Consider Attending #casesmc

2012 brings the third annual CASE Social Media and Community Conference. I’ve never attended this conference but I remember reading some tweets from San Francisco in 2011. In fact, I think I first heard about #casesmc via social media from @rachelreuben. That was back before I met her live and in person.

In case you’ve missed the build of 2012 tweets about #casesmc, I’m super thrilled to announce that, this year, I’m serving as the conference chair.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been working with Jen Lichty at CASE to identify faculty and speakers for this event. I’m pretty excited about the program we’ve put together. It starts with a Social Media 101 pre-conference workshop designed to orient social media newbies just in time for the conference that follows. We are very lucky to have Patrick Powers leading the workshop. If you need a knowledge base about social media, you can rely on Patrick to deliver. He’s sure to be awesome.

The conference gets underway mid-day on April 18 with sessions and keynotes that will be varied, on point, and useful. (I promise to do my best on that commitment!) The full program with session titles and descriptions is on the conference website. Along with me, the mStoner contingent at #casesmc will include Michael Stoner. Here is a bit about the presentations Michael and I will offer:

From Michael

• Succeeding with Social Media (co-presented with Cheryl Slover-Linett, Slover Linett Strategies): In this session, we’ll look at what we learned in our third year of conducting the CASE/mStoner/Slover Linett survey on social media in advancement. What’s changed—and what has stayed the same? How have schools, colleges, and universities responded to external demands for stronger, more engaging social channels? How have staffing, management, and policies shifted internally to keep up with these needs? We’ll explore these and other findings. This year, we focused more sharply on success, probing on particular tools, practices and tactics of social media that help institutions to achieve successful outcomes. We’ll look at what our data reveals about the characteristics of successful campaigns and institutions on social media.


• Social Media and the President: Today, social media is pervasive. Not only are presidents expected to communicate with important constituents through social tools like Facebook and Twitter, but many recognize them as channels that allow them to amplify their messages. This session offers ideas on how presidents can maximize their use of social media—and why social channels are an important component of today’s communications mix.

From Susan

• What do I say? Some content ideas for your social media channels.: It bears repeating, content is king. If you are just getting started with a social media channel, it can be daunting to figure out what to say. Even those of us who have been doing this for a while experience an occasional dry spell or suffer through good, old-fashioned writer’s block. Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned pro, coming up with good stuff to use on your institution’s social media channels is sometimes challenging. This session will present a few (many!) suggestions.


• Connect Your Own Dots: Social Media Integration as a Best Practice for Marketing and Communications (co-presented with Nyleva Corely, UT Austin): Your audiences experience your brand and hear from you through a long list of social media and non-social media channels and you shouldn’t expect them to connect the dots. You need to develop an institutional plan that will allow you to stay on message across multiple communication channels using everything from social media aggregators to editorial calendars to social media campaigns. Not only that, a social media strategy isolated from your broader communication strategy is a risk. We’ll share specifics and demonstrate best practices through case studies from educational institutions.


It’s not too early to register for this Chicago event to be held on April 18 – 20. And, while you’re looking at the 2012 #casesmc website, check out the list of faculty and speakers. I think we’ve pulled together some of the most experienced and expert thought leaders within the social media discipline. I hope you agree. What a Tweet up this will be!

Just in case you’re not convinced, here are, straight from the CASE website, the official benefits of attending. These bullet points work well for the request-to-attend email you might need to send to your boss:

• For the social media novice, you’ll receive a practical orientation to the most widely used social media platforms. Get comfortable getting started.


• For the more experienced social media professional, you’ll engage (face-to-face) with respected educational leaders and be inspired by some of our advanced sessions.


• We’ll discuss the results of the third CASE/mStoner/Slover-Linnett survey on the use of social media in advancement.


• You’ll discover how educational institutions are tracking, assessing, and evaluating the effectiveness of social media channels.

Did you plan to get more social in 2012? Are you deciding now which conferences you’ll attend this year? Then join us at #casesmc in Chicago.

Posted by Susan Evans
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Introducing Fran Zablocki

Back in November, we were ISO a PM for LTR.

Today, we announce that the search is over and that the long-term relationship will begin soon. I am thrilled to write that Fran Zablocki will join mStoner next month as a project manager. Perhaps you already know him as @Zablocki.

