On your campus, what "works" in regards to parent communication?
How do you intially collect parent contact information (admissions, orientation, other)?
Are you sending hard-copy publications only?
Have you moved completely to electronic formats? Or...are you using a mix of both?
How did you determine what communication methods to use, the frequency, content, etc?
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At Bloomfield we have a fairly good turnout for Parent Orientation. I'll leave the stats to my colleagues in charge of that area. In the meantime, though, since we first connect with parents through Orientation, and since most (non-discipline issue) communications with parents are more likely to occur in the first and second year, it seems to me that we should be looking at the high schools for some evidence. While parent communication for high school students is certainly differnt than college - socially, behaviorally and legally, etc. - we can all learn a lot from better udnerstanding what is works best there.
To that end, as the parent of a current high school senior (as well as two older sons) - email and web site postings are the communication vehicles of choice among every high school parent that I know. It keeps us up on what is going on in the school as well as in the indidial classrooms, keeps us connected with our sons/daughters teachers, and provides an easy form off communication for questions. The high school does not flood us with info - when I see an email from the high school I read it immediately, knowing it is something of importance to me.
I utilize a mix of mediums to communicate with parents of undergraduate students at Binghamton University. I produce a monthly online newsletter for parents during the academic year. Parents must subscribe for this service (right now over 3,300 parents are subscribed). I balance the electronic communication with a print newsletter published once in the fall and spring. Additionally, we provide parents of incoming students with a Parents Orientation Brochure (prior to Orientation) and a Parents Handbook (at Orientation). All parent communications are also available on our Parents & Families website.
The Parents Online Newsletter (PON) is also used, when warranted, to send breaking news items to parents. I have only had to use PON twice for this purpose in the year that I have been in my position.
I feel it is important to balance the print and electronic communications since only a portion of our overall parent constituency registers for the on-line newsletter. The print newsletter is the one piece that I know will reach the majority of our parent audience (as it is mailed to students' permanent addresses- over 10,000 each semester).
I have received very good feedback from parents that value and appreciate the monthly e-newsletters in particular. PON includes timely advice on parenting a college student, calendar/event reminders and brief informational pieces about campus programs and services available to students and parents. Similar information is included in the print newsletter.
At the University of North Texas, we communicate with parents through our website and e-mail. Given the number of students we have on our campus (34,000), we are not at a point where we can afford to print and mail copies of our parent newsletters and university updates.
In the fall of 2006, we began to grow our parent database past those parents we received information on at parent orientation and through the parent association. We collected the parent e-mail addresses of all students going through new student orientation. We did this again this year and are pleased with the number of parents in our database.
We went a step further this semester and created a link on our parent homepage where parents can "subscribe" to our database to receive monthly newsletters and university updates. This is helping to gather the contact information of both perspective parents and upperclassman parents, both populations we currently do not have a lot of information on.
These practices are working for us, but I'd love to hear what others are doing.
At UNLV, I send a montly e-letter to parents in the Parents Association. I am in the process of creating a Parent Handbook (calendar style) for all parents who attend Orientation next fall.
I collect parent information at parent events: Orientation and Family Weekend. I am meeting with technology to create an online collection method for the database.
I am hoping to add a print newsletter twice a year for the next school year too. Feedback from parents is collected via an online assessment, sent yearly. I also have a committee for marketing within the Parents Council.
Anna Carey - WWU
We too have a number of programs/publications that allow us to communicate with family members.
Approximately 50% of our incoming students have a family member join them at summer orientation and family members get a handbook and materials to orient them to campus. Prior to the start of fall quarter, we mail out a copy of the family handbook to any freshmen parents we didn't see at a summer program - good investment in reaching out to folks.
Our quarterly family newsletter keeps the family members of ALL students informed about campus news and events and those families that participate in our Parent Connection group receive a monthly email with updates and tips on parenting a college student.
A direction that we need to better develop at WWU is tailoring ongoing information for 1st year.
In combination with a twice annual family weekend, our surveys and feedback from family members tell us that folks are pleased with the amount of information and interaction with Western and we are always looking at ways to increase the levels of engagement.
As an additional piece of information - The Chronicle of Higher Ed had a nice piece today on the results of the 2007 CIRP coming out of UCLA. Info can be seen at http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/01/1355n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
By Branka Kristic, Director of Parent and Family Programs, Hofstra University (LI, NY):
Monthly e-letters are very popular with our parents. I also post them online at our web site as pdf files, since many Internet providers (like AOL) block mass emails, including ours. In addition, we mail our semi-annual family newsletter to all undergrad parents. The parent handbook is distributed during our summer parent orientation.
Parents want to be able to communicate among themselves. Therefore, I would appreciate your input about how your institution accomplishes that goal. Do you have discussion boards?
We collect parent information on paper, during our family events -- a very inefficient way. Ideally, we would like students to enter parent contact information directly into Banner (our database system) through their portal. That information would be then linked to the student information. I just don't have staff to do so much data entry (each parent should become a "person" in Banner and then we would be able to offer parent services through their own portal). How does your institution collect parent contact information? Which department does it?
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