Universities to students, fans: Don’t recruit athletes via social media

Colleges have asked students to stop making Facebook pages for potential recruits.

Brigham Young University (BYU) last week became the latest school to plead with its students and supporters to avoid Twitter and Facebook recruitment of high school athletes more than two years after the NCAA first warned against the practice.

BYU’s compliance office dispatched a tweet Aug. 16 asking campus sports fans to extricate themselves from the recruitment process.

“Boosters/Fans: Please do not use @”insert prospect twitter handle” to encourage enrollment at BYU. Leave the recruiting to the coaches!”…Read More

Kentucky uses sports success to engage students in social media

UK social media pros have used Facebook to help prospective students “see blue.”

Dean Tsouvalas, editor-in-chief of StudentAdvisor.com, recently interviewed Whitney Hale, senior public relations specialist in public relations and marketing at the University of Kentucky, ranked  No. 7 on the just released Top 100 Social Media Colleges rankings from StudentAdvisor.com for spring 2012.

The University of Kentucky is a public, land-grant university dedicated to improving people’s lives through excellence in education, research, service, and health care. As Kentucky’s flagship institution, the university plays a critical leadership role by promoting diversity, inclusion, economic development, and human well-being. The university is ranked nationally in more than 70 academic programs.

DT: Fresh off your win in the NCAA Final Four, how did the University of Kentucky’s social media play a part before, during, and after March Madness?…Read More

Facebook Places: Marketing tool or educational asset?

UK's Facebook Places ad campaign guides students to an educational web site.
UK's Facebook Places ad campaign guides students to an educational web site.

The University of Kentucky, if all goes according to the campus’s marketing plan, could pop up in 1.3 million Facebook news feeds during the fall semester—and students might just learn something about maintaining online privacy in the process.

The Lexington, Ky., university placed six-foot wooden Facebook Places logos in six campus locations with the heaviest foot traffic to encourage students to “check in” using Facebook’s geo-tagging application, which lets users show friends where they are—the campus library, for instance.

Places, which is similar to geo-tagging services Yelp, Gowalla, Booyah, and Foursquare, launched in August and drew skeptical reviews from many in higher education. Facebook users must opt into Places before the application displays the person’s location.…Read More

CIOs prepare peers for their changing roles

A survey shows the number of CIOs considered "business strategists" is growing.
A survey shows the number of CIOs considered "business strategists" is growing.

An international group of chief information officers has developed a program designed to shift higher-education technology leaders from a purely technical role to one with more executive power, putting them side by side with campus decision makers who call the shots.

The CIO Executive Council, made up of more than 500 CIOs from across the globe, released a detailed model last month that guides current and prospective IT officials in a more business-oriented approach to the job of managing a company’s or campus’s computer infrastructure.

While the council’s model – known as the Future-State CIO – includes technical expertise as part of the base for a successful technology leader, the organization’s vision for a more influential CIO involves more interaction with stakeholders and bosses.…Read More

Universities look toward data to stabilize enrollment numbers

Data mining could be one way Kansas officials address a decline in student retention.
Data mining could be one way Kansas officials address a decline in student retention.

University of Kansas officials are considering working with a data-mining company to pinpoint strategies to keep students enrolled after a recent report showed that 28.7 percent of freshmen from the fall 2007 semester have left the campus.

Five months after University Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little formed a task force that would examine ways to increase student retention and graduation rates, task force members say they might enlist the help of Virginia-based data mining company Starfish Retention Solutions, which works with 14 four-year colleges, seven two-year campuses, and two K-12 school systems.

Starfish’s retention program helps campus decision makers weed out data that identify at-risk students with consistently low grades and spotty attendance records who are not engaged in campus activities.…Read More

University of Kentucky launches instructional innovation lab

The University of Kentucky is launching a new laboratory to develop innovative ways to educate students from preschool through graduate programs, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader. UK will invest $1.5 million over three years on the P20 Innovation Lab, which will serve as a melting pot in which school leaders, teachers, and students from all levels across Kentucky can mix with professors in all of UK’s 17 colleges. The lofty goals: figure out ways to incorporate new technology into teaching; help bridge gaps between what students know when they graduate from high school and what universities and employers expect them to know; and shake up conventional teaching and classroom formats. “It’s really going to give us the capacity to customize teaching to individual students and their needs,” said Robert L. King, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. UK’s dean of the College of Education, Mary John O’Hair, brought the concept with her when she was hired last year from the University of Oklahoma, which created a similar center in 1995. Professors and teachers can act like scientists by researching and testing different styles, approaches, and the use of web sites, computers, and even video games to help them in the classroom, she said…

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