Nerissa McNeil

Excellence in Admissions
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 08/15/2023
Excellence in Career Services
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 11/01/2023
Excellence in Leadership
CHEP Status: Active
CHEP Awarded: 02/29/2024

Badge Evidence | Completed Courses (4 Hours Each)

Effective communication skills are essential in every aspect of life - especially in our work with students. This course provides a foundational understanding of all forms of communication and offers new techniques to improve admissions performance. In addition, a communication hierarchy provides participants with an advanced understanding of rapport building and connecting with today's students.
Whether your admissions personnel work exclusively by telephone or use the phone for setting a face-to-face appointment, they need a tool kit of powerful telephone techniques to be successful in working with students. This course provides best practices for both inbound and outbound calls. Admissions professionals learn how to project professionalism and a positive attitude in their telephone personality and identify methods for conducting effective and appropriate calls.
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 by using common collaborative principles and improving teamwork.
Ethical behavior in recruitment is essential to student and institutional success, and is a crucial component of a compliant institution. This course provides a framework to evaluate your current admissions interview process and offers new tools that allow for meaningful connections with today's students. An ethical enrollment process will help your students make their own best decisions and will increase the effectiveness of your admissions personnel.
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.
The most successful admissions professionals are those who maintain a positive attitude and energy, but maintaining that positivity each and every day can be tough. This course focuses on the importance of understanding and building your personal attitude and energy to maximize your effectiveness. You will have the opportunity to assess your attitude and energy and manage these elements to maximize your performance. In this course, we will examine the fundamentals of attitude and energy and understand why they are so important to your success. In addition, we will utilize assessments to look at your current attitude and energy levels. Finally, we will review tips and best practices to enhance your energy and attitude output. Once you have completed the course and activities, you will be prepared and ready to best serve your students and school by maximizing your personal attitude and energy.
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.
The purpose of this course is to improve the relationship and dynamics between the admissions representative and prospective students to ensure an educational goal is soundly met. The relationship cycle, the importance of relationships, and the process of finalizing the enrollment are discussed. The goal of this course is to help develop a better understanding of the topic and produce tangible resources to help implement plans, strategies, and ideas at your school. In addition to lecture videos, links to possible resources, and assessments, you will be able to utilize the Journal and Learning Activities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
School hiring events are staples for many institutions, whether ground-based or virtual. They are a large undertaking. However, when done correctly, these events should yield many positive results for students, employers, and the school. This course examines each part of the process involved in a school hiring event: from the planning and ideation phase, to budgeting, staffing, logistics, marketing, student preparation, and a complete process for post-event surveying and follow-up. Beyond practical tips, ideas, and strategies, this course will provide a resource of documents that will help support a robust and dynamic school hiring event.
Help students ace the interview with successful tactics to showcase their qualities and make them the best fit for the job. A career management specialist will be able to master the appropriate actions for students to take before, during, and after the interview. These tactics can then be implemented in a career management class or during the preparations for prospective job interviews. The goal of this course is to help develop a better understanding of the topic and produce tangible resources to help implement plans, strategies, and ideas at your school. In addition to lecture videos, resource links, and assessments, you will be able to utilize Journal and Learning Activities, which will continue to be useful after successful completion of the course.
The purpose of this course is to provide instructors with a very basic introduction to the concepts of soft skills and emotional intelligence (EQ). It is designed especially for new instructors in career schools who have little or no training in educational techniques and who are unfamiliar with the basics of emotional intelligence. The course provides a comparison of hard and soft skills, including people skills and workplace behaviors. Ten important soft skills are discussed in detail and the relationship between EQ and soft skills is explained. The course concludes with tips and suggestions to help instructors enhance their soft skills and EQ.
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.
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 through exercises to see leadership and management in action.
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.
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.
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.
This course will show you how to set realistic goals, prioritize tasks, and track milestones to improve performance and morale.
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.
In this course, you will learn a practical, hands-on method for looking at crises. The course will show you how to develop a crises audit to avoid and prepare for crises, how to manage an actual crisis, and how to learn from past events.
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.
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.
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.