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Learnings have been both individual and collective focused on broad areas such
as leadership development, processes affecting institutional change, the
organization of higher education, models for collaborative leadership, and
relationship building. The national workshops and home team activities have
contributed to these learnings. Items mentioned by project participants are
briefly summarized below:
General
- The challenges of institutional change may seem unique but many of the
issues and challenges are common to higher education across the country.
National workshops/dialogues contributed to this understanding REAL change is possible but requires faculty, staff and administrative
commitment
Leadership/Professional Development
- A series of home team workshops and activities focused on developing
leadership skills.
- Attention was given to communication and quality
conversations, relationship building and understanding organizational change.
- Workshops were lead by Paul Axtell, Laverne Barrett, Richard Durst, Bill
Drath.
Susan Fritz, evaluator for our project, has collected data on outcomes
Collaborative Leadership
- More difficult than it appears; requires energy and commitment; will
not be appropriate for every situation takes time, takes relationship building
has important implications for the classroom the success of learning communities in the classroom can help our
thinking about organizational direction and development can provide another way of looking at traditional organizations (e.g.,
shared governance may look like a hindrance or obstacle from the top down
management perspective but could be very useful within a collaborative
framework)
- Much to learn in making shared governance more productive--and more
conducive to constructive change.
- Shared governance should extend beyond the university and acknowledge the
stake our different constituencies already have in us.
- Requires a trust in administration and a respected leader to get the
right people involved and keep them involved.
- Shared Governance has potential but takes years to incorporate into the
university culture.
Organizations
Experimenting with collaborative leadership models has been
frustrating in the absence of a specific project; workshop 5 (from the abstract to the
concrete) did not move us in that direction.
Clarifications and understandings on how higher education organizations
work
Exploration of alternative methods for resource distributions in higher
education (e.g.., dollar gap analysis)
What it means to be an engaged institution.
Esprit de corps
Opportunity for dialogue/discussion; brought people together from various
disciplines who normally/regularly do not interact and discovered they had
more in common than expected lot of talented people who genuinely care about the university and its
future; forward thinking, imaginative, and interested.
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