Town Halls

Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 22, 2017

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 16:50:02 +0000

Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 22, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/25/2017 - 10:50

Town hall, British Studies Room, Norlin Library

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Q. How many topics will Academic Futures take on?

A. There may be 10, 20, 50 great ideas emerging – not all will get meetings, but all will be recorded.

Comment: Very important questions are in the atmosphere, but often decision are made when people are not here (holidays, summer). Please don’t do that.

Q. How are you getting students involved?

A. Student groups are engaged, departmental meetings, open town halls specifically for students. Advisors are also involved – and they often have the solutions.

Suggestion: Students canvassing students can work. Tabling at the UMC

Q. Website sheet points to a discussion about the campus growth. Is that going to be part of the conversation?

A. The nuts and bolts of ‘capping the size”, no. A proposition that we want a campus committed to X, Y and Z (which necessitates slower growth), yes. Though it should be said that our growth is not as out-of-control as others.

Comment: How do you maintain a sense of community, if we keep growing?

Comment: Also a question of are we controlling growth or is it happening to us.

Comment: Recognition that student growth – increased faculty. But we don’t have offices and lab space.

Comment: Same is true for students. Dorms, yes. But the other places (libraries, gyms, teaching and lab space) are lagging.

Comment: To educator the whole student. We’ve got students sitting on the floor in Chem 140. That’s not helping student learning.

Comment: Transformative educational experiences. It can take very different forms. That doesn’t necessarily mean a reinvention of CU. It doesn’t always happen in the classroom. There are other platforms (examples): 1) Race and popular culture class, 2) Prison program, 3) media archeology, 4) Shakespeare co-labs, 5) global seminar, 6) RAPs. How do we create an environment that all faculty can do this? Not always interdisciplinary. But all approaches in general are small group experiences. Students come away with horizons completely broadened. Smaller, intense educational experiences.

Response: This process is also about highlighting excellent models. Today, we’re good. But think 10-, 20-years out. What are our obstacles to keeping on doing this work.

Comment: Socially, we are in a context where liberal arts education isn’t valued anymore (At a liberal arts college I attended), we often discussed what we were there for, but we don’t have those conversations here. Critical thinking, discoveries, sometimes difficult. Would be nice to provide some scaffolding outside the classroom. Some we facilitated and some self-generated.

Comment on the Imperatives: What does it mean to be a top Innovation University? Innovation thinking and process?

Comment: At smaller schools, easier to explore. Today, our students come in to get jobs. How can we provide opportunities for discovery along the way?

Comment: We need to reinvent the process of inviting faculty to come to CU as a line-faculty in teaching. At Iowa State University, we have a model. There, faculty can choose to work towards tenure in teaching (while continuing their research). A contract is made between faculty member and leadership. At tenure, the faculty member is evaluated primarily on teaching. At that point, faculty can ask for contract to be reopened and redesigned with a new position description that may now emphasize research. So the focus can shift.

Comment: There is a growing body of research on Truth and Reconciliation, borne out of the genocidal conflicts in Africa. The goal is to make the massacre known to all people throughout the nation and then work towards conflict resolution. Brown University started a Truth and reconciliation process on campus to enhance campus communication, particularly with regards to transparency.

To find out more about how to get involved, visit the Academic Futures website at

www.colorado.edu/academicfutures

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Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 20, 2017

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:36:10 +0000

Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 20, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/21/2017 - 09:36

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Q. How do you keep the conversation positive?

A. You design the conversation in such a way that its focus sustains aspirational thinking. You give people a place (e.g., a parking lot) to let them outline the negative, but you don’t talk about it.

Q. HI look at this through the lens of staff. (I’m a member of Staff Council.) How do you suggest that Staff Council engage around a white paper with regards to the mission of the university?

A. It’s up to you. (We don’t want to be too directive here) We all support the mission of the university. What we would like to hear: 1) great ideas (on any subject) and 2) how you see that staff could become empowered to support the mission.

