspect that’s core to so much of what we do at RHB. It’s our goal to ensure teams feel empowered to leverage the systems and processes we design. And, it’s our hope that our focus on training promotes that same culture once we’ve moved into new projects.

“RHB’s extensive knowledge of Slate and how it has been implemented at different institutions provides a depth of insight that few others possess.”

— Amy Hutton, Ph.D., Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management, University of Alabama

With a team of professionals who have experience designing and leading curriculum for Slate, it makes sense that one of our services is just that: hyper-focused trainings delivered in your database at the appropriate level for your team. The only way to advance your database is to feel comfortable in sustaining the solutions you have in place and confident to learn and try new things. We’re here to support you along the way. Speaking of training, we’re excited for our next RHB Academy at this year’s Slate Summit and look forward to some other exciting announcements on that front later this month.

Student Success

In the last 18 months, we have seen an incredible uptick in the number of institutions reaching out to RHB for guidance on implementing student success initiatives in Slate. We’ve found that these conversations take several forms but almost all merit a period of intensive discovery with campus stakeholders. Student success and retention touch so many areas on a campus that it’s vital to have the right people at the table from the onset of an engagement. Whether we’re evaluating your current campus ecosystem to establish feature parity with Slate or guiding strategy around an effective advising and communication strategy for at-risk students, our work in the RHB Way for implementing Student Success in Slate is grounded in process analysis and change management.

Slate is an ever-evolving platform, and Summit is the perfect venue to explore the unique and creative ways that institutions and organizations are leveraging this technology to create incredible student experiences and enhance the daily lives of their teams. We look forward to connecting with you there.

My son just walked in with a Minecraft book. We’ve got a castle to build.

The post Minecraft and Slate Strategy: Next Steps After You Have Your Base appeared first on RHB.

There are thousands of movies based on the lives of workers and the workplace. One of my favorite workplace movies is Office Space, a clever comedy written and directed by Mike Judge in 1999. We all love a good story about a talented employee that Eurosteps their boilerplate job description and asks more from leadership in the name of career development. 

As the Great Resignation continues to impact higher education offices across the nation, leaders need to get creative and innovate new ways to engage and retain their staff. Managers have more access and visibility with staff, giving them the advantage to effect real change as they can sense the developmental needs of their staff members. According to a study conducted by Zippia, the average admissions officer “enjoys” staying at their job for one to two years.  

How do we stop the Michael Boltons or Samir Nagheenanajars of Admissions from walking out of the Office Space and from setting the place on (metaphorical) fire?

Some might say one to two years is not enough time to develop and retain staff.

I respectfully disagree. 

“Remember, Next Friday is Hawaiian Shirt Day!” (Expectations for Leaders)

While I do own a red Swingline stapler, I do not condone arson or theft in the workplace under any circumstance. However, I do condone ideology that places the responsibility of creating an office culture that promotes generative employee experiences in the hands of leaders. Generative leadership translates to knowledge-sharing through collaboration and scaffolds your internal leader pipeline. 

Employee development initiatives can be a challenge, but you can start by engaging your staff in knowledge-sharing opportunities. In Overcoming the Fear of Search, Dr. Amanda Sale, Senior Consultant for Enrollment Management at RHB, and Chris Gray, Dean of Enrollment at Lasell University, discuss the surprising benefit of collaborating with staff in building an in-house search strategy.

“… bringing search in-house gives you an opportunity to bring more of your team into the process…there is more opportunity to share knowledge and collaborate on the process. This allows staff to be part of the discussion, brainstorming ideas, themes and even specific tones in messaging to broad and narrow populations that they are invested in. While all their ideas may not be implemented, the inclusion in the conversation creates a culture of buy-in and exposes more members of your team to new, celebrated professional experiences to add to their resume.”

Collaboration allows your staff to participate in creating strategy and contribute to the decision-making process, promoting a culture of empowerment and innovation while adding more tools to your employees’ toolbox.