Fran comes to mStoner well prepared with a successful set of experiences in higher education. He is, for a few more weeks, the online community manager in Alumni Relations at SUNY Geneseo. Before
his current job, Fran spent some time as the web communications manager at Nazareth College. While at Nazareth, Fran was part of the team that deployed the award-winning Flight of the Flyers campaign.

A social media strategist and an expert about alumni communities, Fran offered a presentation about alumni networks and social media at HighEdWeb 2011. At the close of 2011,  he was the guest host for a Higher Ed Live episode called LinkedIn for EDU.

And speaking of 2011, Fran’s personal blog contains one of my favorite posts from last year. He wrote about the relationships colleges and universities have with young alumni and the typical neglect that typically follows graduation. I earnestly recommend his post, I’d like to introduce myself as…myself…and then again, as myself.

Hiring a project manager requires a careful assessment of a wide range of skills and a diverse set of abilities. We make commitments about budgets and time tables and milestones when we begin work with our clients. They are counting on us to deliver, and we rely on mStoner PMs to oversee the full project lifecycle. At mStoner, the PM is also the primary rep for the campus team. So on any given day, Fran will do everything from building a project schedule to analyzing a budget or explaining how usability tests work. He’ll be busy but we’re not worried. He’s got the chops to do the job, and we can’t wait to have him on board.

We’ll welcome Fran officially on February 13. It’ll be our birthday present to him. He wrote this announcement for his personal website. You can read more about Fran on his LinkedIn profile.

Leave a comment about Fran joining our team here on the blog or just Tweet at him. #FranZablockijoinsmStoner

Posted by Susan Evans
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EDUniverse Launch Party!

And you’re invited.

EDUniverse is a site for you. For education professionals who are looking to make their life easier, spend less time searching the web, and who want to discover relevant industry-related content. This party isn’t just a celebration of a site launching. It’s a celebration of the people who work in education, from student affairs to alumni and development to marketing professionals and everyone in between, who are helping shape the future of this industry.

We hope you will join us. This party and EDUniverse will only be successful if you attend.

When: Friday, February 24, 5:30 – 7:30 PM
Where: SCVNGR Headquarters, 175 Second Street, Cambridge, MA 02142

Please RSVP by February 15 via our Evite invitation.

Since the announcement of EDUniverse our team has been working hard to get the site ready for beta users. Interested in getting early access? Sign up at EDUniverse.org.

Questions? Email Mallory Wood, Marketing Manager. Or leave a comment!

Posted by Mallory Wood
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Intelligence relaunched!

We are excited to announce the relaunch of mStoner’s e-newsletter Intelligence.

What is Intelligence about?
Intelligence will highlight content, events, and other edutrends that are relevant to you. Each issue will contain innovative ideas, interesting links, and other resources relevant to professionals in education, no matter what your job title is or what office you work in.

Why should you sign up?
The goal of Intelligence is to provide the education community with ideas that can help you be more effective. We don’t want to clutter your inbox with junk, so each issue will be carefully written to be useful and informative.

Did you miss out on the September issue? Don’t fret, you can read it here and sign up so you won’t miss out next month.

We invite your feedback about what we’ve covered or comments about what we should address in upcoming issues. Just email us. Believe it or not, we will actually read your emails and respond if you write to us.

Posted by Mallory Wood
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Mallory Wood Joins mStoner’s Team

I’m very fortunate to be working with a great team at mStoner: I have smart, creative, engaging and talented colleagues.

These adjectives also describe our newest team member, Mallory Wood, who will join us in August as marketing manager. She’ll be based in our Woodstock, VT, office, and will be responsible for our marketing and business development activities.

Mallory comes to mStoner from Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, VT, where she spent two years as an admission counselor before moving to the Office of Marketing and Communications as an assistant director of marketing and the college’s social media strategist. In this role, Mallory developed and executed a social media strategy for St. Mike’s; provided training for social media users on campus; created and managed content for various social networks; and produced web video. She also managed the social media efforts for the Office of Admission, working student online ambassadors to engage future students on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and other social channels.

But that’s not where I met Mallory. I got to know her first as @MalloryWood and began following her blog, where she shares insights into marketing, social media, and life.

She’s also known on the conference circuit, having presented at the HighEd Web National Conference, Penn State Web Conference, NEACAC Annual Conference, .eduGuru Online Summit, SUNYCUAD, and more. Mallory has also been a guest and a guest-host on Higher Ed Live, the weekly web show created by Seth Odell focused on the emerging role of social media and digital media marketing.

