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The GUR program actually can do
what liberal education is supposed to do
which is teach people to think in different ways
and to approach questions from different angles.
So the conference was a lot of fun and eye opening.
We, Johann and I, thought that we were coming
up with something totally new, something
completely… we were so excited because,
“Wow, nobody’s ever done anything like this
before!” And it turns out that no, ok,
we’re not that cool.
We have come up with an idea that other people
have come up with before.
They’re using it for a lot of different things, this
faculty learning community type of idea.
The conference was really helpful in seeing
what other people had done, how these things
were applied, what they’re useful for and,
actually, what they’re not useful for.
And they’re not useful for things where you
have a definite goal in mind because it’s a good
chance that between 5 or 8 people you’re gonna
come up with a different answer than what
somebody wants.
Our group is all about flexibility and that’s
everything that it’s designed for, is to get,
you know, go off topic and start talking about
new things that apply to what people are doing
in the room and how it might apply to different classes.
We had a lot of great discussions with Leslie Ahrens
about how to facilitate, and that’s one of
the things that I got out of it, especially,
was how to be a facilitator.
If there are group dynamics that people, that
are making people awkward, what can you do
to kind of diffuse the situation, make sure
everybody feels heard, make sure everybody
feels not only heard but listened to and
that everybody has their own voice and
can contribute and feel safe in here.
So far we haven’t had much problem with that,
and so even though that was one of the
big things that I got out of the conference,
was how to be a facilitator, we really haven’t
had to employ any of those skills because
everybody's gotten along so well.
But it was great to see so many different
groups of folks who were at the conference:
from the Berkeley School of Music,
we were from Western, there were a bunch of
folks from Washington who were there,
the CIA was there – the people who train the
agents, they’re trying to do faculty learning
communities amongst all the trainers so that
they can come up with new ideas.
So, I think it was a really diverse group of folks,
really fun, great friendships were made and
I’m still in contact with half a dozen folks from
that conference and we’re swapping ideas and
seeing how their communities are going,
how our community is going and from what I
can tell ours has been one of the most successful
of the products to come out of that workshop,
this has been a really successful one so far.
For me the most important benefit was that
we were able to continue to develop our ideas
with the input of other people, other groups
that were also developing faculty learning
communities; and with their input and
sharing our ideas we really generated some
very great ideas about what we would do
this year and implement them.
So, the one thing that we came away with from
that conference was the fact that this faculty
learning community that we were developing
was, in fact, very novel.
None of the other universities or organizations
that had come to Claremont to participate in that
conference had quite the same structure that
we were thinking about implementing and
we were encouraged to actually return to
Claremont and share what our experience was
this year and I hope that we have an
opportunity to do that.