“Just a Moment!” (Break the Monotony)

Leaders are in a unique position to drive staff retention and engagement. A LinkedIn Study in 2019 shows that 94% of employees would stay with their employer if their employer invested in their individual career development. In Reckoning with the Great Resignation, Ken Anselment, Vice President for Enrollment Management at RHB, writes:

“What we really want, it turns out, is an elevated value of the profession itself, one where institutions not only recognize the importance of recruiting students (most already do), but the immense value represented by the people who do the recruiting.”

How do you engage staff, develop leaders and implement measures to retain your superstars?

Break the monotony.

Exposure to and experience in different roles housed in Admissions and Enrollment Management creates a sense of autonomy, opportunity, trust, equity and reward for staff. Rotational programs offer staff development opportunities by cycling your talent through different roles or in-depth experience in one specific area in Admissions for an established length of time. 

For example, let’s say that one of your institutional goals is to promote awareness of diversity efforts by creating events that support diversity-related recruitment and retention. In a rotational program, managers share institutional goals and build teams based on interest and potential to oversee initiatives with their staff–all staff members. While representation is meaningful and very important, do not miss the opportunity to engage every member of your team in diversity initiatives. As a manager, acknowledge your employees’ intersectionality, worldview and tacit knowledge.

With any new opportunity, assessment is key. Collect feedback, assess the impact on the real work and discuss the success of the experience. Did staff grow from the experience? What did staff learn? Did staff discover their niche?

Leading and Managing

Leadership and management are not the same–a leader leads and a manager manages. It can be hard for managers to encourage busy and overworked team members when they themselves are overworked. Leaders must play an active role in the development of their managers to improve retention and career mobility. Leaders can support their managers by designating time and space for in-depth discussions where managers can voice their concerns, identify training opportunities for their own career development, offer feedback and discuss engagement initiatives for staff members.

There is no universal definition of “leadership” or “leader.” Here are some examples of how different definitions can be:

Forbes: “Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

Padmasree Warrior: “The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.”

Bill Gates: “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”

What is universal is that leaders must do more to develop a path where all employees see a vision of their future within the institution. 

If your institution is interested in empowering your most important resources–your people–RHB is ready to have a conversation with you about Team Assessment and Training to help you effectively meet your goals in a way that aligns with your institutional values.

The post Preventing a Case of the Mondays: How to Engage and Retain Staff in the Face of the Great Resignation appeared first on RHB.

Technolutions’ Slate software is built for admissions, but the system is highly customizable and can be used for more than just admitting students. You can build processes in Slate that help you manage advising, academic standards investigations and appointments with the career services team. All these activities would be considered “Slate for Student Success,” which is really anything that happens after recruiting and enrolling a student. 

Building student success processes into a system like Slate is attractive for a lot of reasons. It’s not enough to enroll students; we want to make sure they’re thriving, growing and succeeding past graduation. Colleges need to make higher education easier to navigate, especially complex processes like financial aid. Universities have SIS systems that might be difficult for faculty to navigate, or they might not be the correct place to hold certain student data. Most universities use multiple data systems, and you might want to see, display or aggregate information from multiple places, while being able to add data on top. These are all great reasons to use Slate for Student Success.

After implementing student success systems at a variety of different institutions, we’ve noticed some themes and trends. If you’re considering using Slate to serve your current students, faculty or staff, you should have a clear vision before beginning. Slate for Student Success doesn’t have a defined step-by-step roadmap like admissions; each student success implementation is highly customized to the school’s particular place in the universe. 

Same database or different?

First things first. You already have a Slate system. Why not just add on? We’ve worked with schools who have gone both ways—a system where admissions and student services work in the same database—and other schools where separate databases house each silo. Both can work, and maybe your budget constraints make the decision easier for you.

We’ve seen adding on to an admissions database works best for smaller institutions, and those with younger admissions databases. But if we’re honest, separate databases for admissions and student success provide the best opportunity to take full advantage of all the creative ways you can customize Slate tools for your students’ needs. You have the sandbox all to yourself, and you get to decide the rules.

