Uncategorized My Father and His 6 Siblings 07/01/2024 Phillip James (Jim) Doyle - September 22, 1940 - February 24, 2018 (age 77) Floyd Doyle - October 16, 1941 - November 23, 2017 (age 76) Lloyd Doyle - October…
Uncategorized My Doyle Grandparents 06/30/2024 My Pop-Pop's 1920 birth certificate My Pop-Pop's updated 1960 birth certificate Pop-Pop's parents - Charlie & Bertie May. They had 13 children. He was a farmer. Pop-pop Mom-Mom's 1922 birth…
Uncategorized Results of Jeff’s “Personality Tests” 06/23/202406/25/2024 In Summer 2024, I taught a short-course on using personality tests to improve our ability to lead. In spite of the boxes some personality types get put into by others,…
Uncategorized 45 things I know (by Sasha Cohen) 06/20/202406/20/2024 Sasha is much younger than me but the challenges he has faced in life has resulted in his ability to state some major truths that I deeply resonate with and…
The Most Interesting College of the Day! College Towns, Enrollments, & Football Stadiums 06/19/202406/25/2024 Found an analysis by someone on Reddit named e8odie and although their data was originally from 2012, I updated it to 2023. How many of these did you know? Football…
Uncategorized Would You Rather – Icebreaker 06/15/2024 I have found these either/or questions fun to ask and discuss when strengthening teams. I pulled these from various locations the web. Would you rather have the ability to see…
Uncategorized 30 of the Best Sources of Knowledge on the Future of Higher Education 06/11/2024 Most Well Known & Respected Higher Ed Resources - includes best estimate of # of employees, year founded (if known), other notes Chronicle of Higher Education, 179 staff (72 writers/editors),…
Uncategorized How Do “Personality” Tests Help Us Succeed? (Summer 2024) 06/05/202406/23/2024 Course Description Over the past 30 years of teaching courses on leadership and organizational behavior, students have always ranked the "leader self-awareness" section of my class as their favorite. I…
Uncategorized The Future of Higher Education Summer “Class” 05/31/202405/31/2024 Summer 2024 - Feel free to send your email if you would like to be invited to our Google Meet or join us in person on the campus of Southwestern…
Uncategorized HEd History – Colleges that Moved Their Entire Campus 05/27/202406/06/2024 From 2001-2003 I worked at Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA. As someone who enjoys learning the history of each college where I work, I discovered Shenandoah had spent its first…
Uncategorized My Grandmother’s Life as a Child 05/27/202405/27/2024 This is a letter my grandmother wrote to my cousin, Anne, in 1977. The letter is about my grandmother's life when she was 9, the same age Anne was in…
Deep Thoughts Articles Top 50 Higher Education Consulting Companies 05/13/202406/16/2024 Growing up on 2 college campuses, earning a doctorate in the study of universities, publishing and professionally presenting on universities over 100 times, and working for the past 30 years…
Uncategorized The End of the American Empire Will Be ~2026 03/23/202403/23/2024 Based on The Fate of Empires, by Sir John Grubb, 1976 Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, (16 April 1897 – 17 March 1986) was a British soldier, scholar, and author,…
Student Success “Find Your Way” College Student Coaching 03/19/202403/19/2024 The Path to Discovering Your Strengths and Clarifying Your Career The Challenge Students today spend years preparing to get into the right college. Once they do, a wave of relief…
Higher Ed History… HEd History – Black Colleges and College Life in early 20th Century 03/13/202403/13/2024 At that time, "it was standard practice to exclude the black colleges from the national media, whether major newspapers or other publications about college life. For example, the anthologies of…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Universities Borrowed Real Babies to Learn Childrearing 03/12/202403/12/2024 "If you studied home economics in the early twentieth century, you may have played with, burped, and changed a real, live baby—one borrowed from social services and put to work as a…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Maintaining the Aristocracy, Starting Student Affairs & Alumni Affairs 03/01/2024 "During the 1920s two alumni of New England colleges attempted to persuade college presidents to limit the size of entering freshmen classes. They explained the plan: "It may be said…
Higher Ed History HEd History – World War I and Colleges 03/01/202403/02/2024 Camp Carnegie at Carnegie Tech (today, Carnegie Mellon University) "Student participation in the military was especially strong on the East Coast. At Harvard and Yale, for example, enrollments dropped by…
Higher Ed History Changes in Majors at Yale over 120 Years 02/25/2024 I found a document, published in 1983 by George Pierson, of almost every conceivable piece of data Yale might have tracked from 1701 until 1976. His reasons for selecting Yale,…
Uncategorized Perez’s 5 Technological Revolutions 02/24/2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4AQ7x9jXN4 In 2002, Carlota Perez wrote a book helping us understand major technological revolutions of the past 230 years. As I listen to people talking about how AI (and nuclear…
Uncategorized Amara’s Law 02/24/2024 I created this post because it resonates with my experience with technological innovation over time. In my "short" life time (~50 years), I remember the following: The microwave will result…
Higher Ed History HEd History – What We Didn’t Know about the Creation of Land-Grant Colleges 02/18/2024 Fascinating piece by Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee about where the land for the creation of land-grant colleges came from. It was double this length - I cut it down the…
Uncategorized College Mascots Named “Purple…”, “Crimson…”, and Maroons 02/07/202402/07/2024 University of Mount Union Purple Raiders University of Evansville Purple Aces Niagara University Purple Eagles Williams College Purple Cows University of Bridgeport Purple Knights The University of Alabama Crimson Tide…
Student Success Improve Retention by Linking Scholarships to High Impact Practices 01/11/202401/11/2024 It was my first day at work at a university over 1,500 miles from my home. We were at a retreat in the Texas Hill Country and I was much…
