As human beings, we have lived by a fundamental principle throughout our entire history, “adapt, or die”. As changes come, as challenges present themselves, as life gives us the invitation to grow, we also face a choice: “adapt, or die”. For the Higher Educational Professional, we are not talking about a physical death, of course, but a decline into mediocrity, stagnation, and irrelevancy.
To continue to create value for the industry and to serve our students where they are at, we must develop a new mindset. It is not enough to see yourself simply as a Student Affairs professional, or a professional who works in admissions, advancement, or any other area of the Academy. You are a Higher Educational Professional, but beyond that, we invite you to pursue becoming a Collegiate Empowerment Professional (a CEP).
Why should you adopt the philosophy and mindset of a CEP? Because the next 20 years are going to be radically different than the past 20 years. Every day, we get to choose to be a part of that transformation. As visionaries here at Collegiate Empowerment, we remind you that our future is going to be bigger and better than our present and our past. With this in mind, here are 7 foundational tenets of what it means to be a Collegiate Empowerment Professional.
Tenet 1: A CEP is wholly dedicated to the advancement and continuation of Postsecondary Education in the 21st century. This is about making a commitment to the longevity and prosperity of this industry. We are about to hit our 400-year anniversary mark. I want this industry to go on for another 400 years after that. Think about that. How does that relate to you? What is your place in bettering the industry and keeping that flame burning? Where are you at in that game and are you committed to playing for the long haul? I know I am, but we have a lot of work to do. The system is broken, yet any worthwhile system can be resolved. Any problem or obstacle that exists is there to help us become better. A CEP commits to being a problem-solver and dedicates themselves to the long-term success of the education industry.
Tenet 2: A CEP embraces the educational enterprise in its entirety from Enrollment, through Engagement, onto Endowment. This can be a bitter pill to swallow for many people who love to live in their little silo of Student Affairs. Many professionals restrict their impact because they only see themselves as being responsible for one of these three “E's”. They might say, “I'm only about student engagement! Let the admissions people take care of enrollment, let the advancement people take care of endowment.” That is a limiting belief system. If you truly want to be successful as a 21st Century Higher Education Professional, you want to have the mindset of all three “E’s”. Of course, you're not going to be able to work in all three of these areas, but you want to be aware of them. A CEP approaches the educational enterprise holistically, seeking to aid and understand the three E’s: Enrollment, Engagement and Endowment.
Tenet 3: A CEP helps college students get what they want and need. The big vision and mission of CE over the past 25 years has been to help college students get what they want and need. The reason why Collegiate Empowerment exists is because many collegiate institutions are not providing this for the students. Students are getting their degree, but not their education. They're taking their education higher and higher, which is wonderful, but we're failing to help them take it deeper.
One way the industry falls short is it doesn’t pay attention to the data. The longest longitudinal study of college students is done at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. The study asks the question of incoming first-year students, “What are your most important lifetime objectives?” Over 80% of the respondents indicate that they want to be very well off financially. And yet, we only have four institutions in the United States of America that offer financial education in the core curriculum. This is educational malpractice.
Additionally, we know that the demographic of college students is changing. We don’t only serve 17 or 18 year-olds just out of high school. We serve a spectrum of college students, including returning adult students. As an industry, we need to cater to the needs of students from all walks of life, providing education, wisdom, experience, and guidance. This is way CEPs don’t only work in Higher Education, we work in the larger industry of Postsecondary Education.
Tenet 4: A CEP empowers students with enhanced Clarity, Confidence, Capability, and Commitment. We enhance clarity through giving leadership. We provide confidence by providing relationship. We enhanced capability by providing creativity, a new or better way of doing things. With commitment, we provide a sense of management and accountability for our students. These are the fundamental byproducts of the 21st century of Postsecondary Education. These are products that you sell. You don't sell degrees. You create value via Leadership, Relationship, Creativity and Management.
In previous articles, we’ve talked about the concept of Real GPA and Core Genius. We’ve examined how each of us has two dominant areas, either in Leadership, Relationship, Creativity, and Management. The CEP knows their Real GPA and Core Genius and seeks to lead from that mindset.
Tenet 5: The CEP enhances Recruitment, Retention, Research, Revenue Generation, Risk Mitigation, ROI and Reinvention for the institutions they serve. These are the 7 “R’s”. We've talked about these “R’s” in past articles. They started as 4 “R’s” and they’ve grown! For institutional health, Higher Educational Professionals need to be concerned about all these areas. At all times, the Higher Ed Pro must examine which “R” needs the most attention and adapts as needs change. For example, to bring this to our current context of continuing education in the COVID crisis, we need to be focusing on retention, risk mitigation, and revenue generation. Now is not the time to be focusing on recruitment. The CEP commits to staying in tune with what the institution they serve needs.
Tenet 6: The CEP commits to enhancing their own educational impact. This is a lifetime commitment to ongoing education. This is the commitment to adapt, to change, and to advance. Many professionals are not growing, they're “dying.” But we at Collegiate Empowerment have a growth mindset. In the coming years, Collegiate Empowerment will become more than an educational production organization. We are becoming a National Association For Collegiate Empowerment Professionals (NAFCEP), the purpose of which is to be a home for individuals like you and me. It is for those of us in search of a space of support and inspiration; a place where we have a sense of bigger meaning and purpose. The CEP invests in a growth mindset in order to expand their educational impact. A CEP is you.
Tenet 7: The CEP exemplifies the ideal that we cannot take our students or institutions to a place where we ourselves have not yet been. Lastly, a fundamental tenet of being a Collegiate Empowerment Professional comes from a mindset of humility. It's the ability to surrender to the fact that we cannot take our students or our institutions to a place where we ourselves have not yet been. We know that the work we do is about the students, but we also must acknowledge that we cannot do for our students what we do not do for ourselves. As leaders and professionals, we have to show up for ourselves in the same way we show up for our students. As Gandhi said, “We need to be the change that we want to see in the world.” The world will not change unless we change. The CEP is a professional educator who commits to constant and continuous self-improvement, humility, and accountability.
You are not alone.
The list that I just shared with you may seem daunting. And it’s true that you can’t do this alone. But we can do it together. We can do it in collaboration. Which is why we are striving to create The National Association For Collegiate Empowerment Professionals; an organization that will exist for you. Why? Because you have knowledge. We want to give you that space to cultivate that knowledge and transform it into wisdom. The mission is to allow you as an educator to take your intellectual property and transform it into intellectual capital. You will be able to write that book that you want to write, create that seminar that you want to create. You can build that practice that you want to have. You’ll be able to empower yourself and empower others. You're going to build a foundation on the tools from Collegiate Empowerment and the support of other Collegiate Empowerment Professionals.
We invite you to join us as Collegiate Empowerment Professionals in pursuit of a bigger vision.
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Anthony (Tony) J. D’Angelo, is founder & Chief Visionary Officer of Collegiate Empowerment, a educational production company dedicated to serving the US Higher Education Industry. Since 1995, Tony has served as a coach and strategic consultant to thousands of Higher Education Professionals and University Executives from over 2,500 US colleges. Learn more @ www.Collegiate-Empowerment.org or Follow: @TonyDAngelo on Twitter.
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