Initial Publication Date: June 4, 2009

Desirable Support

  • Traveling Workshops (tell us about them)
  • Information about other departments' administrative structure and history
  • Information on field trips/sites
  • Information on regional activities (including departmental seminars)
  • Compilation of data from curricula sessions (Carol has added these to the program page)
  • Citations/bibliography of resources that the leaders mentioned
  • Getting buy-in hotline: if you would like help getting buy-in from your colleagues, email Carol and she'll send it to just the workshop leaders or email Cathy and she'll send it to whichever leader(s) she thinks will be most helpful
  • Each other.... share our successes and failures: email strong_programs@serc.carleton.edu
  • Information on how many departments have participated in Building Strong Geoscience Departments (and Cutting Edge) workshops
  • Checkpoint to see how we're doing -- prompt the email list to send progress reports once/semester
  • Letter to Presidents/Provosts recognizing participants' contributions to this workshop (and a copy for ourselves)

Lessons Learned

  • We are not alone; we have lots in common
  • Each of us is doing some things well
  • Simple ideas can launch complex action plans with profound impacts
  • Think proactively
  • It's important to consider multiple perspectives: colleagues, students, alumni, and administrators
  • Meeting regional colleagues is valuable

Recommendations

  • More workshops (including the Traveling Workshops)
  • Workshop on Environmental Science/Environmental Studies/Geosciences and how they fit together
  • Export this workshop to related disciplines - or at least share with them what we did and what worked well
  • Update the list of characteristics of thriving departments
  • Workshop on how to be an effective department head/chair/leader (CCAS has such an annual workshop)
  • Workshop on working effectively with administration