Building and Scheduling Community Time

(Vital Quality Initiative)

Facilitator: Dave Fuller

February 15-16, 2001 - AQIP Retreat
Project identified and prioritized

March 14, 2001 - AQIP Retreat Follow-Up Meeting
Project refined
Council member assigned to project: Dave Fuller

September 21, 2001 - AQIP Meeting
Status report given: Dr. Fuller reports there is a lot of interest in this topic. Now is the time to begin polling the faculty and administrators about this. At another meeting, Dr. Sweetland suggested M-R and T-F classes, leaving Wednesdays as a day for committee meetings, research activities, professional training, being in high schools that day, etc.. Maybe instead of all day Wednesdays, it could be from 1-4 p.m. instead. JoAnn Bondhus reported an institution in Colorado has classes Monday through Thursday, with Friday off; this is a good marketing tool for them, since it attracts faculty and students who are ski buffs, it gives them a three-day weekend to do those activities. It was suggested that the Task Force not only look at Dr. Sweetland's suggestion, but also be brave enough to look at several options, researching other institutions. Dr. Fuller shared with the group that at a previous institution, he served on a committee who did this very thing. They went to a start time of 8:30 which allowed them a community time of 10:30-12:30 on Thursdays. Each week was a specific topic, such as advising, professional development, convocation, governance meeting, speakers related to the treatment of people, etc. It seemed to work well. But it was hard to find a time that worked well for everyone and it was hard trying to squeeze all meetings into that time period.