ModernThink, LLC

Founded in 2004, ModernThink is a strategic organizational development and management consulting firm that focuses on workplace excellence. It is a privately held company headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.

As a research and consulting leader in workplace quality, ModernThink has been involved with over 50 city, state and regional “Best Places to Work” initiatives. In partnership with The Chronicle of Higher Education, ModernThink co-founded The Great Colleges to Work For® program in 2008. In its partnership with The Chronicle, ModernThink served as the survey, research, and analysis engine for Great Colleges for eleven years before assuming full responsibility for the program in 2019. We have surveyed over 1,000 colleges and universities through the Great Colleges program, and have accumulated an unparalleled database of higher education benchmarking statistics and best practices.

We have a deep understanding of the challenges currently facing leaders in academia and substantial expertise providing data-driven solutions. The scope of our work may be a broad assessment of levels of engagement or a more narrow focus to address a specific challenge facing college leadership. Our mission in higher education is to help colleges and universities become better places to work and learn. To that end, we currently partner with several Higher Education consortiums and associations including:

  • Network for Change and Continuous Improvement (NCCI)
  • National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE)
  • Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC)
  • College and University Professional Association of HR (CUPA-HR)

A defining element of our work is our expertise in gathering feedback and relevant data from a wide variety of sources; summarizing and synthesizing key findings, patterns and trends; and arming leaders with the information they need to drive strategic change. ModernThink has successfully supported a wide variety of higher education and non-higher education clients with initiatives including the following:

  • Faculty/staff engagement, diversity, Title IX, and climate assessments
  • Strategic planning
  • Benchmarking comparisons
  • Audits of institutional HR practices and human capital planning
  • Extensive reporting on higher education statistics, metrics, best practices and trends
  • Student surveys
  • Exit surveys
  • Gap analyses
  • Accreditation submissions

Through our survey and consulting work, we help leaders identify strengths, eliminate barriers to employee engagement, and build better workplaces. Learn more at ModernThink.com.