However, if you choose to add on to an admissions database, make sure that:  

• There is one central Slate Captain and a Slate Team with the governance authority to make decisions on how tools are used (and who can manage user permissions, which can become tricky). The Slate Captain should have the time to oversee student services in Slate and the authority to lead decisions.
• Accept that some student success ideas may not be feasible or as easy to implement because the “sandbox rules” have already been set with admissions’ needs in mind.
• If you only need Slate for Student Success for smaller, more specific goals, combining databases might be fine, especially if it is going to be the same user managing/adding data for admissions and student success.

Make decisions on who 

Every system needs a Slate Captain, and a student success implementation is no different. Whether you’re using the same system as admissions or building a new Slate database, you will need a systems analyst who will take the lead and who will have authority to drive decisions. “Who” is also which office on campus will own the Student Success side of Slate. Is “who” Career Services? Financial Aid? The Dean’s Office? You need to decide on a clear Slate leadership team and governance strategy. 

Once other offices realize they can also use Slate for their work, you’ll be pulled in lots of different directions, which is why you need to decide who has ultimate governance over the project and why you’re implementing the system.

Make decisions on why 

Because there’s no defined roadmap, and you can do almost everything, you need to keep your eyes on the prize. Define your one to two primary specific goal(s) and stick to them while developing your system. 

Some primary goals we’ve helped schools develop in the past are:

• A student tracking system for a K-12 school to share notes about student’s well-being and trigger immediate action when intervention is necessary.
• An appointment booking system for a small liberal arts university where success coaches and career services staff can manage their appointments with students, the students can book appointments with staff and the office can ensure students with specific profiles (such as a low midterm grade) are meeting with a coach.
• A central place for students at a large university to see a list of resources and links, and a system for managing various institutional and national award applications, like Rhodes, Fulbright and Marshall Scholars.
• A place to pool data from multiple systems into a central view and provide a way for faculty and staff at a large university to view selected student data points easily.
• A place where graduate program administrators and advisors at a state flagship graduate school can log study milestones, faculty committee members, publications, funding, research contributions, etc. 

It’s easy to get distracted once you realize Slate can do so much. And you might say “yes” to everything above. But picking one key priority for you and your team will help you create a system that is immediately additive to your work. Once everyone’s comfortable, then you get to add to it with more goals and more stakeholders.

Make decisions on how much

Now that you know your primary “why,” you’re going to get overwhelmed with all the possibilities. What do you want the system to do? The answer to that question can’t be “everything!”

Make a list of everything you hope to accomplish in Slate. Then ask yourself, “Which of these moves me to my primary goal I defined in step 3?” Those are your Phase 1 implementation strategies for Slate for Student Success. 

Anything that sounds exciting but does not move you toward your primary goal is Phase 2. This should come after Phase 1 (obviously) but it’s still important to outline them! Your other ideas are still goals, and you might be able to think longer term by structuring your database in a way that sets you up for Phase 2. 

For example, maybe you primarily want a system to help schedule coaching appointments with students who have lower midterm or final grades. But maybe eventually you’d like to report on which classes tend to have lower midterm grades to target your outreach even earlier or advise students to be wary of taking too many of these classes at once. That’s a Phase II goal, but you might set up the data structure in your system with an eye on that (eventual) prize.

You’ve made your big decisions. You’ve got a governance strategy in place, and you have some immediate and long-term goals. You’re ready to implement Slate for Student Success. In our experiences designing student success systems, we’ve begun advising clients to begin thinking about a few things sooner rather than later. Here’s what you should be ready to tackle as soon as you confirm your Slate database. 

Get your IT department’s time right away

The first step to almost all student success implementations is integration with one or more information systems on campus, most notably your school’s central SIS. You will need to complete this step before building anything in the database, because this is your source for data and records.

Your IT department will need to be ready to build data exports that include all the fields you’re hoping to display or use in your Slate system with the specific group of students you need. You can be ready with a brainstormed list of fields. 

