Colleges

"We end up having ownership from top to bottom, with everyone on board." - Patricia Lang, President, Confederation College, Thunder Bay ON

Interested in what Canadian colleges are doing to address the challenges of strategic planning? Read our new article, 'College Planning 101,' featuring interviews with college Presidents from coast to coast. There are many types of colleges in the educational 'marketplace' these days - we are referring to teaching intensive post secondary institutions, including both traditional Community Colleges and four-year, degree granting undergraduate colleges and university-colleges.

In the article, Presidents talk about the challenges they face, even the mistakes they have made, enroute to planning solutions that work for their colleges.

Facing planning, communication, or marketing challenges at your college? Do you know how well your web site is REALLY serving students, staff, community supporters, and prospective students? Does everyone in your college community understand your direction? Is there a clear connection between your vision / plan, your internal and external communications, your student recruitment, and your community relations messages?

We specialize in working with colleges that are ready to take new steps in establishing a unique direction and a market identity. While our services are available to all colleges in North America*, our locations are best suited to serve colleges in western Canada and the northwestern United States.

* Recently, two booklets from our series, "Changes in the Neighbourhood: development processes that work" were adopted as training tools for the (U.S.) Rural Community College Initiative: Implementing a Vision for the 21st Century. The goal of RCCI is to enhance educational access for equitable economic development through community / tribal college extension / community teams in rural America.

Is your college producing many communications, recruitment, and marketing materials without a clear sense of what works? You will be interested to know that there are ways to focus your efforts, to improve their impact, and to generate new energy for your college.

If you choose to work with us, you can expect:

Integration with your existing services. Whether you are relying primarily on internal or external planning, communications, and marketing services, we believe in working with those people. Our goal is to add capacity and energy to your current resources - not to supplant, short-circuit, or alienate them. Our strengths-based approach contributes to long-term growth and development for your organization.
Respect for the value of college education. You won't need to convince us of the value of community-based colleges, or niche market colleges. With our years of background teaching in colleges, as well as years of consulting to colleges, we KNOW how much colleges contribute to the lives of their learners, their educators, and their communities.
Awareness of differences. Each college, like each learner, is unique. We don't rely on cookie-cutters 'solutions' that have been mapped out before we even talk with you. While we have a wealth of experiences upon which to draw when it comes to college planning, communication, and marketing, we try to practice the creative and critical-thinking that colleges themselves teach.
Satisfaction guaranteed. In over eight years of providing professional consulting services (more than 200 distinct projects), we have had two jobs go sour. In both cases, we simply asked the clients 'what can we do to try to make things right?' and then invited them to pay whatever fees they felt were appropriate.

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