LERN Best Practices Conference 2010

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LERN’s Best Practices Panelists
Kim Halpern Director of Marketing, Continuing Education and Community Services University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico Kim leads a marketing group of five with a budget of $500,000. Her group utilizes a full array of promotion and media techniques. Kim implemented LERN strategies to broaden promotion and distribution strategies and targeting marketing efforts while controlling costs. Recent results include a significant enrollment increase of 31% over four years while reducing catalog production and distribution costs by a huge 25%. In the mix was implementation of an award-winning e-communication campaign.
Amy Lane Executive Director, Corporate and Community Services, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Amy operates a start-up unit rendering training and other services to employers in highly competitive Northeast Ohio. She has leaned on LERN advice to build the unit from scratch to one of five staff positions. Previously, Amy led the shift from a traditional continuing education unit at Kent State with revenues of less than $100,000 to a professional development unit with gross revenues of $1.1 million. LERN best practice strategies were pivotal to these entrepreneurial business units.
Patricia Hoyt Dean, Workforce Development and Continuing Education, Lakeland Community College Pat leads six diverse centers at Lakeland and utilizes a variety of LERN organizational and staffing best practices to move the centers in common directions and to keep the centers operating efficiently. Pat credits LERN organizational, marketing, program and contract training benchmarks and strategies for providing the framework to achieve an incredible 300% in revenue growth over the revenue-driven departments in the first three years since initiating the LERN review process and other methodologies.
Tom Leaverton Director of Marketing, ContinuingEducation, Kirkwood Community College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa Tom has performed a major overhaul of continuing education’s marketing efforts over the past three years. He identified the program’s best customers using LERN’s market segmentation strategy and used LERN’s approach to identifying the carrier routes responsible for the most registrations. The program now promotes more to best customers and top carrier routes. The result has been an impressive 17% increase in enrollments reducing promotion, printing and distribution expenses by a whopping 30%.
Kim Johnson Associate Vice President, Continuing Education and Training Services, Kirkwood Community College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa Kim leads a team of seven programmers who do $2 million in programming per year. Kim and staff use LERN benchmarks and course/event evaluation processes to focus on “winner” courses and to eliminate poor performers. The result has been an increase in revenues while experiencing an overall reduction in continued course offerings. Since 2006, Kim has used LERN’s new business initiative model to add four new major progto date have added $200,000 to revenues.
Russell Mills Independent Consultant, Deer Park, IL Prior to his retirement, Russ was the Dean of Continuing Education at Harper College where he led a restructuring initiative to implement the LERN organizational model. Within two years of making the change, Russ's program went from an annual deficit of $500,000 to making a profit. Within four years the department was so profitable it returned at least $500,000 per year to the institution. Recently, Russ has consulted for the City Colleges of Chicago and Scottsdale Community College as well as Harper College.
Rita Martinez-Purson Dean, Continuing Education and Community Services, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico Rita’s program serves more than 20,000 students annually and is one that relies heavily on LERN’s best practices for management and operation of the program at every level. Rita credits the use of LERN guidelines, planning, management and marketing strategies and trend analyses for turning revenue-losing programs into major profit centers, and for realizing annual increases in enrollments and revenues of at least 10%.
Jan Wahl Associate Dean, College of Extended Studies, San Diego State University, San Diego, California Jan manages the growth and development of the college’s three programming divisions which generate 26,000 credit and non-credit enrollments each year and are supported by 40 staff positions. For over a decade, LERN has been Jan’s “go-to resource” for practical strategies and techniques that translate to well trained staff who produce successful programs, write selling copy, implement effective marketing plans and create and follow solid, money-making budgets. As a result, Jan’s program is financially self-sufficient through good and bad times.
Michael Rainey Dean, Workforce Development and Continuing Education, Truckee Meadows Community College, Reno, Nevada Mike operates a diverse division that serves over 14,000 participants annually. Mike implemented LERN’s organizational model four years ago, assigning program manager’s specific segment and niche areas and centralizing administrative functions. He also implemented use of LERN’s benchmarks. Results include an impressive 25% increase in continuing education and contract training revenues.
Trenton Hightower Assistant Vice Chancellor for Workforce Development Services with the Virginia Community College System He has 17 years experience working in leadership at community colleges. In taking two community colleges from deficit to profit, teamwork & partnering are the key. Trenton is the author of Field Trip 101, an approach to team-building which borrows from the same philosophy that makes getting out of the classroom fun and valuable for teachers and students. Trenton holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Public Relations,Master’s in Administration of Higher Education.
Doug Soo Dean, Continuing Studies, Langara College, Vancouver, British Columbia Ten years ago, Doug took over a small program that offered limited courses two terms per year and generated $100,000. Today, Doug operates a $10 million program with over 22,000 annual registrations. Along the way, Doug has applied LERN organizational, planning, staffing and programming strategies, and has used LERN benchmarks to monitor progress and success. Doug credits his program’s success and growth in large part to the adherence of LERN’s best practice strategies.
Sherry Tenclay Senior Program Manager for Business and Technology (B&T) Programs at the University of New Mexico, Division of Continuing Education. Sherry’s B&T team develops approximately 1000 classes each year including 85 certificate and certification programs which meet or exceed industry standards and provide direct pipelines to employment. They have more than doubled their revenue goal in the past two years to now exceed $2,000,000.