Committees are the linchpins of an effective Board. When Board meetings are well-attended, purposeful, and gratifying, this foundation usually grows out of understanding and applying the principles of properly establishing committees. The key to success is identifying, recruiting, and managing strong leaders—a critical role shared by the Board President, the Committee on Trustees, and the School Head. Committees are only as strong as the people who lead them.

Back in the summer of 2015, President Simon Newman of Mount St. Mary’s University developed a plan to improve the institution’s student retention numbers by culling 20–25 first-year students before the end of September. The federal government requires colleges and universities to submit the number of enrollees each semester, and the Mount’s cutoff date was September 25. The President’s office created a student survey to administer during freshman orientation, specifically designed to determine who to dismiss. The rationale was artificially to boost retention by 4%–5%.

Student assemblies change students’ lives—or they can be something akin to a waking nightmare. Finding the right “educational performers” or motivational speakers that do a wonderful job of inspiring and teaching your students within your budget and who mesh with your school’s mission can be a trial, though. This month, we’ve listed the five steps that should lead you to host the transformational student assemblies that will become wonderful memories your students treasure long after they leave your school.

Our email-based, position-specific e-Lists generate lively conversation year-round, but the Division Head e-List has been especially insightful lately. In addition to recommendations on specific curriculum, technology, and policy-related questions, there are many words of wisdom to be shared from listening in to the conversations of your fellow Division Heads.

Your school’s administrators—from the School Head, to the Admission Director, to the Business Manager—are all ambassadors of your school’s mission. They are the physical “faces” to your community that embody your school’s values. Their ambassadorship means they all have vital roles to play in promoting and representing your annual fund and capital campaigns to current and potential donors.

If you’re not already subscribed to ISM’s e-Lists, then you’ve missed some great conversation from fellow Development Directors. To get you started, we’ve collected several great insights from your peers around the country and the world as they crowdsource common knowledge to every Director’s problem.

Sometimes people removed from a sticky situation can see solutions to the problem better than the person mired in it. Our Admission Director e-List has been lively lately with such solutions, and we thought we'd share their insights with you, dear readers!

Social media can be a powerful tool. It’s the online driver of word-of-mouth recommendations that keep your admission pool full. However, the platforms are only useful if your school uses its accounts strategically. Having an account for the sake of having one—without knowing who your audience is or what you want them to do—will waste time and resources when you have none to spare.

As telecommuting becomes more acceptable in many professional industries, several public schools that want its graduates to be prepared for the workforce have begun to experiment with “work from home” days for its students, as reported by Benjamin Herold for Education Week. Don’t mistake this phenomenon for an online school or homeschooling program. These are brick-and-mortar schools offering unique interactive activities for students to complete in home offices or at dining room tables, creating a purposeful blended learning environment that administrators hope may replicate “real world” working conditions after graduation.

Mark Engstrom is a Certified Blending Designer, Middle & Upper School Head at Allen Academy—and an ISM workshop leader. This February, he was invited to lead his fellow consultants in a day-long professional learning opportunity surrounding one of the latest educational trends emerging from the Information Age: blended learning. This curriculum focuses on the integration of personal learning through technology with more traditional face-to-face interactions between teachers and students. The Source had a chance to speak with him after his presentation and dig deeper into what he sees the impact of technology-fueled education will be on private schools now, as well as what it could be in the future.