The Mortarboard

Presidents spend a great deal of time fund-raising, and luckily, soliciting support from entrepreneurs is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the fund-raising role. Entrepreneurs are fun people to be around and work with – they tend to be independent thinkers, with a natural curiosity and a desire to help. After 15 years of working with entrepreneurs, Dr Daniel Barwick has found that specific approaches, for specific types of support, are more effective than others, and shares them in this podcast.

An accepted principle in college enrollment is that it's cheaper to retain a student than it is to recruit a new student. The same is true for donors, and yet colleges and universities do an overall poor job of retaining donors, effectively forfeiting the lifetime giving those donors may have made. Dr. Dan Barwick explains the most effective techniques for retaining first-time donors.

The William Inge Theatre Festival, the official State Theatre Festival of Kansas and hosted every year by Independence Community College, was created 38 years ago as the first festival to honor playwrights themselves. The craft of playwriting has changed over time, the audience for theatre has changed, and the Festival found itself in danger of becoming irrelevant. Producing Director Hannah Joyce-Hoven describes how the Festival has been reborn through embracing change while preserving the past.

The stakes for college and university strategic planning are high - accreditors expect it, colleges use it to engage and educate stakeholders, and a poor outcome or a poor process alienates people for years. Dr. Daniel Barwick describes Independence Community College's current process and how it is the result of lessons learned from previous campus efforts.

How many of you have been seen by a million people in the past year? Five million? Ten million? Fifty million? Authenticity is a useful and an overlooked trait no matter who you are. If you can be you with 50 million people watching, you can be you anytime. Dr. Daniel Barwick talks about how appearing on a popular Netflix series, Last Chance U, made him confront how authentic he was willing to be.

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A crisis can take many forms, but every college administrator wants them over as soon as possible. Dr. Daniel Barwick talks about the ways in which schools over-react to a crisis, and the ways in which schools over-estimate their capacity for dealing with a crisis once it starts.

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We're all familiar with the adage that every crisis is an opportunity, but what does that mean when it is combined with an entrepreneurial mindset? Dr. Dan Barwick talks about how that mindset works, and provide some real-world examples on his campus.

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Independence Community College is the #1 ranked community college in Kansas - how does it attract the best teaching talent? By asking new teachers what they want. In this episode, Dr. Barwick discusses how what new teachers want is sometimes at odds with what teacher unions are seeking for their members.

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With the possible exception of pensions, the greatest unfunded liability of colleges campuses is deferred maintenance, and the cost for this is increasing rapidly due to new construction. Why do campuses build new facilities so often and so willingly? Dan Barwick explores the problem.

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From being a small rural campus in rural Kansas to being the most famous community college in the world?? How did that happen?? Dr. Dan answers the most common questions he gets asked about being on Last Chance U, Netflix's fourth-most-binge-watched show.

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