Because I was impressed by what I read—and learned subsequently—about Mallory, I was thrilled when she expressed interest in working with us and when she accepted our offer. My colleagues who have met Mallory are as excited as I am about working with her.

Before I close, I want to give a shout-out to Katie Jennings, who served as mStoner’s director of business development until a week ago. For the past several years, Katie has ridden herd over her creative and unruly colleagues to develop powerful and compelling proposals and manage our marketing. Katie assumed project management responsibilities for Beth Lee, who at this moment is awaiting the birth of her second son. Beth will return to mStoner part-time after her maternity leave.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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CASE Circle of Excellence Awards 2011: Best in Social Media

And … it’s a wrap. The judges’ report for the 2011 CASE Circle of Excellence Awards for Best in Social Media is finished. This year’s entries were generally uninspired, but we had two excellent entries that earned Golds: one of them was from William & Mary, which entered its blogs (hence the image above); the second from the University of Nottingham, which achieved amazing results from a smart campaign focused on achieving exposure for faculty experts blogging about last year’s election in the UK.

Judging for the 2011 CASE Circle of Excellence Awards, Category 12: Best in Social Media, was held at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, for two days in April, in conjunction with the judging for Category 11: Websites.

This year, the panel of judges included representatives of American and Canadian colleges, schools, and universities, both public and private. Half of the judges had never participated in one of these panels before. Three work for institutions that won national CASE Circle of Excellence Awards for their websites—and headed the teams that built the award-winning sites. Several are well known in the .edu blogosphere. One judge has earned a gold for social media. The panel included people with experience in design, web strategy, web content development, admissions, student recruitment, social media, web technology, and marketing.

According to CASE’s website:

Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards may be given in each subcategory to recognize best practices using social media within new and established programming. One overall category Grand Gold award may also be awarded for superior work. Eligible programs may come from any area of institutional advancement. Programs may be on-going or new in 2010 but must have been in place long enough to have produced well documented results. You may also enter best uses of social media in the following categories: Alumni Relations Programs: Creative Use of Technology and New Media and Fundraising Programs: Technology Applications and Creative Use of New Media.

There are four subcategories in “Best in Social Media.” Here they are, with the number of entries in each subcategory and the number of awards given:

• 12a. Best Uses of Social Media in Alumni Programming: 13 entries, no awards


• 12b. Best Uses of Social Media in Fundraising: 1 entry, no awards


• 12c. Best Uses of Social Media in Student Recruitment and Marketing: 7 entries, 1 award


• 12d. Other Uses of Social Media: 32 entries, 3 awards

Award Winning Social Media in 2011
In the second year for CASE’s “Best in Social Media” Category, it seemed that the entries were either very good or pretty bad, with not much in between. This is one indication of how institutions are struggling to make sense of social media and to use it effectively. In general, we observed that when institutions clearly defined the problems they wanted social media to solve, they were able to develop innovative solutions.

As judges, we were looking for the following attributes from award winners:

• Strategy: What’s the overall goal? How will social media be used to achieve it? What channels are appropriate? How are they used?


• Integration of tools/channels
  
• Clear objectives across channels and a clear strategy in place to measure results

One positive development this year was that there were more entries from institutions that had clearly thought about integrating their social media across channels into a type of “campaign,” taking advantage of different social media platforms. Consider, for example, the University of Nottingham’s award-winning effort to cover the 2010 election in the UK, which combined traditional media relations with a 24/7 blogging/Twitter effort.

This integration of communications channels is a positive movement away from what we observed last year, when many institutions indicated that having a Facebook page or a Twitter feed in and of itself was a social media strategy worthy of an award. And it’s also a clear indication of growing sophistication about social media as a key channel that must be managed appropriately. Institutions are learning that Twitter is different from Facebook and the rules of engagement are different. Pumping tweets onto a Facebook wall is a fan-losing proposition. So is a one-way communications model that emulates broadcast.

And, as one judge pointed out, “While we can appreciate that at your institution the fact that you have a pretty well-run Facebook community is impressive and it took a lot to get there internally, it’s not innovative.” We want to know what institutions are doing with Facebook and other social media channels, and how they are leveraging their social media community to accomplish their communications goals.

We were hoping to see more collaboration across communications, web, alumni, and admissions teams than we did, with more integration. And we’re still not seeing clear goals behind institutions’ adoption of various social media channels, much less metrics that would let them know if their social media efforts had been successful. And we’re not seeing great examples of engagement, especially on Twitter (which happens to be the preferred social network of many of the judges).

