Bob Dylan was not singing about higher education when he sang “the times they are a changin’,” but indeed many universities nationwide are experiencing an era of challenge and change. Our relatively small school at the flagship university in Colorado has experienced significant change over the past year-plus — from deanship transitions to sweeping budget and organizational change. These changes have led us to pivot and evaluate our communications strategies in real time while we attempt to remain true to our mission and center community-building among faculty, staff, students, and supporters. We don’t have all the answers, but we know we are not the only ones interested in exploring inclusive and transparent communications strategies during times of change and processing our emotions as staff leaders. In this interactive session, we will work through lessons learned around change management in our school as we explore case studies together about budget constraints, political scrutiny, leadership transitions, humanizing change management, and more.

Does the number of scholarships you manage intimidate you? Are your scholarship processes stuck in the vicious cycle of swapping spreadsheets across campus? Then an online scholarship management system may be just what you are looking for. Emporia State University improved our scholarship utilization by 10% by using an online scholarship management system. In this session, we will discuss how an online scholarship management system can improve the efficiency of your scholarship awarding process. We will explore how these systems can merge the entire awarding process into one place. From student scholarship applications to thank you letters to the donors these systems will immensely improve your ability to manage your awarding process.