NAGAP Wrap up

Staff members from The Graduate School attended the NAGAP conference in San Francisco last week, to learn more about our colleagues around the country, hear from senior administrators about the state of higher education and to view the latest product offerings that will make all of our lives easier and more efficient.

We began our visit with the Pre-Conference Institute which focused on recruitment and retaining underrepresented populations. This is a topic with which we at UND are particularly aware of and have a desire to build upon. The day-long discussions provided us with great philosophical considerations and practical ideas.

The rest of the conference saw each of us attend a variety of sessions from marketing to recruitment to organizational structure. Social media was a definite theme – if you’re not yet doing, you should be, but it do it carefully. I attended a really interested session about using Facebook to recruit prospective students, and I will share more of that discussion in a later post.

Two of us attended a meeting to establish and set the framework for a Midwestern chapter of NAGAP and by the look of the turnout in our small conference room, many other schools want the same thing. A way to network with colleagues in the region, discuss issues and see what is new. We hope, and believe, it will be a reality in the coming months since the hope is to meet over the summer. Finding a location slowed us down, but perhaps Grand Forks could be a venue – at least in the warmth of the summer!

The Graduate Deans’ Panel and the presentation from Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education did not fill us all with great optimism for the financial future of higher education. Honestly, the Deans’ Panel (each of whom were from California Schools) was downright grim, and our table of North Dakota representatives felt very fortunate to be  up here on the prairie. Still, the powers that be are working hard to find solutions to the challenges they are facing with staff, faculty and budget cut backs, furloughs, and recruitment of new students.

We had a very educational trip: We made new contacts, friends and promises to ourselves to bring back some of these great ideas and implement them in our own school. New initiatives will be rolled out by NAGAP 2011!