Sonia Tenorio

Excellence in Campus Operations
CHEP Status: Expired
CHEP Awarded: 11/29/2018
Excellence in Admissions
CHEP Status: Expired
CHEP Awarded: 01/21/2019
Excellence in Career Services
CHEP Status: Expired
CHEP Awarded: 02/03/2019

Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)

Success in helping students begins with "connecting" in a meaningful way. These "connections" are formed through our ability to understand generational experiences and preferences in communication. Additionally, a better understanding of ourselves helps us connect with students. This course explores how to work better together through common collaborative principles and improving teamwork.
Let’s face it, today's students have a plethora of information at their fingertips; but can they truly understand in a meaningful way all that your school has to offer? This course takes product knowledge and presentation skills to a higher level with enhanced tools and techniques to improve your "sales" skills. Additionally, advanced methods for presenting the attributes and benefits of your institution will be explored, along with successfully addressing challenges and resources.
In this course, we will examine the fundamentals of value, benefits, and worth. In addition, we will utilize techniques and tools to prepare and present the value of your institution. Finally, we will review tips and best practices to maximize your value presentation. Once you have completed the course and activities, you will be prepared and ready to best serve your students and school with your value presentations.
Today’s admissions professionals need expanded methods to adapt to where the prospective student is in the decision-making process. Whether you work with students online, face-to-face, or a little of both, adding variety will help you successfully connect with your students. In this course, you will discover ways to improve your connections with prospective students, best practices for inbound and outbound communication, how to address challenges in the moment, and methods for effective follow-up that improve your effectiveness as an admissions professional.
Questioning and listening are essential elements of communication—especially when working with students. This course provides an in-depth understanding of the purpose of skillful listening, and how this is necessary to be the most effective in your position. In addition, this course provides an in-depth understanding of the purpose and types of meaningful questions. You’ll be introduced to the fundamentals of both questioning and listening, as well as new tools and techniques to help you refine your questioning and listening skills.
This course provides an overview of the methodology and guidelines to help you outline an audit plan for your institution. You will learn how to define audit scope and determine the audit approach which fits your organization. The course provides tips for successful audits and reviews audit areas for each functional department of a typical campus, including admissions, financial aid, student accounts, education/academics, and career services. Other business areas including marketing and advertising, human resources, information security and other key areas are also reviewed to provide you with a full scope audit outline. The course concludes with information on reports, audit documentation, and follow-up recommendations following the field audit activities.
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.
In this course, using your accrediting body’s criteria, you will study the language and intention of accreditation. Participants will develop a different perspective on the self-study process and an understanding of how to craft the self-study report to effectively communicate how present practices meet the standards. Discover what the standards really are and what it takes to meet them, interpret and communicate your institution’s current operating practices in the context of the criteria, and develop a more accurate understanding and expression of how your institution can provide the evidence needed to demonstrate compliance.
Is your campus ready for a full unannounced visit at any time? Onsite visits are becoming more frequent in recent years and unannounced visits even more so. This training is designed to aid campus leaders to be prepared, using best practices and practical tools, to host an onsite visitor at any time, including visits that are unannounced, by any organization such as state agencies, veterans’ organizations, regional, national and programmatic accrediting agencies and the Department of 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.
In today's world where jobs are posted online, matching algorithms screen digital résumés, and recruiters source candidates online, students must market themselves online. Writing a résumé and cover letter alone is no longer an adequate skill set for career seekers to successfully find and secure employment as well as manage, advance, and transition their career throughout life. Students must know how to digitally market themselves, and 21st century career advisors must know how to advise them. This course will help you advise students on developing digital career-marketing strategies for career success.
Students with disabilities represent a unique minority group within higher education. Despite being the largest minority group in the world, all too often their access to and inclusion in programs and services comes as an afterthought. Career services practitioners pride themselves in their ability to serve diverse populations, yet many remain untrained in working with disabled students. This course helps career services practitioners understand federal legislation basics as they relate to disabled students, the unique challenges they face, and characteristics of the population as well as practical resources and career services strategies to help overcome their unique barriers to employment.
**While the course addresses interaction considerations for those with deafness, blindness, learning disabilities, acquired brain disabilities, and physical disabilities, it shouldn't be expected that the course will cover all possible disabilities you may want to specifically learn about. It provides a broad overview.
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.
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 offers proven-successful techniques that ultimately prevent student loan delinquencies and defaults. Because there is not one miracle that reduces the chance of student loan defaults, this compilation of ideas and practices collectively greatly reduces those risks by giving ownership of the loan responsibilities to the students who benefit from them. By integrating effective borrower education and interaction from the day your students walk through your front door, your students will embrace the state of mind needed to give them lifetime accountability for their Federal Student Loans obligations.
With a seemingly endless stream of new laws and regulations, institutions have become burdened with ensuring they are compliant, while continuing to give great customer service to their students and families and all while achieving larger institutional goals. The role of the Financial Aid Office in compliance cannot be underestimated, but the Director of Financial Aid cannot ensure compliance in a vacuum. This course is designed to examine the fundamentals of law and regulation, and of the enforcement process. More importantly, this course provides tools for School Directors, Chief Financial Officers, Enrollment Managers, and Financial Aid staff to develop and build compliant practices that don’t interfere with effective operations, customer service or institutional goals.
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.
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.
In this course, you will learn what it means to be a manager, as well as how to navigate the complex and often stressful transition from individual contributor to a new manager.
Note: This course is closed for new enrollments and will be retired on June 30, 2021.
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.
