Minutes - Town Hall, Sept 20, 2017
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鈥檛 talk about it.
Q. HI look at this through the lens of staff. (I鈥檓 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鈥檚 up to you. (We don鈥檛 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鈥檛 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鈥檚 meaningful and not fluff. It can鈥檛 just sound good. Some of our current certificates and minors do not connect the dots.
Comment: What we鈥檝e 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鈥檛 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鈥檚 not a tradeoff
To find out more about how to get involved, visit the Academic Futures website at