The UBC Admin Blog: blogging by higher ed executives done right

I stumbled on the UBC Admin Blog thanks to Martine Lafleur who shared its link on Twitter.

Yesterday, I took the time to explore this recently launched group blog aimed at enabling further dialogue between senior administration and students at the University of British Columbia.

While president blogs have been around for some time (President Michael Crow from ASU was one of the trailblazers, President John Meada at RISD has also been doing a great job at blogging), I hadn’t come across a blog by senior administrators that hold as many promises as the UBC Admin Blog (Well, Joe Hice’s Hice School is also a great blog, but I’ll put it in another category as Joe is a communicator by trade).

Frankly, what I found really surprising and interesting in the UBC Admin Blog was to find UBC VP of Finance, Resources, and Operations among the bloggers.

In those tough budget times in higher education, it’s pretty rare to see the people in charge of budget cuts get up front and personal to try to initiate open dialogue with students and other constituents.

The UBC Admin Blog — The administration connecting with students online.

Anyway, here are a few things UBC is doing right with this blog:

• A short video introduction from each blogger on the About page of the blog.
  It helps put a face on a name and can also help promote civility by reminding readers they are interacting with real human beings.

  Here’s the video introduction from Pierre Ouillet, the Finance VP.

• A great moderation policy highlighting in plain English what is ok and what is not when it comes to comments and available from one of the top navigation tabs of the blog.
  
• A conversational tone as shown in the first post written by Ouillet, From transparency to dialogue, and the direct reply to the comment of an international student about budget on his second post.

What do YOU think? Has your institution done something similar? Let us know by posting a comment!