Awards
category 12c: best uses of social media in student recruitment & marketing
gold: The College of William and Mary: William and Mary Blogs: Bloggers; Admissions Blogs; Law School Admissions Blog

category 12d: other uses of social media
gold: University of Nottingham: Election 2010: Social Media Impact for Politics at the University of Nottingham: Election Blog; Politics in 60 Seconds YouTube Channel; Ballots & Bullets Politics Blog

bronze: Columbia College Chicago: Manifest Urban Arts Festival Schedule Builder; St. Edwards’ University: Give it a Whrrl: St. Edward’s Graduation gets Socially Connected; Whrrl Blog: St’ Andrews University Makes History

There’s more detail in the complete Judges’ Report, which contains further comments about process and comments about each of the award winners.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Social Media & Advancement Survey 2011: Changes, but not Big Ones

While advancement offices at many institutions are engaged in using some social media platforms (especially Facebook, which 96 percent of institutions utilize), institutions are still struggling with how to manage social media. And there weren’t significant shifts in usage, management, or other trends since our first survey was conducted in April and May, 2010.

These are key findings from the 2011 survey of social media in advancement, which we conducted in February and March in partnership with Slover Linett Strategies and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The first survey was released in July 2010 (more information here).

I’ll report briefly on some of the findings in this post. You can review the topline findings and a presentation about them that Cheryl Slover-Linett and I did at CASE’s Social Media and Community Conference last week. We’re working on a white paper further analyzing the data, which we’ll release at the CASE Summit in July.

What institutions do

Institutions utilize an array of the most popular social media platforms: 75 percent use Twitter, 66 percent use LinkedIn or YouTube, 40 percent have blogs, use Flickr, or offer a social community developed by an outside vendor. Only 4 percent don’t use social media at all.

Top goals for social media remain alumni engagement (at 84 percent of institutions responding) and strengthening brand image (75 percent); also engaging prospective students (68% of respondents), admitted students (63%), increasing awareness and rankings (61%). But only 38% of development offices use it for fundraising.

Staffing for social media varies across institutions. At the institutional level, 25% of institutions have at least one person working full-time on social media. It’s far more common for staff to have social media responsibilities incorporated into their jobs, along with other other responsibilities: at the department level, roughly .5 FTE focuses on social media.

There were some changes since 2010:

• The use of Twitter has increased.


• While institutions struggle with social media, they believe that it has value and that it’s here to stay.


• More institutions have the IT and content management resources they need to augment their social media activities.


• More institutions have policies on legal and privacy issues and negative postings.

Success with social media

Again this year, we asked institutions to report how successful they are with social media and 62% reported that they are moderately successful with their social media initiatives, measuring success by the number of touches (friends, fans, comments, likes, etc.) they receive. Facebook is viewed as the most successful social media platform (by a large majority, 87% of institutions). They’re still challenged by staffing, lack of full support and buy-in from senior staff, lack of readily available expertise, and funding.

Institutions that are successful report a number of characteristics: they have specific goals for their social media; they are less spontaneous and plan more; they have institutional buy-in and support for their social media activities; they control social media content and staff with their own department; they use multiple social media platforms and target multiple audiences; and they are more likely to have policies. And they are more likely to evaluate their success in multiple ways.

Looking ahead to 2011, we’ll see institutions creating social media plans (51%), expanding their activities to new audiences (46%), adding new social media tools to current programs (44%), and developing formal policies (37%).

Here’s a pdf of the presentation slides from the CASE Social Media and Community conference and a topline report of the raw data. We’ll release the White Paper in July.

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On the Move

The mStoner Chicago office is moving! We are pleased to announce that as of August 9, 2010 our address will be:

mStoner, Inc.
4311 N. Ravenswood Ave.
Suite 304
Chicago, IL 60613

We love our neighborhood, though, so we’re not going very far. Seriously:

And our new office will really be a new office. The building is freshly rehabbed (ahem, it’s not done quite yet but we’re assured the necessities will be done by the time we move). For those of you who enjoy home improvement, we thought we’d share some photos.

The building is three stories and we’ll be occupying about half of the top floor. If you look closely, the sign out front reads “Bobby Moore’s Performing Elephants”. We love the sign and the landlord has agreed to move it inside to the lobby. We’ve been assured that elephants weren’t really kept in the building.