Comment (abridged): I love undergraduate advising. Advisors have a different perspective on how students have changed. [At the core is how to] find a balance between beliefs and approaches to education. Faculty and advisors need to meet on common ground. Advisors are the liaison between students and faculty. Part of developmental advising is meeting students where they are, which can be hard because of roadblocks at the university. Two core needs: 1) International students need more and different support (crafted with input from advisors) and 2) Students with disabilities need to be better served at all levels.

Comment: We talk about meeting undergraduate students where they are (with their technical capacities). But we can’t just accept that we meet them there and accept where they are. There is a balance between where they are and that the university standards and norms are.

Comment: I would hope that when we think about interdisciplinary, it’s meaningful and not fluff. It can’t just sound good. Some of our current certificates and minors do not connect the dots.

Comment: What we’ve said about students above applied to our new faculty as well. They are different today than 20 years ago and need different support. We (CEAS) have a large number of incoming international faculty who need support integrating into teaching and research.

Comment: Students need to be engaged in Academic Futures. Perhaps we can set up some coaching for UG/Grad that paints a picture of how to become an engaged member of the community.

Q. Are we benchmarking against peer institutions?

A. It happens all of the time, in an ongoing manner. The Provost is in contact with his peers. But no university is taking on this kind of effort in this manner.

Comment: Students can’t find enough research opportunities.

A&S is highlighting this same issue.

Other places (like CSU) are doing it better than we do.

We need to make Research part of teaching, so it’s not a tradeoff

To find out more about how to get involved, visit the Academic Futures website at

www.colorado.edu/academicfutures

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Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 19, 2017

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:33:10 +0000

Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 19, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/21/2017 - 09:33

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Q. Process: What do you want to see from white papers?

A. Vision and Barriers (not solutions).

Q. How do we hear about the meetings?

A. The primary avenues for information are the ��񱦵� Today and the Academic Futures website. In addition, Listeners play an important role to get information out to their units.

Q. Scope: Should we talk about student life and diversity?

A. Yes, and our info will feed into other strategic efforts on campus, like Inclusive Excellence.

Comment: Things are still a bit amorphous. I’m sure other faculty will jump on board when it’s more concrete.

Comment: One of our greatest challenges is that our students need slices of deep research and learning – and not an entire semester. Students are not ready for deep hard learning and we need to recognize that and meet their needs. Short efforts (weeks) on specific topics or needed skills.

A. We seem to being a fairly good job of this on the research side (e.g., Data Blitz). We need an equivalent on the education side.

Idea: Creating social networks in the class rooms that allow students to find cohesion and a cohort.

To find out more about how to get involved, visit the Academic Futures website at

www.colorado.edu/academicfutures

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Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 14, 2017

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 16:10:00 +0000

Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 14, 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/20/2017 - 10:10

Discovery Learning Center

N=12

Intro by Jeff Cox

Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
Laying out of fall work
Role of Committee and Report

Q. How big should we think? Can we work to change policy at NSF?

A. We listen to everything but we can only control what we can control.

Q. When do you want the white papers?

A. We would love to have the white papers earlier, rather than later. We can use them to drive the conversations and themed discussions. To be considered by the Committee, they need to be submitted by December 15.

Comment: Given the upset over the A&S Dean, people may be afraid to bring ideas to the table, for fear of flying in the face of the old guard.

A. While the A&S situation is different, we are really talking about building trust. Senior leadership is committed to openness and transparency. Let’s work together to ask the large questions. It can be scary. But that shouldn’t stop us. We want our university to be stable, but not stagnant.

Q. I work in an arena where I innovate and improve administrative processes. Is this a conversation for the AF?

A. Might rephrase it as something like “How do we develop a culture that facilitates elevation innovation to the campus level?” And it’s not just administrative processes, but research and teaching innovation as well.

To find out more about how to get involved, visit the Academic Futures website at

www.colorado.edu/academicfutures

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