Certified Higher Education Professional

This course is designed for employees of all roles and levels at institutions that participate in federal financial aid programs. The course provides an awareness of prohibited acts which could adversely impact operations, and covers the requirements which must be adhered to in order to maintain good standing with state* and federal regulations as outlined in the Program Integrity rules. Emphasis is on areas of misrepresentation related to advertising and recruitment activities, interactions with prospective students and appropriate communication of disclosures and other publications. *This course currently covers the regulations for the following states: AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, IN, KS, LA, MA, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, NM, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA. Course participants can select specific state(s) at the beginning of the course to customize the training content to their state.

This compliance training course is designed for admissions, financial aid and career services employees of accredited institutions participating in federal financial aid programs. The course provides a clear and practical understanding of the federal regulations that govern the conduct of your institution and correspondingly underlay the performance of your job. The purpose of the course is not to train you to become a regulatory expert, but to provide the information you need to do or say the right thing when interacting with both prospective and enrolled students, as well as the consequences of doing or saying the wrong thing whether by mistake or with intent. More importantly, the course emphasizes that 'Doing the Right Thing' ensures that we provide an environment of trust where prospective students receive the information they need to make informed decisions about their education.

This course provides faculty, staff, and administrators with an understanding of the legal mandates regarding equal access for students with disability. More importantly, it provides a practical framework to help institutional personnel know what to say and do in the context of their defined role and interactions with students with disabilities. Topics include the civil rights nature of applicable Federal law, definitional issues, the impact of disability on traditional education activities and pursuits, reasonable accommodations, and the unique responsibilities of faculty, staff, and administrators as prescribed by their position.

This course offers strategies to provide employment and job search skills training that enables students to seek jobs in the field for which they are trained. You'll learn how to offer comprehensive career services regardless of whether your career services department is staffed full- or part-time. The course provides strategies for an institution to set up a Career Services Department, enhance and run it, and measure results. It describes how a successful career services department can ensure that your students have the skills and self-confidence to succeed in the workplace. You'll learn techniques to increase placement rates and reach out to the community to meet and maintain relationships with hiring decision-makers.

In this course, you will be given tools to help your students find the job that's right for them, present themselves impressively on paper, and interview with ease. This course is designed so you can successfully support your students in four phases of their job search: doing a targeted job search, writing a powerful resume and cover letter, presenting professionally, and developing effective interview skills.

Social media is critical tool for career services professionals to interact with and reach their constituent groups yet many career professionals aren't aware of how to develop a purposeful social media strategy. Without a social media strategy, career services departments risk losing relevance with their audience, and they also lose the opportunity of harnessing social media to achieve department goals. This course describes the phases of planning and implementing a social media strategy for your career services department. Each module is based on the fundamental steps of preparing a comprehensive and measurable plan to achieve the goals of the career services department.

Educational institutions have opportunities to create unique alumni associations which will look and feel more like alumni communities. This course will show you how you can create active alumni communities to increase enrollment, retention and placement for your entire institution. You will learn how to provide your alumni with valuable services and how to seek their help to enhance your educational programs and career services, as well as marketing and admissions. From getting started to setting up an alumni data base management system and determining the institution's return on investment, this course provides you with operational strategies for establishing an effective alumni association.

Although job developing requires a mix of critical skills, many career advisors are forced to learn them through the "sink or swim" method. They're often asked to immediately make a specific number of cold-calls daily. They learn that "job developing" is synonymous with cold-calling. It isn't. This course covers how to properly prepare for job developing, how to prospect, prioritize employer contact, and communicate with employers to address objections, get job orders, manage them to completion, and continuously engage employers and candidates to develop long-term partnerships. Job developing should be more comprehensive than a simple list of employers to cold-call.

Military veterans represent a unique type of non-traditional student and must overcome distinctive challenges to reintegrate into the civilian workforce. With an influx of over one million veterans projected to enter higher education in the next several years, career services personnel must be prepared to provide the level of service these students need and deserve. This course helps career services practitioners understand the unique obstacles veterans face in the reintegration process, how to help them translate their military experience into civilian language and provides strategies & tools that can support veterans in becoming gainfully employed.

Securing gainful employment for students with an arrest or criminal conviction is filled with unique challenges. This course introduces many of the challenges your students have (and will face), not only from the student's perspective, but also from the employer's. Upon completion of the course, you will be in a position to counter potential stereotypes and 'negligent hiring' fears. Topics of study include reviewing effective interview practices and the importance of honesty, how attitude lays the foundation for success or failure, the value of developing a letter of explanation, as well as reviewing techniques to mend a problematic past.