Higher Ed Mascots College Mascots that are Mythical Creatures 01/09/202401/09/2024 Webster Gorlocks - the paws of a cheetah, the horns of a buffalo, and the face of a Saint Bernard dog Pacific Boxers – a mythical Chinese creature that is…
Higher Ed History HEd History – The Early Days of the University of Virginia 01/07/202401/07/2024 "The University of Virginia, "Mister Jefferson's University," stood out as a model and marvel of planning, in both its educational mission and its architecture. Its greatness is in large measure…
Higher Ed Mascots College Mascots that are Pure Evil 01/06/202401/07/2024 What do these 6 universities have in common? Arizona State University Sun Devils Mississippi Valley State University Delta Devils and Devilettes McDaniel College Green Terror Northwestern State University Demons and…
Higher Ed History HEd History – First Ever Ranking of Universities? 01/06/2024 "Between 1880 and 1890 only a handful of institutions in the United States had legitimate claim to being a "real university." Apart from the 5 below, the list of serious…
The Most Interesting College of the Day! Colleges We Lost in 2023… 01/04/2024 I have stolen the concept from Celebrities We Lost in (Year), the pictures I found online, and the actual research from InsideHigherEd. I had fun packaging the "obituaries" this way…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Fun Facts About 12 of U. of Virginia’s Current Buildings 01/03/2024 1824, November While construction is underway on the Rotunda, Jefferson and Madison hold an event there for the Marquis de Lafayette. Varsity Hall today 1857-1858 UVA’s first infirmary (now named…
Student Success One Method for Discovering Why Students Really Leave Your University 01/01/202403/01/2024 When new students show up to college, the red carpet is rolled out – orientation can become a mini-pep rally and move-in has volunteers galore greeting families with smiling and…
Higher Ed History HEd History – “College and the Poor Boy” The Atlantic, 1933 12/30/202301/14/2024 By Russell T. Sharpe. The following exerpts I found most interesting. The bolding is text I am particularly highlighting. "The American college is not operated for profit. It has always…
Higher Ed History HEd History – “Identify & Ratify” the Elite through “In Loco Parentis” 12/30/202312/30/2023 In the colonial colleges, "young men attending college were going to be wealthy and powerful whether they went to college or not. The colonial college was an insurance policy guaranteeing…
Higher Ed Mascots College Mascots without an “S” at the End- FBS 12/29/202302/07/2024 There are 133 universities that are members of the Football Bowl Subdivision. However only 13 of these colleges (10%), share one thing in common - their mascot does not end…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Using a Credit Hour as a Gauge to Efficiency 12/28/2023 1910 Report "One is struck in any such study of collegiate conditions with the absence of any gauge of efficiency which even remotely resembles, for instance, profits in an industrial…
Higher Ed History HEd History – ACC Targets UVA for Expansion But UVA Leaders Resist 12/28/202312/28/2023 "Seventy years ago, before conference realignment was all the rage, UVA was the Atlantic Coast Conference’s first expansion target. On Oct. 9, 1953, the Board of Visitors met to consider…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Colonial Colleges’ Efforts to “Educate” Native Americans 12/28/202301/06/2024 "The education of Native Americans, including their conversion to Christianity, had great appeal to donors in England. The problem was that such experiments were usually disastrous, and most enterprising college…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Academic & Industrial Efficiency 12/28/202312/28/2023 A REPORT TO THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING BY MORRIS LLEWELLYN COOKE, M.E., 1910 As someone who reads about and tries to improve the lack of efficiency…
Student Success >50 Variables to Study for Student Success Impact 12/27/202312/27/2023 When I arrived at Southern Methodist University as the Director of Student Success & Retention, I was perfectly placed to join a team of student success experts maximizing student data…
Deep Thoughts Articles Key Performance Indicators in Student Affairs 12/25/202312/28/2023 Having grown up with a scientist and professor for a father and a researcher and librarian for a mother, I became quite comfortable incorporating data and assessment into everything I…
Student Success Letter to Families Of College Students 12/21/202312/28/2023 ...to Help Their Student Stand Out When Compared to Other Graduates One Day
Higher Ed History HEd History – Graduating College Not nearly as Important in Colonial Days 12/17/202312/28/2023 U. of Texas graduates in 1894 - UT now has ~10,000/graduates/year "One peculiar characteristic of the colonial colleges is that there was little emphasis on completing degrees. Many students matriculated…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Yale’s Namesake Considered Overrated Philanthropist 12/16/202312/28/2023 Yale in 1786, some of Elihu's gift went to pay for the 2nd building at the school. "Donors during the Colonial College era were often focused on one of two…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Medical Schools Were Not What We Thought 12/16/202312/28/2023 Did you know that diploma mills existed over 100 years ago? They were often medical colleges - of which many were for-profit! "A favorite form of diploma mills was the…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Why There Are So Many Memorial Stadiums 12/14/202303/02/2024 Hundreds of universities were given money after WWI and WWII to build new football stadiums to honor fallen alumni from these wars. I did a quick Google search of university…
Higher Ed History HEd History – A Jewish Student in the 1950s 12/14/202312/28/2023 1987 New Yorker piece by Philip Roth, who was a famous author at that time, about college life in the 1950s. I was particularly interested in his description of how…
Higher Ed History HEd History – SMU 1958 Yearbook 12/14/202312/28/2023 My daughter and I were at a half price book store in November 2022 and I found several old college yearbooks that I purchased for $5 each. Now you get…
Higher Ed History HEd History – Rationale for Eating Clubs 12/14/202301/06/2024 If you have heard about the Eating Clubs at Princeton and other elite colleges, their reputation is often similar to the power of fraternities and sororities to group students off-campus…