Best Practices Task Force

Minutes of the meeting on September 18, 2002

Partners Project grants
Best Practices Projects
Strategic Briefings

Present: Peter Bankart (Wabash College), Patti Brown (Denison University), Roger Casey* (Rollins College), Lesley Davis (DePauw University), Elizabeth Hayford (Associated Colleges of the Midwest), Anne Ledvina (Birmingham-Southern College), Sue Mennicke (Southwestern University), Blake Michael (Ohio Wesleyan University), Michael Monahan (Macalester College), Jo Ellen Parker (Great Lakes Colleges Association, Inc.), Eva Posfay (Carleton College), Patrick Quade (St. Olaf College), Milton Reigelman (Centre College), Daniel Sack (Associated Colleges of the Midwest), Jennifer Wieland (Associated Colleges of the Midwest)

*Members of the GPP Coordinating Committee

Welcome and Introductions

Dan Sack welcomed the Task Force (TF) and asked them to introduce themselves. The TF has one new member, Lesley Davis of DePauw University. Dan then outlined the agenda, with three major items for discussion: 1) Evaluation of the Partners Project Grants that were awarded in the summer of 2001 as a follow-up to the Best Practices Conference at Lake Forest College, including a discussion of next steps, particularly dissemination; 2) Discussion and evaluation of the ten proposals for Best Practices Projects; and 3) Introduction to Strategic Briefings, one of the new initiatives proposed for the second phase of the Global Partners Project (GPP), which was recently renewed by the Mellon Foundation for a second three-year period.

Partners Project Grants

Dan drew the task force’s attention to the final reports of the Partners Projects, and asked the task force to evaluate whether the projects achieved the outlined goals. Roger Casey stated that he didn’t think the projects achieved what the TF had hoped, particularly in the area of innovation. He is still waiting for something new and creative. Elizabeth Hayford wondered if it’s always necessary to look for something new. She suggested that some of the old ideas aren’t bad, and sometimes it’s more important to be constructive than innovative. Jo Ellen Parker noted, however, that because “new models” are an important component of GPP as a whole, she would like to see an attempt to create models that is both innovative and replicable.

Dissemination

Pat Quade said that a plan for dissemination had been an important project criterion for the TF when the proposals were considered, and stated that these plans seem to be inadequate in the reports. He also felt that the pairing of institutions for “collaborative purposes” was forced and that collaboration hasn’t been applicable to all forty-two GPP institutions. Dan agreed that dissemination is the biggest problem for these grants; the recipients are consistently asking how to get people to look at the work they’ve done.  

Dan felt that the Coe/Monmouth project on Orientation/Reorientation Programming for Exchange Students was very successful because the two institutions had a shared problem. The project was truly innovative for them, although it might not be innovative for all of the forty-two colleges. Sue Mennicke suggested that it is hard to find something that is innovative for every campus.

Jo Ellen suggested a publication along the lines of Policy Perspectives as a method for dissemination. Creating such a publication would involve a round table discussion on a specific issue leading to well-written documents. Roger was thinking along the same lines as Jo Ellen, and said that the conference at Lake Forest was excellent because it provided an opportunity for people to sit down together and talk.

Pat suggested using campus liaisons as a built-in structure for additional dissemination because the liaisons know their campus needs. He wondered if it might be possible to expand the ACM Liaison Officers Meeting (held annually at Lake Forest) to include a few more people to discuss GPP issues.

Jo Ellen observed that there are two challenges involved in dissemination: 1) Sharing information from people who have done projects with those who haven’t; and 2) Getting people who work on the same issue to talk. Anne Ledvina agreed with Jo Ellen and mentioned that she had been looking at the proposals for the Best Practices Projects with the idea of gathering people working on the same issue. She sees three major themes in the new grant proposals: global citizenship, re-entry programming, and internationalizing the curriculum. Anne proposed having three seminars to discuss these issues and develop models.

Elizabeth noted that overlapping networks could make a roundtable or a seminar feasible; these are good models for discussion, and eventually for dissemination, but the structure must be focused. Mike Monahan suggested that GPP could encourage publication of the results of such a seminar in a very active way. This could be done through GPP specifically, or the project coordinators could publish through CIEE or another existing journal.

Dan asked the TF to think about how they personally would want to learn more about these projects. Patti Brown mentioned that a listserv generally gets the fastest response, but personal networking and conversations at meetings are often the most effective methods of sharing information and project ideas. Anne suggested that publication is also important because it leads to a wider impact outside the consortia when models are on paper.

Reports on Partners Projects

The TF then discussed the eight Partners Projects.

Birmingham-Southern/Centenary/Hendrix/Millsaps

Anne explained that the purpose of this project was to recruit international students to the four colleges by bringing six Latin American high school advisors to the campuses in April. Each campus gave an orientation and had a day or two with the guests to discuss the opportunities available for international students.

The project was a success for a number of reasons. For example, at Birmingham-Southern, the Off-Campus Study Office is now more involved in recruiting international students. Also, the visits led to the creation of friendships and personal relationships with the advisors. Over the next two years, it will be interesting to see which of the four colleges enrolls Latin American students as a result of these visits. Anne noted that the colleges developed this project idea at the Lake Forest Conference and had not had prior contact.

