About Our Past Events
This year, Academic Performance Solutions (APS) is hosting a Virtual Summit Series consisting of one session per week for four weeks. Increasingly, executive leaders must balance academic unit-level complexities regarding student success goals, enrollment outcomes, and cost efficiencies. This series is focused on putting the all-important annual health check-ups front and center – and creating a support infrastructure to set your users, as well as executive leadership, up for success as users are asked to embed data use in their day-to-day roles. While most institutions employ a traditional program review process every 5-7 years, this cadence does not allow leaders to understand unit-level resource needs or opportunities to support growing programs frequently enough to effectively promote institutional goals. As a result, many APS partners across the collaborative have implemented annual health check-ups. But even after implementation, institutions agree that it is difficult to get it right the first time around. Iteration and improvement are the keys to success.
Throughout the series, participants will learn:
- Why creating and maintaining data-informed annual health check-ups are critical for institutional success
- Ways in which other partners have implemented and iterated on the process,
- Actionable next steps they can implement on their own campus to continue driving data-informed decision-making
The series will serve as dedicated time for academic, financial, and institutional research leaders to learn, network with peers, and create action plans. Institutions that have already implemented annual health check-ups will learn how to effectively maintain and iterate on their process, as well as create a support infrastructure for their users, including the development of self-service resources and internal expertise. Without proper planning, expectation setting, user support, and evaluation, institutions that have annual health check-ups in place rarely achieve impact and the process remains stagnant. As new individuals take on department chair roles, it is important to constantly reiterate the value of your institution’s process, their role in it, and how you will support them.
Dividing the Summit into four sessions creates more digestible material, encourages reflection across the series, and accommodates difficult schedules in the fall. This series is best suited for individuals in designated APS Leadership roles (Program Sponsor, Owner, Value Lead) at the institution who work closely with their APS Strategic Leader and individuals who are, or will be, key champions in their institution’s annual health check-up process. Users in other roles who are interested in attending APS events should connect with their APS Leadership team about potential training opportunities, like the August-September CPO Intensives and Office Hours sessions.
Session One | Friday, September 17 | 1:00 - 2:30 pm Eastern Time
Watch the recorded session here!
- Lessons Learned from Annual Unit Health Check-Ups 1.0: Bridging People, Process, and Technology to Achieve Transformation (1:00 p.m. - 2:00 pm)
The implementation and improvement of annual unit health check-ups help leaders make more informed decisions in support of academic instructional efficiencies and address their institution’s changing needs. Like an institution’s use of data, this process is a journey; no institution will get it “right” the first time around. In this session, EAB experts will share lessons learned from across the APS Collaborative’s many annual health check-up implementations – and how this process is just one component in EAB’s Transformation equation. To achieve transformation, institutions must effectively bring together people, process, and technology. By providing users with a holistic support infrastructure tailored to your institution and process, users will better understand expectations, feel empowered to use the data, and scale the time of your local experts so that they can focus on strategy. Attendees will learn how to put this infrastructure in place on their campuses, as well as other ways to avoid common missteps when launching and improving annual unit health check-ups. - Inside Navigate: Dynamic Self-Service Guidance and Academic Planning Tools to Foster Student Success at Scale (2:00 p.m. - 2:30 pm)
The pandemic has widened equity gaps and made it difficult to engage students in traditional ways. In this session, we'll share how Navigate, EAB's student success management system provides students with a dynamic mobile and desktop platform to guide them through important decision points and help them plan, schedule, and register for courses to accelerate their time to degree. Join this session for a demonstration of Navigate's student empowerment capabilities, including our comprehensive mobile app and integrated shared workspace, which allow advisors to collaborate with students on their degree plans from anywhere, ensuring virtual operations don’t pose a barrier to essential support. Hear how current partners are using Navigate to improve engagement and foster success for all students.
Session Two | Thursday, September 23 | 1:00 - 2:30 pm Eastern Time
Watch the recorded session here!
- Presentation with Middle Tennessee State University: Hardwiring Data into Academic Resource Decision-Making and Generating Buy-In to Support Institutional Goals (1:00 p.m. - 2:00 pm)
In this session, participants will hear directly from peers about their experiences. Middle Tennessee State University’s Dr. Brian Hinote (Associate Vice Provost for Data Analytics & Student Success) and Rebecca Cole (Associate Provost for Academic Administration and Resources) will share how they have successfully implemented annual unit health check-ups and a support infrastructure for their users, including the development of templatized resources that help users self-serve their questions. Attendees will have an opportunity to ask presenters questions throughout the session. - Shaping the Future of the Academy with EAB’s Strategic Advisory Services (2:00 p.m. - 2:30 pm)
As we enter this next academic year, uncertainty about COVID remains, but higher education leadership teams must turn their attention back to pre-pandemic challenges such as enrollment, cost pressures, and financial sustainability. These challenges haven’t gone away, and in fact, have amplified as many teams lost a year of strategic progress to crisis management. Join this session to learn how EAB’s Strategic Advisory Services helps institutions build the organizational capacity for an agile and resilient response to their most pressing challenges. We will share the strategic areas institutions can partner with EAB Research to accelerate progress, including financial sustainability.
Session Three | Friday, October 1 | 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time
- Peer-to-Peer Networking and Insight Sharing to Bolster Data-Informed Decision-Making at Your Institution
At EAB, we know the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The power of the APS Collaborative is the presence of individuals in a variety of roles across different types of institutions together in one “place” – many of which are experiencing similar challenges and considering the same questions. In this third session, attendees will have an opportunity to attend one of three session topics to connect with each other directly. We recommend you attend the topic that aligns with the area of focus your institution will prioritize after this Summit series.- Launching annual unit health check-ups
- Creating a support infrastructure
- Building trust in the data
Attendees are encouraged to share lessons learned from the two previous sessions, discuss successes and challenges encountered in their roles, and ask questions among peers and EAB experts.
Session Four | Thursday, October 7 | 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time
- Action Planning Workshops: Launching Annual Unit Health Check-Ups or Creating a Support Infrastructure
Information, like data, is only impactful once acted upon. As we wrap up the APS Virtual Summit Series, we hope sessions and conversations with peers have sparked inspiration to take actionable steps when you return to campus – in-person or virtual. In this last session, participants will have an opportunity to attend one of two session topics depending on their institution’s preferences. This will likely be the same topic you attended in the third session.- Launching an annual unit health check-up: Participants will select metrics to include in their institution’s templatized report.
- Creating a support infrastructure: Participants will identify their institution’s designated Trainer, as well as create training and resource development plans for the Trainer to partner on with their APS Strategic Leader.
Sessions will provide hands-on working time, leaving participants with actionable next steps.