READY OR NOT
Global Challenges, College Learning, and America’s Promise

AAC&U is pleased to offer the POD Network Institute in conjunction with the 2009 Annual Meeting.  The POD Network will also sponsor a Pre-Meeting Workshop on Wednesday, January 21, and a session on Thursday, January 22. (More information is below.)   

We invite you to learn more about the POD Network at www.podnetwork.org.

Multicultural Organization Development Institute

Fulfilling the Promise:
Using Multicultural Organizational Development to Transform Higher Education Institutions
January 20-21, 2009

About the Institute
Increasingly, diversity and inclusion efforts in higher education have moved beyond the periphery of our academic and institutional missions to form the foundation of a new framework for excellence that integrates diversity and inclusion as a critical component of institutional excellence.  As noted in AAC&U’s initiative on “Making Excellence Inclusive,” the future requires us to re-envision diversity and inclusion as critical processes through which we create new forms and levels of excellence in teaching, research, learning, student development, workforce development, institutional functioning and more.

Practices derived from multicultural organization development (MCOD) provide frameworks useful in aligning our institutions’ mission of teaching, research, and service with the imperative to create diverse, equitable, and inclusive colleges and universities.

Institute participants will utilize case examples from higher education institutions that have implemented such MCOD efforts.  We will identify stages multicultural organizations move through as they become more socially diverse; examine how to use MCOD frameworks to guide organizational planning, assessment, implementation and evaluation of change plans; and work together to adapt MCOD frameworks to create a data-driven, systemic process suitable to the unique needs of a campus.

Participants will explore how to promote the interpersonal and system dynamics essential to institutional change efforts.

Finally, we will share resource materials for envisioning, directing, and sustaining long- term systemic change efforts related to diversity in higher education.

Institute conveners: 
Mathew L. Ouellett, Director, Center for Teaching, and Linda Marchesani, Director, Workplace Learning and Development – both of the University of Massachusetts Amherst  

More information is available on the POD Network website.

* The Institute will be held all day on Tuesday, January 20, and half-day on Wednesday, January 21.

The following workshop and session are also presented by the POD Network.

Pre-Meeting Workshop on Wednesday, January 21

Strategies for Systematically Improving Teaching and Learning on Your Campus
Colleges and universities are striving to improve student learning, not only to respond to the outcry for more institutional accountability, but also to meet the challenges of rising enrollments and fewer resources, new technologies that allow new pedagogies, and student bodies with different backgrounds and expectations. Responding to these changes, three seasoned faculty developers will ask participants to consider strategies for teaching improvement on their own campuses and will describe how teaching centers and other instructional development initiatives can advance student learning at both the individual and the organizational level. This workshop is designed to help academic leaders who are responsible for faculty development address their institutions’ strategic priorities. The workshop will include guidelines that leaders can use to make their own teaching centers and instructional development initiatives more effective in meeting the local and global challenges facing higher education.

Constance Ewing Cook, Associate Vice Provost and Executive Director, Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan; Peter Felten, Director, Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, Elon University; Virginia S. Lee, Senior Consultant, Virginia S. Lee & Associates, LLC, and  President, Professional & Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education

Session on Thursday, January 22

Improving Teaching and Learning:  Faculty, Academic Leaders, and Faculty Developers as Partners
This interactive session is designed to assist faculty and administrators interested in establishing and/or sustaining programs to stimulate, support, and reward faculty efforts to enhance student learning; and creating strong and effective partnerships among faculty, academic leaders, and faculty developers to enhance teaching, learning and faculty development.

Constance Ewing Cook, Associate Vice Provost and Executive Director, Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan; Virginia S. Lee, Senior Consultant, Virginia S. Lee & Associates, LLC, and President, POD Network; Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Associate Provost and Director, Office of Faculty Development, University of Massachusetts Amherst