University Business - November/December 2011 - (Page 16)

Behind the news Future Shock P E O P L E W AT C H MaraveNe S. LoeSChke IS No STraNGer To Towson University (Md.). She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from there and served on the faculty for more than 30 years. Now she has been appointed Towson’s next president, effective Jan. 1, 2012. Beginning in 1970, Loeschke moved up in the ranks from faculty member to dean of the College of Fine arts and Communication, a position she held from 1997 to 2002. She is currently president of Mansfield University (Pa.), where she has been since 2006, and has previously served as provost of Wilkes University (Pa.). … David D. Gregory has been appointed the first Maravene Loeschke chief information officer at Smith College (Mass.), effective october 24. Previously the CIo at Colgate University (N.Y.) for nine years, Gregory oversaw the complete upgrade and expansion of the school’s wireless network, the replacement of phone service with voIP, and a cloud computing initiative. … National Wrestling Coaches hall of Fame Inductee Dave kemmy will oversee the Roger Williams University (r.I.) hawks as director of athletics, intramurals, and recreation. he served the past two years as acting athletic director. … University of Indianapolis President Beverley Pitts announced that she will retire at the end of the 2011-2012 academic year, ending seven years of service. … East Georgia College President John Bryant Black will retire at year’s end from the position he held since 2004. … Georgia Highlands College President John randolph “randy” Pierce will also be retiring on December 31. … David e. van Zandt has been president of The New School (N.Y.) since September 15. … Manhattan College (N.Y.) has named andrew ryan vice president for facilities. … Mary Lou Derosa has been named vice provost for academic programs and anthony Ciorra assistant president for Mission and Catholic Identity at Sacred Heart University (Conn.). … Since September 1, Teresa Flannery has served as the first vice president of communication at American University (D.C.). She was formerly executive director of communication and marketing there. —K.D. U Treasure Island: The Next Generation of Cost-Conscious Colleges and Universities Steve JobS once opined, “it’S more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” today, this classic metaphor provides us with a cogent expression of Jobs’ counter-intuitive resistance to the temptation of conformity, and his passionate desire to explore uncharted territory and discover unfound treasures. higher education can learn new lessons from Steve Jobs’ corporate vision and will— particularly when both small colleges and large research universities are strapped for precious resources. With spiraling tuition, rising default rates, increasing health and benefit costs, and unbridled financial aid discounting, institutions now find themselves searching for buried gold in an imperfect storm. With 25 years of corporate cost avoidance experience, chicago-based Stratego partners’ ceo Steve brown, provided this perspective: “What clients like best is 100 percent results-based compensation, providing no risk exposure and significant campus reward. the typical campus treasure hunt targets noncore functional areas like vendor services and procurement, campus financing and facility costs, employment benefits and healthcare costs, energy and utilities, it, and equipment spending, to name a few.” Stefan Krug, dean of the Simmons College (mass.) School of Social Work, says, “all higher education administrators ... must work to create a cost-conscious culture among faculty and staff. faculty and staff are ideally positioned to identify operational inefficiencies and areas for cost savings but, in a misplaced paternalism, are protected by administrators from full knowledge of the institution’s financial challenges until it’s too late.” from the national partnership perspective, emergent higher education consortia are exploring new and creative ways and means to gain cost savings. take the boston consortium, for example. this collaborative of 15 institutions in the Greater boston area serves as an honest broker and facilitator for effectuating collective procurements, health and benefits cost reduction, captive insurance pools and energy cost-sharing. phillip dichiara, managing director, puts it this way, “colleges and universities in the consortium have formed wholly owned entities to provide services at lower cost, taking the form of joint ventures, partnerships, or alliances with other organizations or schools for the purpose of increasing service, lowering cost, and improving overall efficiency.” for higher ed industry insiders, the handwriting is on the wall. colleges and universities need to become more fully engaged in a proactive search for buried treasure. cost avoidance, expense reduction, and bottom line profit improvement organizations like the boston consortium, Simmons college, and Stratego partners are at the forefront of this movement—finding new ways to figure out where X marks the spot. for more on cost-conscious colleges and universities, see the online version of this column at www.universitybusiness.com. —James Martin and James E. Samels, Future Shock columnists, are authors of turnaround: Leading Stressed colleges and universities to excellence (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Martin is a professor of English at Mount Ida College (Mass.) and Samels is president and CEO of The Education Alliance. 16 | November/December 2011 universitybusiness.com http://www.universitybusiness.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - November/December 2011

University Business - November/December 2011
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Financial Aid
Viewpoint
Education Gateways
Models of Efficiency
Business Intelligence Gets Smarter
Internet Technology
Independent Outlook
End Note

University Business - November/December 2011