Vesper for Institutions
We offer a range of services designed to help higher ed and higher-ed adjacent institutions earn and maintain accreditation, build productive teams, and develop sustainable and student-centered policies and programs that fit their educational missions, institutional cultures, and regional contexts.
Policy Consultation and Development
A good policy is one that is aspirational yet applicable, specific enough to guide action yet broad enough to allow appropriate discretion. We have over 30 years experience developing such policies for academic affairs and student affairs, in the US and abroad. We have developed academic honesty policies and free speech codes as well as policies concerning student gatherings in residence halls and conduct codes. We have written and revamped faculty and student handbooks and created academic rules and regulations for new academic programs. We have adapted policies based on US law for overseas contexts and we have adapted policies based on US expectations to fit other cultural contexts. Whatever your need, we can help you devise a policy for it.
Strategic planning
Too often, strategic plans are 10,000 foot views, crafted at levels and in ways that do not map onto the everyday business of the institution. Such strategic plans tend to be shared with governing boards and then stashed away in drawers, disconnected from policy and practice. For a strategic plan to impact the work of the place, it needs to move from 10,000 feet to ground level, to connect aspirations and actions, and to draw connections across the campus. With experience directing institutional accreditation efforts, and having had the good fortune of working at multiple levels and in varied capacities in academic affairs and student affairs, as well as teaching and collaborating with a wide range of campus offices, we are well positioned to help you craft strategic plans that make a difference to your colleagues and students.
Accreditation
Colleges and universities based outside of the US often seek US accreditation because of its cachet, and institutions in the US need it in order to disburse federal financial aid (among other things). The rules and processes for receiving and maintaining accreditation are often difficult to understand, however, as are department of education regulations governing the development of new academic programs and the issuance of credits across state lines. As a result, it is easy for an institution to accidentally fall out of compliance or be forced to delay the start of a new location or program. We have won approval for many campuses, campus locations, and programs; we know how to work within these systems and we are ready to do it for you.
Student Life
Academic Advising and Support
On average, college students spend 14 hours per week in class. What they do with the other 154 hours of the week matters a great deal to the quality of their experience at the college and to their education- what happens outside of the classroom impacts what happens inside it, and what happens inside the classroom can impact what happens outside it. Building on over thirty years of experience at the intersection of student affairs and academic affairs, we can help you develop a vibrant co-curricular program that is engaging, mission-consistent, and that takes your students seriously and empowers them to take themselves seriously.
Students arrive on campus with a wide array of backgrounds, strengths, challenges, perspectives, and ideas about how to be a successful college student. All of them will participate in the same curriculum and be held to the same academic standards. Some need help meeting those standards. Some meet them so easily that they become bored. Some are capable of meeting them but struggle to understand the systems in which they are expected to do to work. Building systems that empower students to survive and thrive in college is at the heart of what we do; we've done it for students across a range of campus structures and cultures, and we can do it for you, too.
Write the Way™ Facilitated Retreats and Workshops
We craft writing-intensive, project-based workshops to guide you through team development, curriculum design, and alignment of policy, practice, and mission. Based on writing-to-learn pedagogy and design thinking principles, Write the Way™ workshops are designed to elicit multiple perspectives on shared work. They invite participants to examine familiar documents, policies, and practices of decision-making and communication from new and sometimes deliberately displaced perspectives and, through an iterative process of reflection, response, action, and reinterpretation, revisit them so that they align more fully with institutional vision, mission, and goals.