You should also think of the group of students your Slate system will hold. Is it all currently enrolled students? Does that include students on study abroad or leave of absence? Does it include non-degree seeking students? When do incoming students move from admissions into student success? Should the system house newly graduated students? 

All these questions will need to be answered before IT can build your data feed into Slate for Student Success. Be ready with answers—and be sure someone is ready with time to build those file exports and then assist with setting up a regular data feed (usually nightly) into your Slate database.

Portal or Custom Tabs with Population Permissions?

There are so many ways you can display data in Slate, and you’ll need to define who should have access to Slate and who might best be served with a portal to view only selected students and selected data. While beginning a Student Success implementation, you should define what types of staff might fall into each category. 

Photo and other multimedia content needs

Of course, when you look up a student, you’ll probably want to see their picture! That’s not exactly ready-built technology in Slate (admissions offices don’t tend to ask for an applicant’s photo), but there are tools to use.

• If your campus already has a student photo library that you can access with a unique URL for each student, you can easily embed the photo in a dashboard and portal. If that’s the case, each student likely has a corresponding URL like www.school.edu/photos/[Student ID here]. 
• You can use the Deliver Library to house your student photos, but this does take manual upkeep from your team. You’ll need to develop a process to remove old photos from students who have graduated. To make that as easy as possible, think carefully and begin using a folder structure from the beginning that will help you identify photos that need to be removed when the time comes. An example might look like:

• You can also save photos in a text field using base-64 encoding within a form. There are limitations here, too, though. You will likely need to upload each student’s photo separately using a form to get the base-64 encoding saved in the field. This might be a viable solution if you plan on students entering their photos themselves in a portal. And since you’re saving the photo in a field, you’re able to easily query and delete those photos when needed.

Communications

We often speak with schools who want to send emails to students. It’s a primary goal of many Student Success implementations. Anyone using Slate in a portal or in the administrative view will be able to send individual emails to students, and that email will be saved on a student’s timeline. You’ll also be able to see when a student opened the email–very useful information when checking someone’s engagement.

You can develop configurations in Slate Deliver and Slate Forms to allow staff and potentially faculty to send emails to larger groups of students. We have also helped teams configure forms to request emails that are then built by a coordinator trained in Slate Deliver.

To decide which tools are best for your team, discuss internally to decide:

• What types of emailing tools do you want staff to use? What are some examples of email communications you see staff sending?
• Should staff/faculty be able to send mass emails themselves, or should they send email content to another Slate user to build the email and deliver query?

Having answers ready for these questions will help develop the system’s configuration for your institution, which will likely use:

• Populations, realms and permission structures to allow separate departments to access (and email) students within their population.
• Form solutions for users to email (or request an email) with content they write. 
• Query templates to help users build deliver queries to common groups of students.

Developing a clear vision and setting primary goals is key. Making sure you have personnel in place to manage the system and make decisions on system configurations is equally important. Thinking about all of these decisions before starting a student success implementation puts you—and your students—on the path to success.

The post Slate for Student Success appeared first on RHB.

Late last fall, we published an Insight in which I discussed some connections between marketing and anthropology that would be the subject of a paper I co-authored with RHB’s Rob Zinkan to be delivered at the American Anthropological Association conference. The point of our paper was that anthropology and marketing share the goal of understanding how humans understand themselves. We also argued that anthropologists have fallen into a cynicism that sometimes blunts their ability to take joy and aesthetic expression seriously. Marketers provide great inspiration for discovering how people relate to brands and institutions as a way to make sense of themselves and to genuinely create positivity for themselves.

While I was at this conference, it was interesting to see how academic anthropologists responded to someone doing ethnography in ways that are non-traditional. I also got to catch up with some colleagues who are working in the tech sector and other industries, hearing about how they are pushing the boundaries of what “ethnography” means.

Academic methodological conversations have implications for our clients because the appropriateness of our methodology and how we talk about it establishes our credentials as trustworthy experts. At the same time, we also have an opportunity to be part of the conversation that changes how academic anthropologists might understand the possibilities of the field.