Look at all those windows! As you can see, we really were working with a blank canvas. With the help of a wonderful space planner, we’ve come up with a plan that suits our needs and keeps true to the mStoner atmosphere.

The natural woods are another great feature. When we first saw the space the wood was covered in peeling paint but now it’s back to it’s natural color and quite beautiful. Our landlord (we may be moving but we’re not changing landlords, we’ve been with Hayes Properties for about 10 years now) has done a wonderful job in keeping the vintage wood structure intact.

Overall, the new office allows for a better use of space and, most importantly, moves us far enough from the El train that it will no longer be drowning out our conference calls. We’re all pretty excited about the move:

• Voltaire is excited about the move because it puts us within walking distance of Spacca Napoli, one of the best pizza places in Chicago
  
• Jeremiah is excited about the move because he (and lots of other people) will be getting his own office
  
• Kevin & Laurel are excited because their section of the office is filled with natural light
  
• Sarah is excited because her commute will be only 7 minutes
  
• The entire group is excited because the nearby lunch options are have improved tremendously (though we’ve promised to make the .5 mile walk back to one of our favorites, Cafe 28)

We’ll keep you posted!

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CASE Awards of Excellence 2010: Winners, Comments, Judges’ Report for Category 11, Websites

The best professional development event I attend every year is the judging for the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards for websites, which I’ve led since the 1990s. At this year’s judging, held in early April at George School, we judged Category 11: Websites and Category 12: Best Use of Social Media. [There are comments and a downloadable Judge’s Report from the social media category here.]

What this means is locking oneself in a room for two days with more than a dozen smart, informed, opinionated people; looking at more than two hundred websites and social media sites; and arguing about which sites are good enough to get a award. It’s incredibly stimulating—and sometimes frustrating—to have strongly held opinions strongly challenged. No one knows where we’ll end up when we compile the final list of award winners.

For the record, as you scan the lists below, there are several sites that would never appear on my own list. And it’s safe to say that each of the other judges this year, as in years past, would say the same thing. But we all stand by the final list of award winners.

This year, the judges represented American and Canadian schools, colleges, and universities, both public and private. The panel included people with experience in design, web strategy, web content development, admissions, fundraising, student recruitment, social media, web technology, and marketing. Several of the judges work for institutions that have won national CASE Awards of Excellence for their websites. Two representatives from CASE attended the judging.

Results: Category 11

There were 54 complete institutional sites entered in Category 11A [Complete Institutional Websites] and 106 sites entered in Category 11B [Individual Sub-Websites]. Here are the winners:

Category 11a: Complete Institutional Websites
Gold: Fashion Institute of Technology
Silver: Northfield Mount Hermon School
Bronze:: Duke University; University of Puget Sound

Category 11b: Individual Sub-websites
Gold:: King’s College London, Online Prospectus; University of Michigan, University Housing
Silver: University of Toronto, U of T Magazine
Bronze:: Boston University, 2009 Annual Report; Columbia College Chicago, This is Columbia’s Moment Media Production Center; Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 3-D Web site; University of Iowa, Annual Report
Honorable Mention: University of Missouri-Columbia, Illumination

Observations and Trends

Each year, we begin this judging with a discussion of what makes an award-winning institutional website. Here were some of the important elements we identified this year:

• a sound strategy;


• sound information architecture, navigability, usability and search;


• valid, accurate, timely, and relevant content, effectively deployed across the site, including both text and images;


• the quality of resources-content assets, staff, and budgets-and how they were used on the site;


• a clear identity that is appropriate to the organization;


• an appropriate level of innovation—in other words, we want designers to push the envelope but we still expect information to be findable, content to be readable (or viewable), and the site to be well-designed. Cutting edge for the sake of being cutting edge didn’t persuade the judges to award anything.


• standardization of interface across the site;


• accessibility of the code; appropriate use of technology and adherence to standards (We awarded extra points for sites that had considered how they would display on a mobile device.);


• metrics; evaluation plans; results;


• and, new this year, a connection to the ecosystem of the web, which is particularly significant as the social web assumes a greater importance.

We asked ourselves repeatedly what each site does that’s unusual or innovative. Though we are tasked with judging the sites that are entered in this category and, to some extent, we must compare them with each other, we can’t ignore other sites we’ve seen. For example, we considered it legitimate to reject a site that was a collection of student blogs designed to recruit students. While it was well-designed, there was nothing about it that distinguished it from many similar sites nor did it do anything different than Ball State University’s student blog site has been doing for five years.