Dan commented that, like the Birmingham-Southern project, a number of the Partners Projects should bear fruit down the road. To this end, several projects were given additional funding to continue their work over the next year.

Carleton

The Carleton project to develop a video and a companion booklet has been given additional funding. Eva Posfay noted that the project is progressing slowly but well. The project has been a lot of work, particularly the technological aspects, but it has been valuable for different parts of campus to work together. All forty-two GPP schools will get a copy of the video and the booklet, both of which are being designed to be adaptable to other schools. Eva added that the idea for the project was developed at the Lake Forest Conference.

Centenary

Dan commented that the curricular impact of the Centenary project is unclear.

Coe/Monmouth

Dan noted that the Coe/Monmouth project is another that has been given additional funding. It has been a successful project and very useful in building relationships; Coe and Monmouth continue to look for new and different ways to work together. Elizabeth commented that Coe and Monmouth have not been able to extend their collaboration beyond the two schools.

Davidson/(St. Olaf)

Dan explained that Davidson is looking for ways to develop its project on campus. The college didn’t get the follow-up grant from the federal government that they had hoped for, but inviting Jolene Barjasteh (of St. Olaf) to campus was a successful endeavor.

Lake Forest

Dan noted that the Lake Forest student symposium was effective and can be an annual event; the college is currently attempting to work the symposium into its curriculum. Roger added that he found this project to be the most replicable of the group, and he recommended a cross-campus symposium as a means of disseminating the project.

Lawrence/Southwestern

Sue noted that the Lawrence/Southwestern project accomplished the proposed goals; the project started with a day and a half long meeting, which led to a paper. The future goal of the project is to get students to reflect critically on their time abroad; the planners would like to get a broad range of people interested in this approach, hoping that it might lead to virtual conversations and/or to another day-long discussion. The paper that came out of the initial meeting may be useful to other colleges as a starting point for similar discussions. It’s possible that the paper could be published in Frontier, but Sue noted that the group might wait to publish until after the second round of discussion. The document will be distributed to all GPP institutions.

Rhodes/St. Olaf/Southwestern

Sue also spoke about the project on Service-Learning (S-L) and commented that the March meeting was very useful and led the three colleges to discover that they are in very different places with their approaches to S-L. St. Olaf is working on plans for S-L programs, including looking at short-term programs and the potential for collaboration at the Rhodes S-L site in Honduras. The three colleges submitted a proposal to present the project at AAC&U, and they continue to work on how to position S-L in an academic context.

Best Practices Projects

Roger opened the discussion by asking about the possibility of combining some of the proposals along the lines of the three themes Anne mentioned earlier: global citizenship, re-entry programming, and internationalizing the curriculum. Mike wondered if the TF would get negative feedback from the proposers if we forced them to combine projects. Jo Ellen agreed that the TF doesn’t want people who submitted proposals to feel misled by a sudden change in criteria. A middle ground between awarding project funding and denying funding/forcing collaboration might be instituting proposal development seminars.

Anne suggested that if the TF could fund a project to bring people from all three consortia together, it would give benefit to forty-two schools instead of just a few schools. The TF could address the proposers who have an interest in a certain issue and suggest that a seminar open to all forty-two schools be developed instead of funding their specific proposals. The proposers would become the planners of the seminar. This could work well since all the proposals seem flexible and need refinement. Anne also noted that networks and models, both excellent tools for dissemination, are created with and through seminars.

 Roger agreed with Anne’s suggestion for a seminar, but Pat worried about the integrity of the TF in the eyes of the groups that wrote these proposals based on the criteria. For example, the Macalester proposal isn’t collaborative, but it’s an important project and would have a tremendous impact. Peter Bankart noted that he would like the TF to fund both strong individual projects and seminars.

Review of Proposals

The TF discussed each of the ten project proposals. After reviewing them in detail, task force members agreed to evaluate the ideas and the questions raised in the proposals, consider linkages, and determine rankings for the proposals. Mike suggested incorporating comments and suggestions for revisions into the rankings. Elizabeth recommended that conversation continue via the listserv with comments on the projects sent to the entire group. After sufficient discussion, an advisory selection committee could be developed to make the final determinations. Blake Michael suggested that Patti, Sue, and an ACM Task Force member could serve as the selection committee since they don’t have proposals on the table.

Pat summarized that the awarding of grants now seems to be a two-stage process with some proposals being funded as they are and others being funded if they accept revisions/combinations as suggested by the Task Force. Elizabeth agreed that this is the case.

Strategic Briefings

Jo Ellen introduced Strategic Briefings, one of the new initiatives for the second phase of the Global Partners Project. Leadership level discussions are necessary for GPP initiatives to take place; otherwise, the Project’s impact is limited. Therefore, GPP will attempt to leverage work that has been done with work that will be done into strategic discussions for campus leaders. Essentially, these Strategic Briefings will be think-tank experiences for senior campus leaders, including presidents, deans, trustees, and other administrators who think on a long-term level. The goal is to create a serious consciousness about international education and to form new bonds. It is anticipated that each Strategic Briefing will result in a white paper for the larger community