NWP Site Leaders

“Site Directors Talk About Sustaining Their Sites”

July 14, 2011 NWP Radio Show: “Site Directors Talk About Sustaining Their Sites”

 

I’m still buzzing from the energy of last night’s NWP Radio episode during which three site directors shared the ways in which their site leadership is thinking about site sustainability including sources of funding they plan to tap, ideas for programming and strategic planning with site leaders, and a variety of approaches to making their sites ever more visible and essential to the mission of the university.    You can find the archive of the show here in NWP Connect here along with links to many of the resources that were mentioned, or listen at NWP Radio at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nwp_radio/2011/07/14/planning-for-the-future-directors-talk-about-sustaining-the  I’m thinking this would be a great planning and/or pre-retreat resource for the many site leadership teams that are planning retreats in August.

The show featured Lil Brannon, director, UNC Charlotte WP, Tom Meyer, director, Hudson Valley WP, and Lisa Rougeou, director, Northwestern State University WP, Louisiana sharing the thinking and the  work that has grown out of conversations with site leadership over the past several months.  And as Mike Mathis noted they covered three key areas around which leadership team are simultaneously organizing and facilitating inquiry: 

                                Sustaining the site’s TC community
                                Sustaining work for the community
                                Sustaining availability of university faculty for leading the site

 

In my recent conversations with site leaders, I’ve heard of a variety of smart ways in which site teams are organizing around these areas of work.  So I want both to point to this episode of NWP Radio as a terrific and inspirational resource and also invite a conversation about the ways in which sites are engaged in similar work.  Looking forward to hearing from you all.

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Comments

Posted by Patricia Scanlan
July 22, 2011 at 12:40pm

Hello Pat and other writing project leaders,

I appreciated listening to the radio show this week as well.  I found it supportive to feel the energy of these site stories, and I felt affirmed that our journey is similar to that of other sites.  Our Leadership Team, 8 of us, had a one day retreat in April, and we've been meeting once a month since then to continue our work toward site sustainability.  We met yesterday for two hours, which of course was not enough time.  But I feel like we're making progress.  This work is recursive; two steps forward and one back.  But my notes below reflect some patterns that are emerging in our conversations, our questions, and our To Do list. 

Below is a memo that I wrote to our Leadership Team after yesterday's meeting.

Leadership Team July 21 – After Thoughts by Pat Scanlan

Sustainability Work

July 22, 2011

In an effort to capture the good thinking that we continue to do and in hopes of helping us to see some progress or pattern in our work toward sustainability, here are some thoughts/threads that are emerging for me.  Also, I’ve embedded a few questions which we seem to continue to raise and which we can use to guide our work.

Thoughts/threads

  • Partnerships that are formed in order to provide financial support for the project need to be with districts/businesses/foundations/other agencies that share our values and our mission.  Partnerships are win-win arrangements.  We have much to contribute to any partnership.  Our alliances need to be mutually beneficial.
  •  In order to develop partnerships, we need to know who we are and what we can do.  Although as a leadership team, we “know” who we are, putting this down in language that can be communicated to a general public is important.  The “what we can do” part is still emerging . . . we can do a lot, but strategically, what are our priorities as a project? What work is THE MOST IMPORTANT for us to engage in at this time?  What work CAN we engage in at this time given the teacher leaders available?
  • We’ve thought a lot about the strengths and our challenges internal to FVWP.  And we’ve begun to discuss the external opportunities and threats.  One of the challenges of this latter conversation is that the political landscape of public education in Wisconsin is shifting right now, and it will take a bit of time for us to begin the answer questions about the context in which we live/work.  What will professional development look like in area schools?  How will professional development be financed?  Where is the professional development money in districts with whom we’d like to partner? Who manages those monies and who makes the decisions about the kinds of professional development that needs to be done?

Ongoing efforts to build partnerships and/or to secure financial support

  • Meet with district curriculum directors. Scheduled or already held: Oshkosh, New London, Neenah, BerlinJ, Clintonville.  Still to be scheduled?  Southern tier districts such as Slinger, Campbellsport, Beaver Dam, West Bend, etc.    Western tier districts such as Omro, Winneconne, etc.  New London has expressed interest in having a 2012 Summer Institute which serves several rural districts.
  • Investigate the possibility of co-writing a grant to do professional development work with CESA 7.
  • Develop a proposal to provide a writing workshop at Fox Cities Book Festival.  The primary purposes for this are making us more visible in the community and building a relationship with a group who does similar work and has similar values.
  • Investigate other funding sources, such as grants from private donors or area businesses. Funding sources we thought about include:  Appleton Area Community Foundation, Oshkosh Area Community Foundation, UW Oshkosh Foundation, JJ Keller.
  • Create a revised webpresence that reflects who we are and what we do.
  • Continue to keep our options open for building partnerships and securing financial support.  Recognize that our revenue streams may be several smaller ones or one large one.  Diversification has its benefits; so does one big sugar daddy who thinks like we do.

After you’ve read this, please add your own thoughts/threads and questions in the space below.  Thanks.

Next meeting: Tuesday, August 16 from 12-5 in 205NE.  Nichole will provide lunch.  This will be a working meeting to: 1) Write a description of who we are, 2) Develop a proposal to provide a writing workshop at the Fox Cities Book Festival, and 3) To continue to share information/insights from our meetings with district administrators which help us to better understand the external/contextual issues (opportunities and threats) which surround our Sustainability Efforts.  4) Other needs which emerge from the team.

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