There are millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) job seekers struggling to find careers and even hold down a job, due in part to their sexual orientation and gender identity. What amplifies this issue is the fact that many college career advisors who are supposed to help struggling jobseekers are not trained to address the unique struggles their LGBTQ students face in their career development. This course equips career advisors with the perspective, knowledge, and practical skills necessary to provide quality career services for their LGBTQ students, who greatly need their assistance.

In the most competitive economy ever, crafting powerful job search documents, communicating strategically with employers, and presenting evidence of one’s qualifications won’t even necessarily get candidates jobs—it’ll barely get them interviews. This course covers advanced writing techniques, shows examples, and offers detailed strategy explanations to help career professionals enhance their ability to teach students how to craft modern job search documents and strategic employer communications. You'll be able to more effectively advise students on how to use impactful strategies that differentiate them from competitors through résumés, letters, portfolio evidence, and strategic post-interview correspondence. *This course also contains several downloadable resources to be used in your career center.

Effectively coaching students to achieve their goals in a way that builds autonomy, confidence, and accountability is fundamental to the role of a career services professional. Despite this fact, many career professionals have never engaged in professional development to build their coaching skills. This course helps career services professionals develop fundamental coaching skills so they can act as a catalyst and facilitator in assisting students to work towards their self-identified goals, with the belief that self-identified goals lead to increased student buy-in and motivation for attainment. Learn to put practical coaching techniques into action to maximize your results with students. *This course is relevant to a variety of career support professionals regardless of titles such as career counselors, advisors, coordinators, or "case managers" serving a variety of populations which may include students, out-of-school youth, or dislocated workers (youth or adults).

Establishing, developing, and maintaining employer relationships is a large aspect of a career-services practitioner’s responsibility. This involved process requires insight into your institution, your department, and your industry, as well as an understanding of key strategies that can assist in the building and nurturing of employer relationships. From acquiring industry knowledge to marketing your services and identifying opportunities for long-term employer engagement, this course can assist you in providing a roadmap intended to move you from a potential cold-call relationship to understanding an employer’s perspective on return on investment and gaining effective and long-lasting employer partnerships.

Derived from the feedback of over 100 institutions, empirical research, and case studies, course participants are presented with specific strategies and best practices that promote graduate employment. This course is for all education professionals seeking to understand the institutional practices that maximize graduate employment outcomes. Because employment outcomes are as much a function of institutional behaviors as they are of student behaviors, this course is based in systems thinking, which challenges participants to examine the interdependent relationship among institutional infrastructure, student career-readiness, and graduate employment rates.

Accurate representation of graduate outcomes is critical to upholding institutional integrity. All involved in employment reporting must continuously identify ways to strengthen their system for tracking, collecting, and verifying employment data. When documentation is both a quality and a compliance matter, staff must understand the verification program as a whole, the role they play in continuously improving it, and how to use professional principles and best practices in documentation. This course is designed to encourage participants to critically analyze their own employment reporting practices while sharing ideas and best practices that can help lead to the highest level of data integrity.

This course will provide you with information to help you effectively communicate with students and encourage communication among students in an online environment. You will learn the importance of facilitating instructor-to-student (I2S), student-to-instructor (S2I), and student-to-student (S2S) communication. Technology tools play a vital role in the communication process and several are discussed in this course. In addition, discussion is also provided to help you further understand how to manage and measure communication in an online course and help students communicate effectively.

This course provides a blueprint for running an effective financial aid office in an educational institution. You will learn to optimize the performance of your financial aid office with a minimum of waste, expense, and unnecessary effort. The course covers the cornerstones of an efficient financial aid office: timeliness, accuracy and customer service. You will also be advised of pitfalls to avoid in the realm of Title IV compliance. You will learn the key points to building an effective business office processing procedure. Reports and notifications required by the Department of Education are also explained. In addition, you will be given pointers on preparation for the annual Student Financial Aid (SFA) compliance audit and alerted to the most common triggers for Department of Education Program Reviews.

This course explores the critical differences between management and leadership. Participants will be introduced to definitions and myths about each area as well as how management and leadership must coexist for an organization to operate effectively. Participants will explore their own management/leadership tendencies.

Not everyone is suited for, or desires, a leadership position. One of the first steps to being an effective leader is to understand the desire to lead in the first place. Participants will explore their motivation to lead and develop a deeper understanding of their leader style(s).

Beyond understanding the role of the leader, the ultimate effectiveness and impact of a leader takes into consideration the followers and the situation, too. This course defines leadership impact and explores the Interactional Framework for Leadership.

