I am four months into my Aspen Fellowship, and about to leave for the second convening of the 2019-2020 cohort. The Aspen Institute offers robust, rigorous, and challenging professional development for community college professionals who want to be transformational leaders. It is an honor to be part of the current cohort, full of passionate, dedicated, committed, brilliant community college leaders who will indeed transform colleges across the country.
39 of us are gathering Wednesday afternoon at a conference center outside of Washington, D.C., where we will learn, eat, talk, practice, present, and learn some more, until we all scatter for home Sunday evening.
Among our homework assignments for this second convening was to develop and debut to our colleagues a 5-minute presentation around data. We are each asked to tell a story with data from our college as a means of pitching a high-level, big-picture idea to an external partner. In essence, this homework is a rehearsal for our April “capstone” presentation that is to be 15 well-prepared, well-conceived, well-rehearsed, well-timed minutes, complete with compelling visuals – and perhaps video. Again we will pitch a high-level, transformative idea that has the potential to alter the trajectory of our students and support significant improvement in our student success outcomes – however our students define their success, whether it be a better job, transfer without loss of credits to a four-year institution, or both.
Additional homework included reading The Transfer Playbook and completing the self-assessment tool, as well as reading The Workforce Playbook and completing that self-assessment tool. My thanks to my colleagues at ACC who offered ideas and perspective on both assessments.
So – wish me well. I’ll let you know how it goes and some of the things I learn when I write Chapter Four of my Aspen Journey.