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Small institutions must be agile and creative in successfully sustaining and expanding in today's higher education climate. Collaborating with external partners is an excellent choice for small institutions whose funding and staffing are limited. Our intention with this article is to focus on collaboration with external partners including parents/family, alumni, businesses, and others, sharing best practices, impact on student success, and additional information to help a wide variety of colleagues who work at small institutions. Our hope is that this article will give readers some practical ideas for implementing and expanding partnerships to benefit the small institution. Benefits may include marketing reach, brand management, revenue generation, and expanded opportunities for students, enhanced services, and more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents of today's college students have much on their minds: paying for college, coping with their children's history of depression, ensuring safety, managing complex roommate relationships, and emphasizing academic success, to name just a few. Parental involvement has reportedly grown over the past few years, owing to many contributing factors: changing structures of families and campus environments, consumerism, and increased communication through technology. The impact of parent involvement on student development is being studied with mixed results. In spite of both positive and negative implications of parent involvement, the media present unflattering characterizations of today's parents as "helicopter parents" hovering around the adult student prepared to intervene. Colleges' response to this increase in hovering varies, ranging from orientation bouncers to minimize involvement to parent associations and parent services offices to manage expectations and maximize influence. This article provides an overview of current family trends, the influence and expectations of parents, and some preliminary implications of parental involvement.