The higher education industry provides a wealth of opportunities and challenges for those seeking leadership positions. In this course, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the higher education sector and themselves. The importance of higher education institutions will be explored along with developing a personal leadership legacy.

Get ready to add a number of skills to your toolkit as you develop as a leader! This course focuses on increased self-awareness in communication styles and learning; developing deeper understanding through empathic listening; and motivating through innovation.

This course provides you with a framework to put your self-discovery and learning into a workable plan to further develop your leadership skills. A step-by-step process is offered to help you create a meaningful Personal Leadership Development Plan (PLDP) complete with the development of SMART Goals and advice from some of today's leaders in the higher education sector.

This course provides a synopsis of the essential tasks of leadership setting direction, aligning people, and motivating others. You will learn how to recognize the skills and characteristics of effective leaders, create an inspiring vision, and energize people to support and work toward your goals.

Skillful writing helps you accomplish your business objectives and extends your influence as a manager. In this course, you will learn to create clearer, more effective written communications. The course includes specific guidelines for preparing memos, letters, emails, and other common business documents.

In this course, you will learn how to strengthen your coaching skills by using a four-step process to facilitate the professional growth of the employees you coach.

This course provides a practical guide to becoming an effective negotiator. The course includes steps to guide you through the negotiation process assessing your interests as well as those of the other party, developing opportunities that create value, avoiding common barriers to agreement, and implementing strategies to make the negotiation process run smoothly.

What will your institution look like in five years? Growth takes change and the commitment of the stakeholders in your organization. A five-year plan is essential for any owner or director of an educational institution, no matter how long they have been in the business. It includes various elements such as your enrollment goals for all programs, plans for new programs, new profit center potential, fees and all financial aid opportunities, enhancement of student services, faculty and staff planning, marketing and development strategies, and planning for physical space to support your expansion goals. Also, development plans are often needed to satisfy licensing and accreditation requirements. This course covers the essential components and techniques involved in developing a comprehensive five-year plan. We will show you an effective step-by-step planning process that involves the participation of representatives from your institution including staff, instructors, students, graduates, and the employers who hire your graduates. The process encourages participants to share their knowledge and ideas, and everyone who participates in the process ultimately becomes a stakeholder in making the plan work. The course includes planning worksheets that you can download and use to help you develop your institution’s five-year plan.

Educational institutions need to be aware of emerging employment opportunities in new and expanding fields if they are going to continue to attract students. Most licensing and accrediting agencies ask an institution for some form of feasibility study when submitting new program-add applications. The research involved in this step often requires proof of need for the program, number of anticipated job openings, and input from employers. This course outlines ways to collect data to make an effective decision and show regulatory agencies proof of employment opportunities. Step-by-step directions are included to assist institution staff in conducting effective research and preparation of curriculum to meet employer specifications.

Vital advisory and governing boards create additional opportunities to enhance operations within an educational institution. Well-prepared board members engaged in appropriate and timely activities can make a substantial contribution to operational, financial and management success. Creating, managing and maintaining effective advisory and governing boards can be a demanding yet rewarding process. Board members have to be identified, recruited, and trained to be effective and to understand their role as individual contributors and as members of a group of advisors. To gain maximum leverage from a board, members must also remain motivated and retain a concentrated focus on the institution's mission, purpose and goals. This course will provide a blueprint, with accompanying checklists, for establishing and maintaining effective advisory and governing boards in an educational institution.

This course shows you how to hire high-quality instructors and orient them to your institution. The skills also apply to hiring staff. It's easy to hire someone to do a job. But it can be difficult to hire the right person. You want instructors who are top notch. They represent your institution and interact with the most people at your campus and particularly your students. This course starts with how to determine exactly what type of people you need as your instructors. Then it shows you how to recruit and hire them. Once hired, you'll learn how to introduce them to the working environment at your institution. By the time you finish this course, you'll be recruiting, hiring, and orienting quality instructors. You'll see results in improved enrollments, student achievement, retention, and completion.

It is no longer news that predictive learning analytics are changing online classroom instruction. This course teaches current trends in locating, hiring, monitoring and retaining the best professionals that specialize in online instruction. More importantly, this course provides insights for using the new predictive analytic approaches to optimize management of online faculty. Generalized "best practices" are waning in favor of real-time monitoring for individualized qualitative and quantitative analyses. This real-time approach provides significantly increased student success and retention. Also addressed in the course is how to build a strong faculty management team, continuing faculty development recommendations and various business considerations.

Jessica Desmond

Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)

CHEP in Teaching

CHEP in Online Teaching

CHEP in Admissions

CHEP in Career Services

CHEP in Campus Operations

CHEP in Leadership