Here’s an example of what I mean. I was talking to an anthropologist, L, who was a major influence on my academic work. She heard the paper I presented and wanted to know what RHB means by ethnography because she feels so strongly that what it means to anthropologists is the correct meaning. She is not alone in this regard. Anthropologists in the United States can be intently focused on how the way they practice ethnography distinguishes anthropology from sociology, ethnic studies or international relations, to name a few other fields that can concern themselves with understanding human cultures.

What ethnography means to anthropologists 

To many American anthropologists, ethnography is a qualitative research method with highly specific features. The primary feature of anthropological ethnography is that it is both a process and a product of long-term engagement with a community through what is called participant-observation, or the process of learning about culture and language by hanging out and being part of daily life. 

The standard idea of doing anthropological fieldwork involves spending about a year out in the “field,” which can be really anywhere, even in one’s own home community. While doing ethnography, anthropologists contribute to the work of households, perform expressive art forms like music or cooking, or otherwise just become part of life while also conducting interviews and making observations. 

Then, after fieldwork ends, anthropologists are often in contact with people they met in the field across their entire life courses and even become godparents to children or otherwise help provide for the care of family members. There can be other visits and other projects. This is the ethical deal, to continue to be interested and active in the lives of people who were generous enough to give time and space to someone asking questions. 

The distinction here is that many other fields may use the word “ethnography” to refer to interviewing or short-term visits to a place, but they tend to not emphasize the immersive nature of anthropological ethnography. Rather, the goal seems to be to capture a “slice of life” or to see what others are looking at or experiencing, but without the context of everything else that happens that might give the ethnographic slice more depth.

Another key component of anthropological ethnography is conducting research in the local language. While there may be periods of requiring a translator to help, in the most classic ethnographies, fieldworkers showed up somewhere and by dint of immersion learned the language of the communities where they worked. The goal here is to avoid filtering one’s understanding of what’s happening and what’s being said through someone else’s interpretations to the extent possible. The process of working through being misunderstood can be one of the most productive. When a fluent speaker of a language has to explain why a word choice was wrong or why something was said incorrectly for the context of the conversation, some deep cultural material can be excavated.

Ethnography is also the reportage of the research, through writing and sometimes through film- or music-making or constructing museum exhibits. Ethnographic writing can be rich with detail about things that happen and quote people met in the field. This reportage is also a chance for the anthropologist to be clear about how their background affects the research topics that interest them and how they interact with people they meet in the field. 

Anthropology as a field is by no means uncontroversial. Some major figures in anthropological theoretical history were pseudoscientistic racists (e.g., Carleton Coon), actual or assumed spies (e.g., Edmund Leach), or otherwise cogs in the bureaucratic machinery of colonial governments. Anthropologists have spoken for others who can speak for themselves and even been complicit in the mistreatment of human remains and burial goods.

Anthropological ethnography is itself controversial in certain ways. It is an exclusive methodology in the sense that doing it in the traditional fashion presupposes having a budget sufficient for that. It also typically required being single or having a family who was willing to move or function without one adult member for a while. How many people can reasonably meet these criteria, especially if they come from minoritized groups, need a grant or have caretaking responsibilities? Sometimes, a couple are both anthropologists; if they don’t share the same field site, then what? 

Since we have access to an increasing number of digital channels that allow us to visit each other from home, some feel there is even less reason to go away for extended periods of time. This is an opportunity to consider how anthropology can live up to the promise it makes to make the world safe for human diversity by allowing more people to become anthropologists. This is also an opportunity to dig more deeply into the applied, empowering capabilities of social science research, the ones that create useful tools for problem-solving and giving constituents access to all the benefits of their relationships with you.

Exploring empowering ethnographic capabilities at RHB

At RHB, scuttling off to do long-term, embedded research with any individual institution is a non-starter. However, to go back to L’s question about what we mean when we talk about “ethnography,” one of the things I told her is that while we don’t engage in long-term, single-episode immersive research with any campus, what we do have are long-lasting relationships that, in some cases, have lasted a decade or more. The insights we are able to draw as we see the many changes that happen at an institution are also made in the “local” language of that institution. That’s one reason why clients see such an emphasis on the discovery element of our service offerings and why we talk so much about both language and behaviors as part of our commitment to Coherence. We have to understand how you speak in order to help you align your speech with the practices that truthfully communicate your market position.

