Tag Archives: ideas

Student and Academic Life Staff Meeting Activity 2/13/20

We have had a robust week of “big bets” updates, including at the Wednesday, February 12th faculty meeting and at the Thursday, February 13th staff meeting for the Student and Academic Life (SAL) division. 

The faculty meeting update on “big bets” was led by a group of faculty serving on our Coordinating Group–a big thank you to Carri LeRoy, Karen Gaul, Kevin Francis, and others for putting together a robust discussion and activity centered around all (500+!) ideas received thus far.  I hope to post to the website the presentation they put together as soon as I receive it–stay tuned. (Edit: the first iteration of the data presentation is available here. Enjoy!)

The SAL staff meeting was another great opportunity to engage our community in the “big bets” process.  Co-chairs Jen Drake and Larry Geri offered process updates, we reviewed the website, and we invited attendees into an activity focused on supporting two populations of potential student populations: “career starters” and “career accelerators” (taken from The Differentiated University). Career starters are 18-24 year old students focused on their professional lives who view colleges as a “stepping stone.”  Career accelerators are working adult students who believe college credentials will improve their chances of obtaining higher paying jobs. 

Pictures below are the answers generated by SAL staff participants to the question “what are your BEST ideas for supporting” career starters (orange paper) and career accelerators (green paper). 

Coordinating Group Meeting 2/3/2020

The Coordinating Group met Monday, February 3rd; 23 people attended.  Below are photos from the meeting.

Feb 3, 2020 Coordinating Group Agenda

We talked about how, because this initiative is coming from the Provost’s office, the process is overseeing Student and Academic Life–that’s our sphere of influence.  We have partners in all areas of campus, and many representatives from other divisions are members of the Coordinating Group, and our focus for the work resides in Student and Academic Life (SAL).

The Evergreen State College organizational chart (high level)

One of the exercises we did was around model generation within constraints.  The constraints given were to build curricular frameworks for these different potential student populations (below).

Model generation exercise with constraints around potential student populations
“Thumbs,” a voting exercise (that we actually didn’t use this time, but can be helpful for checking in with a group)
The Parking Lot
Index card prompts at the end of the meeting.
One of the models generated over the last few Coordinating Group meetings.
One of the models generated over the last few Coordinating Group meetings.

Examples from model generation exercise

Kathleen Eamon, Karen Gaul, Laurie Meeker – 2.3.20 meeting

Thought experiment on how to serve specific students: 

  • Wouldn’t it be great if adult learners mentors mentoring the career starters
  • Engaging adult learners, strong mentorship programs FOR the adult learners, community and professionals, linking with external partners
  • TRIAD? Support intergenerational relationships
  • Heavy, integrated advising (advisors who work as team, or capacities to do financial aid and registration)

 Hybrid online and low residency, high intensity… options for adult learners

  • Especially exciting for Interdisciplinary MFA, but also possible for humanities
  • Commuter Lounge on main campus – the people that need, lockers, facilities, kitchen
  • Smart housing choices

Supposed to be creating new poem, but…

  • Catalyst HUB – already happening, job description director/fellow/faculty posted soon
  • Especially good for 1-24 Career Starters

Transfers – are they Career starters? – on track, know where they want to go

  • When students run things – speakers series, film series, student run, conference, college supported… reframing student activities around academics; study – is this energy building or non-sustainable? Building capacity important. 

Minoritized students – culturally relevant pedagogy and curriculum – across the curriculum;

  • What if the college committed to being an anti-racist institution? Julia Metzger asked this in a summer institute? What would that look like? How would that commitment shape the curriculum and the student experience.
  • Serving the students who are already here = 58% LGBTQ and attracting more
  • Intentionally building community and culture beyond a LGBTQ center, academically… a curriculum… central commitment of the college? Faculty hiring? Or building faculty capacity?

Homework

Explore: Uncharted Territory: A Guide to Reimagining Higher Education from the d.school at Stanford

Coordinating Group Meeting 1/22/2020

The Coordinating Group met Wednesday, 1/22, for discussion and model generation; 24 people attended. The group revisited data from various sources, including Institutional Research at Evergreen and data provided in previous meetings, all available here on the Resources page. Wednesday’s meeting was intended to lay the groundwork for work to be further explored in the upcoming Monday, 1/27, meeting.

Call for work group participants!

Please consider joining of the following work groups. The work will begin as soon as we can coordinate schedules.  Thank you!

  • Ideas Group: Folks in this group will comb through all ideas received in this “big bets” process to make sure all ideas are represented and considered as we gather data and move forward.
  • Student Engagement Group: This group will identify and carry out strategies for maximal student engagement in the “big bets” process.

If you’re interested in joining either group, please email Emily Gray at graye@evergreen.edu, email Big Bets at bigbets@evergreen.edu.

Ideas from the Blue Sky Conversations: Fall 2020