Clients

Our principals and staff work on five or six major client projects at any one time. Our work differs from client to client, and no two projects have ever looked the same. Seeing a snapshot of our current client work gives a sense of the variety of projects we undertake and the range of our skills and experience. We identify clients by name when we have their permission to do so.

Clemson University
On behalf of the Graduate Dean, we conducted an assessment of the doctoral programs in preparation for the next National Research Council study. What are the implications of the study's taxonomy for the University's doctoral programs, particularly in the Life Sciences? How can faculty time be allotted both to accurately represent programs and to give strategic advantage to the University? What specific steps will the University need to take in order to ensure the long-term competitiveness of its doctoral programs?

Florida International University
After we conducted an assessment of selected doctoral programs and evaluated market opportunities for the College of Education, the Dean of the Graduate School asked us to return and spearhead a re-engineering of the graduate admission operation made necessary by the University's migration to PeopleSoft. The project focused on staff development, work process flows, performance standards, admission policies, quality controls, and space planning.

Montclair State University
We recently completed a project that recommended the development of new doctoral programs that are marketable and that will not duplicate programming available elsewhere in the state of New Jersey. The project began with an environmental scan that identified approximately 60 possible programs; a marketability study that found 17 particular programs to have both a sizable market of incoming students and a viable regional job market for program graduates; a feasibility analysis that estimated the University's total financial investment over a five-year period, including faculty, physical infrastructure, student financial support, and marketing; and a directional document that identified program development options for faculty, including curriculum design, research thrusts, and promotional paths. The Provost has asked us to develop the programs we recommended, including the preparation of proposals for the New Jersey State Commission on Higher Education.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Yardley Research Group worked with Provost Joan Lorden and selected academic services staff and faculty to improve the retention and graduation rates of all student groups both graduate and undergraduate, traditional and non-traditional. Initially, the project focused on student advising systems developing general principles and characteristics to which the University wants all advising services to conform, facilitating an advising summit for faculty and staff across the University that surveys and documents both formal and informal advising, identifying linkages between advising and student satisfaction, and establishing retention goals and developing formative metrics to monitor the ongoing effectiveness of advising services.

Small, Private Comprehensive University in the Northeastern United StatesSpurred by the acquisition of significant acreage near the main campus that could be developed into a graduate campus, the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs asked us to launch a process that would result in the production of a master plan for graduate education. The ongoing project involves space planning, evaluating the long-term market viability of the institution's current graduate programs, and identifying and developing new professional master's programs that would place the University on the national map.

Mid-sized Public Research Intensive University in the Southeastern United StatesWe are working with the Provost and Academic Affairs staff to identify learning outcomes for the University's general education program and to develop both advising programs to foster the development of those outcomes and assessment systems to measure whether they have been achieved. The project is taking place in the context of the institution's preparation for re-accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Large Private Research Extensive University in the Northeastern United StatesThis project involved the development of market-focused strategic plans for all of the University's doctoral programs, including benchmark improvement plans, capacity studies, and external funding strategies. We  worked on revising the University's policies on tenure, promotion, and merit review in order to foster interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty from different departments and on defining overarching academic initiatives to build the University's research profile.

Other smaller projects open at this time include the development of a distance education strategy for a public research-intensive university, a review of a department of Civil Engineering at a land-grant university, and the development of a doctoral program in Theology for a small Catholic university in the Northeast.

Other clients include:

A complete client list is available upon request.