Focus is essential to effective teamwork. In this course, you learn how to diagnose and overcome common problems - such as poor communication and interpersonal conflict - that can impede team progress. You will also learn to take corrective measures to remove team problems and improve team performance.
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.
This course provides sound advice on preparing and delivering presentations that command attention, persuade, and inspire. It includes rehearsal techniques as well as tips for creating and using more effective visuals. The course also addresses the importance of understanding your objectives and your audience to create a presentation with impact.
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.
To do their job - accomplishing work through others - managers must develop and use persuasion skills rather than simply issue orders. Formal authority no longer gets managers as far as it used to. This course will help you master the art and science behind successful persuasion so you can begin changing others' attitudes, beliefs, or behavior to create win-win solutions.
Feedback is an essential component of the communication process. In this course, you will learn when and how to give effective positive or corrective feedback, how to offer feedback upward, and how to receive feedback.
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.
This course will show you how to discuss and resolve difficult interactions in the workplace - whether with employees, peers, bosses, or even suppliers and customers.
In this course, you will learn how to manage diversity to extract maximum value from your employees' differences - including how to recruit diverse talent, resolve diversity-related conflicts, and communicate with employees and customers from other cultures.
This course will show you how to set realistic goals, prioritize tasks, and track milestones to improve performance and morale.
In this course, you will learn how to manage your career - including how to identify your business interests, professional values, and skills in order to target your most exciting career possibilities.
This course will help you master effective time management techniques. You will learn to analyze how you currently spend your time and pinpoint opportunities for improvement. The course will show you how to plan your time efficiently using scheduling tools, control time-wasters, and evaluate your schedule once it is underway.
In this course, you will learn the difference between positive stress that enhances productivity and negative stress that breeds tension, lowers productivity, and undercuts job satisfaction. The course includes strategies for dealing with underlying causes of worry and stress, with tactical advice and coping mechanisms for immediate problem management.
This course will take you step by step through the process of preparing an effective plan for a business proposal. The steps you will learn are applicable to launching a new internal product as well as seeking funding for a new start-up business.
In this course, you will learn what business processes are, why improving them is essential, and how to carry out a business process improvement (BPI) initiative.
If you are an owner or executive of an educational institution, you want to get the most value out of your marketing dollars. For this reason, publicity should be a part of your daily marketing strategy. In this course, you will learn over 100 strategies to build a great image for your institution, reach the people most likely to enroll, and open new markets. We'll show you how easy and inexpensive it is to get your institution's information placed in local newspapers, in the homes of your best leads, and on the desks of your future employers. This course is a must if you want to reduce your high-priced advertising costs and increase enrollments.
Drifting aimlessly through the year can be a sure fire way to miss your start budget. If you are facing an aggressive start goal and want to figure out how to achieve it, this is the course for you. Developing an effective advertising plan is key to attaining your start numbers. This course will demonstrate how to choose suitable sources for generating leads and enrollments. You will also learn the important aspects to consider when selecting an advertising partner. In this course, we will show you how to develop a marketing plan from the ground up and tailor it to your specific institution. Once you have created the plan, you will become skilled at holding people accountable for its objectives and riding the waves of good and bad that come throughout the year.
If you want to place an effective media buy that generates high quality leads at the lowest possible cost, and more importantly, the lowest possible cost per start, this is the course for you. This course will take you through the process step by step and prepare you for all of the pitfalls you can expect to encounter when placing television, newspaper and radio advertising. The course is designed to help educational institutions develop and implement successful media placement strategies. We will show you how you can tailor your advertising efforts to ensure success in meeting your goals. You will learn valuable techniques to utilize every step of the way when planning your media buys. From gathering market information, to developing a creative mix, to tracking the results, the course presents surefire methods that have proven successful across the country in markets large and small.
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.
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.
How many times have we said “if we’d only known” as a student walks out the door? No one starts classes planning to fail, but unfortunately problems do arise that present barriers to success. Students are good at identifying these problems blocking their path to success, but they frequently don’t have adequate problem solving and communication skills needed to overcome these problems. This course looks at the effect of stress on attrition, the use of tools to identify and help students at risk, and how to develop an institutional culture that shares responsibility for student success across the entire organization.
Building a program to ensure a smooth "hand off" from Admissions to Faculty is a critical component of student retention. Applicants often develop a strong bond with their admissions representative that ends (from the institution's standpoint) once they begin classes. This online course provides practical ideas on designing an orientation program, first-week-of-class and other retention activities that connect the student with faculty, the college and each other that will help you retain and graduate more students.
Owners and directors of educational institutions are always looking for the magical ingredients to improve student retention. There are at least six easy-to-implement retention strategies that can make a difference in whether a student graduates or drops out. These include efficient admissions procedures, great orientation programs, effective mentoring, student friendly classroom involvement, fabulous graduations, and successful placement. Upon completion of this course, participants will have specific easy-to-implement retention strategies to put in place for every area of their institution.
This course is a collection of ideas and best practices drawn from the implementation of enrollment growth strategies at over 300 educational institutions nationwide. The course is based on a highly successful in-service training program offered by Dr. Joe Pace, Managing Partner of The Pacific Institute and includes video delivery of Pace's presentations. Filled with practical tips and suggestions, the course also discusses the application of current research results on human behavior and organizational culture to enhance student enrollment and retention. This is a unique course that will dramatically change your perspective on institutional effectiveness.
This course uncovers the secrets of today's successful businesses and their strategies of first-class customer service. You will learn the components of first impressions that can help you increase and keep your enrollments. This course will also help you to locate the specific areas of your operations where you can implement an improved customer service plan for your institution – whether it is admissions, student services or academics.