We were underwhelmed at what we saw this year. Sites entered for an award were missing basic elements like a sense of where an institution was located. And there were a lot of bland sites.

Some trends we noticed this year:

• People are trying to break out of the mold of what a traditional site looks like and are trying some radically different things that don’t seem to work or are very hard to understand from a user’s point of view. If they’ve tested these innovations and found that they are working, they haven’t shared any usability testing results or data that backs up the success of their risk taking.


• Perhaps because of a desire to be “different,” many sites had identity issues and did not provide us with a strong sense of what the institution was, what it stood for, or how it was truly differentiated from its competitors—and, therefore, why anyone would want to go there. The winners all did this well.


• It’s still hard to find calls to action on many websites. One judge recounted the difficulty of finding information about how to apply, much less an “apply now” button on a website he viewed.


• We saw many attempts to connect a website to the larger web through Facebook and Twitter badges and other devices, but often saw “share this” buttons in unexpected places where they appear to have been added as a afterthought, not baked into the design of the site.


• While .edu websites are much better organized and easier to navigate than they used to be, we still saw sites with “layers and layers of navigation all over the place,” which made them very confusing to navigate. This is particularly challenging on sites that don’t have a clear design hierarchy for pages or where choices are clearly dictated by internal politics rather than a sense of what a visitor to the site might want to do.


• On many sites, the space is just not well used. For example, pages about curriculum choices carried a big header and large images. What value does that have to a visitor to these pages? And related to this, while a big, splashy something may be suitable for a first-time visitor, what happens when repeated visitors tire of it and just want to reach the information they’re seeking?


• While we did see good content on some sites, some of it was buried on the site and hard to find. And some was good, but overused—like a site that featured profiles of six people that showed up everywhere. Another point that is often overlooked is that images, too, need to be refreshed and updated, especially when they depict events that happened some time ago.


• Some of the special-purpose sites, especially annual reports and some of the magazines, were totally devoid of interactivity and even links. I can’t stress too much how important the written submission for this category is—and how crucial it is to provide data about how effective the site is.

A last word about how important the written submissions for this category are. Comments in the submissions that outlined how much testing had been done or how successful the sites were convinced us to give awards to several sites that we might otherwise have passed over.

Likewise, some sites might have fared better if they had demonstrated that the unorthodox choices made by their designers were supported by usability testing rather than whim. One of the judges remarked: “It’s not just about the numbers, even if you have them. It’s about providing context for your content and trying to serve your customers. Posting content is no longer enough—you have to think about providing a service and include a task-based perspective; that’s where analytics shine.”

In terms of context, we paid a lot of attention to the organizational work and cross-campus cooperation that went into building the backbone of some of these sites.

Finally, knowing that sites were created in-house or with in-house solutions was also a plus.

Here’s a copy of the complete judge’s report for this category, with more details about the judging and comments about each of the award winners.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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CASE Honors Carol Cheney with Ashmore Award

I learned this week that CASE selected Carol Cheney, president of Cheney & Co., as the 2010 recipient of the Frank L. Ashmore Award for Service to CASE and the Advancement Profession. I’m delighted to hear that Carol will receive this award and want to extend my congratulations.

Carol and I have known each other for about 15 years—we first met when we were co-teaching at a CASE Summer Institute—and in that time, I’ve come to respect her as a colleague and value her as a friend. Moreover, I’ve learned a lot about how much time she’s invested in being a teacher, conference presenter, mentor, and volunteer (and not just for CASE). She’s given a lot to the advancement profession and it’s great to see her contributions honored.

I wrote a letter supporting Carol’s nomination for this award, as did many others, apparently. Here’s some of what I said that I think speaks to why this award is particularly well deserved:

Carol has done so much as a CASE volunteer, I hardly know where to begin.

Rather than enumerating Carol’s many activities, I’d prefer to note that in my mind she’s distinguished herself because so many of her volunteer activities for CASE have focused on a significant segment of CASE’s membership—advancement professionals at independent schools. She’s helped many, many individuals to develop their professional capabilities and knowledge of the advancement profession through dozens of conference presentations, communications and publications reviews, participation as a Summer Institute Faculty member, and many, many long-term personal relationships. I continue to be amazed at how many people credit Carol with helping them in significant ways at critical junctures in their professional development.

Carol will receive her award at this summer’s Summit for Advancement Leaders in New York.

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