the vision thing
there's no ropes course scheduled, but our sociology department retreat is tomorrow. calling faculty and staff together for open-ended discussion can be a risky endeavor for a new chair, but i'm completely excited, stoked, and fired up for it. maybe i'm naively optimistic, but the department is in a really good place and some big opportunities are opening up this year.here's the plan:
10:00-10:15 check-in
10:15-10:45 agenda setting
10:45-11:45 open discussion and elaboration
11:45-12:00 break
12:00-1:00 lunch
1:00-2:15 visibility in the discipline
2:15-2:30 break
2:30-3:45 excellence in the department
3:45-4:30 synthesis and reflection
4:30-5:30 cocktails/music
5:30-6:30 dinner
6:30-8:00 open music/drinks
most of tomorrow's discussions will be non-bloggable (what with our secret plot to remake the discipline and all), but i'll pass along any lessons learned about conducting retreats at some point. i know that i'll have to check the ego at the door, of course. if and when my brothers and sisters want to take things in a new or different direction, i'll just have to roll with it. i'll only get really defensive if somebody complains about the band. my research and leadership skills are fair game, of course, but i take my music personally.
posted by christopher uggen @ 7:57 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
This sounds really interesting. Does Minnesota do this regularly? Do departments do this regularly? Wisconsin has never even talked about anything remotely resembling this in the time that I've been there. Then again, they have all the tenured faculty on the executive committee and discussions tend to maunder, so maybe they accomplish most of the topics over the course of a year, only without the drinks or music.
this is new for us too, jeremy. investigating the idea, i learned that retreats were often prescribed for departments with deep and painful fissures (e.g., the dean sentenced us to a retreat). that's not us -- we get along pretty well at minnesota these days. instead, some of us liked the idea of escaping the social science tower for a day to take up some big-picture stuff that doesn't fit into standard faculty meetings. there are a bunch of other reasons for the timing as well -- an upcoming self-study, a great number of new hires, a new chair, and some faculty recruitment planning, to name a few.
i know less than nothing about business (having worked in madison social services before grad school), but the analogy might involve focusing on long-term direction and growth at the retreat, versus quarterly profits at faculty meetings. and to do so with *everybody* on the faculty and staff in the room, rather than in exec or some other committee. as the drinks and music suggest, there's an element of celebration as well as future-oriented work involved. i'm fortunate in that my busy colleagues are willing to invest their time and energy in trying such things.
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