Conversations abound on the Business Manager e-List, as private school administrators swap stories and resources with their peers. We’ve collected six of the most relevant crowdsourced points from the e-List over the last few months, hoping that your Business Office will find some useful gems for future use.

Higher education roiled this spring in the wake of the scandal from Mount St. Mary’s University, a private Catholic university in Emmitsburg, Maryland. In January 2016, the school’s student newspaper The Mountain Echo ran a special edition featuring the student retention plan of President Simon Newman. In addition to potentially unethical use of incoming student data to encourage freshmen to leave early, the President allegedly told a professor that “this is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies ... put a Glock to their heads.”

School Heads from around the world congregate on our e-Lists to find crowdsourced answers to common problems only their peers would understand. If you’re curious to see what your fellow Heads have been talking about this year, read on for the fruits from nine lively discussions ranging from arming your teachers to considering alumni fundraisers.

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!