I’ve spent my day writing “one pagers”. What is a one pager, you ask? I’ll tell you.
We report on our work in a variety of ways to a variety of entities. And one of those ways is an annual institutional effectiveness report that goes to the Board of Trustees. It’s submitted by the president and is a comprehensive look (well – as comprehensive as we can make it) at what we’ve done in the year. The 2017-2018 report was almost 200 pages long.
The report is organized around the college’s strategic plan goals (i.e., equity and access, persistence and engagement, completion and transition to employment and/or transfer, and effective and efficient operations and infrastructure). Within each of those goals we write one page (usually) on various initiatives and programs. These “one pagers” have a prescribed format (Background, Current Activities [2018-2019], and Next Steps [2019-2020]).
Writing a one pager may require data gathering, historical research, making some phone calls, and asking others for help. Because brevity is not my strong suit, my one pagers are sometimes two pagers (and occasionally two-and-half pagers). This week – and all day today – I’ve edited, or updated, or crafted from scratch, or finalized one pagers on the following topics.
- Adult Education
- Eight-week programs and innovative scheduling
- Block-scheduled Institutes
- Corequisites in INRW (Integrated Reading and Writing)
- Equity and Diversity in Faculty Hiring
- English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and the IEP (Intensive English Program)
- Events in Academic Programs
- Faculty Mentoring of Students
- Fields of Study
- Instructional Programs Quality and Reorganization
- New Student Welcome Center
- Saving Students Money on Textbooks
- Texas A&M/Chevron Engineering Academy
Of that list, three were written largely by others so my role was editing and formatting. But the other ten required mostly “from scratch” writing. And while I like to write, I’m running out of steam.
So as we move to the end of another month, I’ll tell you that we are doing a whole lot of good work here at ACC, and we are capturing it in dozens of one pagers written by dedicated folks who believe in the work. Celebrate with me, and enjoy the closing of the month of June.