We also emphasize the elements of our work that lead to client empowerment. All of our services are designed around guiding institutions toward creating and maintaining increased relevance that leads to the relationships and revenue they need. Consider our guidance on bringing search in house, setting up clear data governance policies to go along with a shiny new Slate implementation, or designing the right marketing and communications organizational structure that adapts to future conditions.

Ultimately, RHB’s goal is to collaborate with you on creating a shared understanding of how you speak and behave and how you and others talk about you right now so we can make actionable recommendations about the kinds of practices that will align your realities and your aspirations. The best work in anthropology is community centered, open hearted and collaborative. That’s very much the approach we take at RHB and that RHB has taken since 1991. 

We want to help you create relevance for the people who matter most to you so that you can enact higher ed’s promise to transform the universe. It is a privilege to be able to carry your stories back to my home discipline so I can remind them of the power of engaged research and discovery that is responsive to the people it serves.

The post Ethnography in Higher Ed: How RHB’s Ethnographic Approach Leads to Institutional Empowerment appeared first on RHB.

There are many ways to Slate, and the best way to Slate is to Slate together. Likewise, there are many ways to learn, and one of the best ways to learn is through in-person, hands-on instruction. RHB is excited to offer you an opportunity to do both.

RHB is pleased to announce that we will be hosting our second annual RHB Academy this year in advance of the Slate Summit in Nashville. Last year, 135 members of the Slate community came together at the first RHB Academy to participate in instruction and strategy sessions led by our Slate and Related Technology team. This year’s event takes place on the morning of Wednesday, May 31, and we will be gathering 160 members of the Slate community and our team of Slate experts to connect and learn.

There are many reasons why attending RHB Academy is a wise investment in your professional development and why you should attend RHB Academy.

Hands-On Experience

Each course offered at RHB Academy will provide attendees with a chance to complete guided activities led by RHB instructors. Throughout the experience there will be a heavy focus on building in Slate. Courses will deliver content that is relevant to your work and you’ll leave Academy with assets created in a Clean Slate environment that you can export via suitcase or use as models to implement new processes in your own database.

Expert Insights

In addition to building, members of our expert Slate and Related Technology team will share the strategies and best practices that support our builds. You’ll enjoy access to our collective experience and Slate knowledge that we have acquired implementing, managing and innovating Slate for a wide range of uses.

A Robust Menu

Course topics for this year’s RHB Academy cover a wide range of Slate functionality. We’ll be discussing drip marketing and recruitment travel management, querying and reporting, application management and review process, rules and portals, user training and more. As an attendee you’ll be able to select three courses in as similar or different focus areas as you like. Simply put, we’re offering courses that will benefit you no matter your role and how you use Slate.

Configurable Joins, Configurable Joins, Configurable Joins…

Have you heard of configurable joins? By now we know you have. They’re no longer the future of querying in Slate, they are Slate’s present–and not just in the query tool. Every course offered at RHB Academy will include instructional content using configurable joins. Whether it’s building subquery filters in queries, concatenating subquery exports in reports or creating tailored joins in staff assignment rules, RHB Academy courses will illustrate how configurable joins can and should be used to enhance your work in Slate.

Tradition

The day before the official start of the Slate Summit conference has long been hallmarked by pre-conference instruction. The memories of engaging with members of the Slate community and providing in-person guidance on the best uses of Slate are among my fondest as a former Technolutions employee. I’m proud to now call RHB my home, and even prouder that we are leading the way in keeping the tradition of pre-Summit training alive.   

We hope you are as excited for Summit and for the opportunity to level up your Slate skills as we are! Learn more about RHB Academy and register today.

The post Why You Should Attend RHB Academy appeared first on RHB.