Resource:How to cultivate student voice with trustees and external advisory boards
Thanks to Rachel Ford for her insight into her work with Georgia Tech’s trustees and external advisory boards.
Intro
Getting your voice heard by your universities’ trustees and external advisory boards is a necessary step in the development of student-driven entrepreneurship on any campus looking to expand or alter student-driven and university-driven organizations on campus. These individuals in general control the distribution of funds and also determine the priority ranking of various on campus initiatives and projects from an enhanced entrepreneurial environment to the construction of new buildings and work spaces.
Purpose
By getting the voices of the students heard by these boards, students will then gain the ability to more directly influence school policy and priorities to more accurately reflect the desires of student driven initiatives and projects. Wouldn’t you rather have your school work directly for you and the student body, than have to go through middlemen in the administration to get the ball rolling on projects and initiatives? Essentially, by cultivating a student voice with the trustees and external advisory boards, you are enabling students directly and actively effect change in your university.
Who are trustees and external advisory boards
Trustees and external advisory boards are essentially two different entities at virtually every university which comprise people who have the ability to directly effect change at their respective university. The Board of Trustees is generally composed of notable alumni and high level wealth contributors to your university. This group is most likely one of the more influential groups of individuals you can attempt to contact in order to influence your campus. In most cases the Board of Trustees only meets approximately twice a year and therefore getting time to express your ideas to them can be difficult. Strategy for getting on the board’s schedule is explained in “How to get on the schedule.”
On the other hand, advisory boards can also be extremely helpful to your cause, as they are usually comprised of high level administrators and proven CEOs. These individuals are often divided up by college, such as business and engineering, and they help determine the financing and various curricula in their respective departments. These groups also only meet on specified dates, oftentimes with large gaps in between, so make sure that you discover when these meetings are going to take place.
These are simply some of the boards which you should attempt to get in contact with if you want to alter your campus landscape. There are organizations of differing influence levels most likely scattered all around your university system who are willing to help if your student body establishes a rapport with them. Other administrative organizations you can attempt to contact include your universities’ development officers, Board of Regents, foundations associated with your university and schools in the surrounding area, and at one of the highest levels the university system of your respective state, although getting in contact with them will take some leading up to.
How to get started:
Brainstorm strategy
First, it’s important to understand who you are as a student or student group - what are your goals? Vision for the future? What’s your “brand”? Do some soul-searching on this, because it’s important that you can effectively communicate to others who you are, why you’re an important part of campus, and why you are the appropriate voice for whatever you’re representing.
Second, you have to brainstorm a strategy on what you want to get out of your interaction. Do your due diligence on this - is what you want to do, create, whatever, an actual need on campus? Conduct student interviews, faculty interviews, landscape canvas of current available resources, etc. You will always have to prove that there’s a need for something - that students want this stuff at your school. If you have a collection of students who said we wish we had X, Y, Z, and we want it this way, that is much more powerful than outlining a vague concept or vision. The advisory boards are going to ask who you talked to, why did they want this, etc. So, be prepared with your stats and facts.
Survey the landscape
Understand what the dynamics are at your university - which department or program would be the best to approach about your particular issue? There are always people who care about something that you care about; it’s just a matter of finding them. In order to do this, speak with advisors, faculty, students, and more to get an understanding of which departments care about which issues on campus. Pay attention to what the departments have been marketing. Has the university president been talking about entrepreneurship and innovation a lot in his recent proposals? All of this is stuff that you can use when you approach a particular department.
Who to get in contact with (and how)
Often times, it’s not only the Deans that you need to know. It’s also their assistants, who set the schedules of the Deans. It’s the people who organize the schedules of important alumni, or the ones who manage the foundation. Building and maintaining relationships then becomes vital to your success in reaching Boards of Trustees and advisory boards. This is especially important even when you don’t need someone to do something for you. It’s important to express gratitude for someone’s time and be polite with staff, recognizing that what you want to do is often what their job is to do. Take people out to lunch and bake them cookies!
How to get on the schedule
These boards often only meet once or twice a year--that means that you have to hustle to get on the schedule. Understand that all groups at the top work very slowly – thus, time in front of them is very limited. You have to fight for the time. Communicate that we want this, other schools are doing this, we’ve interviewed X number of people, there’s very strong need on campus for this. etc. Show your passion and that will get others more excited.
Work with the people that you’ve built relationships with on campus and ask, “Is there any time on the itinerary or time on the agenda for me to come to the meeting and speak?” Remember, the university administration wants to present the board with students, because students often make the most compelling cases for increased involvement or funding. Everyone on that board was a student once. However, the university administration also does not want to waste the board’s time, which is why you have to show why you deserve the board’s limited time. Come prepared with your ask to get on the schedule.
How to effectively communicate to the board
Present a compelling case that is simple, concise, and maybe has a handout associated with it. There must be a very simple plan with concrete action items associated with them. Remember, this board only meets once or twice a year, and thus must be presented with realistic and concrete goals that have clear action items that are easy to act upon.
Overcoming obstacles
You’ll probably run into a few obstacles along the way - it’s not usually as easy as putting together a PowerPoint, asking to speak to the board, getting money and doing your initiative. If you do acquire funds for your initiative, you must realize that it isn’t the same as simply swiping a credit card to get the materials that you want. Often times the method of payment is in the form of p-card purchases and reimbursements which can take a few weeks to go through so make sure you plan ahead in your entrepreneurial endeavors. For example, there are very specific regulations over how money can be distributed and spent within a university system. Where the money is coming from (state or private), where it is going (student group, foundation, department), what particular stipulations are attached to it (all funds must go toward training either monkeys or pigs), how much money you are spending at a time, and a number of other factors affect how you can actually spend that $2 million you just received from the state board of trustees.
University bureaucracy is also a big obstacle students may face. Remember, things at the top move slowly. Like, very slowly. There are some ways to try to mitigate this - know who key influencers are at the university and use them to help you move things along a bit. Know your timelines for cutting checks, distributing funds, etc. because these things take time to get approval and go through the system. Most importantly, don’t be frustrated by what you see as lack of progress - good things take time!
Analyzing the outcomes
After everything is said and done, and you’ve raised your voice enough on campus to be heard by trustees and external advisory boards, you want to figure out what just happened and how you can capitalize on that momentum. That’s probably a whole other post, but very briefly, know that you now have been exposed to how an entire university system works, from alumni relations, to interdepartmental relations, to financial systems. This knowledge is incredibly useful, whether or not anything came out of your meeting with the boards. Congratulations! And keep on doing you.
Miscellaneous info that could help
Curriculum development teams and advisors at your school can also be a useful tool in the the development of an entrepreneurial landscape. By introducing entrepreneurship classes you can get an initial push in student interest towards innovation. When discussing a new class a good idea is to model it off of a class another university is already doing with your own schools own spin in order to more directly show that the idea can work and has already worked at a different institution.
