If you've come to this site looking for our university research and assessment practice, you may not have heard the big news: Starting in January, 2013 that team became part of Huron Consulting Group, the leading consulting firm in higher education. You can find Bill Hayward, Rachelle Brooks, and other members of the team there. Our own founder and president, Cheryl Slover-Linett, continues to work with both sectors, and can be reached via email or at (773) 348-9200 x101.
January 31, 2013
Special Announcement: Slover Linett’s Higher Education Practice has Joined Huron Consulting Group
» We’re proud to announce that our higher education team is now part of Huron Consulting Group’s Education & Life Sciences practice. Our constituent research for colleges and universities will continue and expand under the Huron Education umbrella. Meanwhile, our audience research and evaluation practice will continue helping museums, arts organizations, and other cultural and informal learning institutions explore the future of public engagement. More »
December 07, 2012
Irvine Foundation Releases Study on Arts Innovation Fund
» Slover Linett announces the publication yesterday of our report on the James Irvine Foundation’s Arts Innovation Fund, which has supported new programming, community, and artistic initiatives at some of California’s largest cultural organizations since 2006. Our report, co-authored with our frequent collaborator Nick Rabkin, explores how change and risk-taking work at today’s major arts organizations and how the 19 grantees in the program attempted to bridge ‘relevance gaps’ with audiences, communities, and artists. More »
November 12, 2012
Nicole Baltazar, PhD Joins Slover Linett’s Arts & Culture Practice
» This summer, we said farewell to colleague Catherine Jett, who had been a researcher in our arts & culture team since 2009. Although we were sad to see Catherine go (and happy that she has continued to work with us part-time from afar), we are very fortunate to welcome social psychologist Nicole Baltazar, PhD as a research analyst in our Chicago office. More »
September 17, 2012
New Findings Presented on Social Media Use in Higher Education
» At the CASE Summit for Advancement Leaders in Washington D.C. this summer, Cheryl Slover-Linett co-presented findings from our third annual study of how colleges and universities use social media tools to foster productive relationships with prospective students, alumni, and other key constituents. The report is now available online. More »
September 04, 2012
Slover Linett Setting up Shop in Boston
» We’re practicing ‘pahking the cah in Hahvahd Yahd’ these days, as we make plans to open a Boston office this winter. Sarah Lee, our vice president for arts & culture, will lead the satellite location, which will expand the firm’s work with arts organizations, museums, and informal learning organizations. In the future, the office will also serve our college and university clients — because no city is more synonymous with higher education than Boston. More »
February 06, 2013 | Peter
A personal view: From one “and” to the other
» I’ve co-led Slover Linett for almost 15 years, and agreeing to merge our higher ed research practice into Huron Consulting was the hardest thing I’ve done in all that time. Sometimes what makes sense rationally — as this does, on every level — is still a question mark emotionally. I hadn’t fully considered the human dimension, including how it would feel to lose some wonderful colleagues. More »
August 03, 2012 | Peter
Classical music's biggest audience development problem may be its current audience
» You may have heard about an incident last weekend of aggressive rudeness on the part of some London concertgoers to a cougher in their midst. You might assume the story was exaggerated, unless you’ve seen for yourself the muted surliness of many classical music patrons in moments when they have to interact with each other. Yet smart writers are still extolling the virtues of the arts in building empathy and tolerance. Is that just a story we culture-lovers tell ourselves? More »
July 31, 2012 | Peter
A new book by a colleague of mine, Kay Larson, helps bring classical music back to its spiritual roots
» I’m smiling these days on behalf of Kay Larson, my fellow editor at Curator: The Museum Journal and a longtime New York art critic. Her new book, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, is getting great reviews. I concur: it’s a terrific, unusual read that humanizes an arcane composer and reminds us that classical or ‘composed’ music is too often talked about as if it were a purely intellectual or technical activity. More »
July 20, 2012 | Peter
Mini-post: What we should be talking about when we talk about the Trenton City Museum
» My colleagues tease me that I never write a short blog post when a 1200-word essay will do. To prove them wrong, here’s a quick thought about the struggling Trenton City Museum — or rather, a recent diagnosis of it in the NY Times. More »
July 11, 2012 | Peter
The Flame Challenge winners, and other attempts to get science communication out of its rut
» I blogged recently about Alan Alda’s contest with the Center for Communicating Science: explain flame to an 11 year old. The entries, mostly from trained scientists, were judged by thousands of actual 11 year olds. But their picks, announced last month at the World Science Festival, suggest either a weak field or the kind of 11 year olds who spend too much time on Wikipedia. Compare the winners to a new NASA video that’s going around and a fizzling effort in Europe to get tween girls excited about science. More »Keep in touch. Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter, re:search, and be the first to know about our reports, articles, professional dialogues, and more.
