Meetings/Workshops 2024
ADVANCE-ing the State of Transfer: Building & Sustaining Strong Transfer Partnerships to Support Student Success · A Planning Workshop (via Zoom)
Mondays, November 6 & 20, 2024
The Yes We Must Coalition offered a two-session workshop designed for community college and four-year college/university teams entitled “ADVANCE-ing the State of Transfer: Building and Sustaining Strong Transfer Partnerships to Support Student Success.” The sessions was led by Jason Dodge (Executive Director, ADVANCE), Jen Nelson (Director of University Transfer & initiatives, Northern Virginia Community College), and Casey Lukszo (Associate Director of Curriculum & Innovative Education, Northern Virginia Community College). Their successful work has been recognized nationally.
This workshop provided strategies to build holistic cross-institutional structures with community college partners to support students’ transfer and successful transition to the four-year college/university. Prior to this workshop, participants completed a self-assessment to gauge their institution’s current readiness to create a cross-institutional transfer partnership (or enhance an existing partnership). Discussion included cross-institutional conversation about approaches and strategies that may work best for the participants’ institution. At the end of this workshop, teams had identified an action plan that includesd next steps for advancing transfer student success. This workshop was intended for cross-institutional teams (i.e., 4-year and community college) of at least 2 people.
To CBE or Not to CBE: Exploring How Your Students Can Benefit from Recent Innovations in Competency-Based Education · A Planning Workshop (via Zoom)
Mondays, September 23 and October 7, 2024,
from 3:00–5:00 pm Eastern
The Yes We Must Coalition offered a two-session workshop to college/university teams: Exploring How Your Students Can Benefit from Recent Innovations in Competency-Based Education. The workshop was led by Dr. Michelle Navarre Cleary, a national leader on this topic with particular experience serving students from low-income backgrounds. Because competency-based education has made a college degree possible for many students, challenged the dominance of the credit hour, driven innovation in how learning is structured and delivered, created a market for new technology solutions, altered business models, and garnered huge enrollments for a few institutions, colleges need to consider its potential for serving students from low-income backgrounds. In this workshop, participants explored the opportunities and challenges of competency based-education (CBE), the wide variety of approaches to CBE, and what can be learned from research on CBE to decide if and how they might move forward with offering CBE programs.
Building S.W.E.A.T. Equity: Cross-Campus Collaboration for Low-Income Student-Athlete Retention (via Zoom)
Thursday, May 23 from 3:00–5:00 pm EDT
The Yes We Must Coalition offered a workshop to college/university teams for Building S.W.E.A.T. Equity: Cross-Campus Collaboration for Low-Income Student-Athlete Retention, a one-session workshop. The workshop was led by Dr. Jacoba Durrell, Professional Learning and Career Services Director, at Yes We Must member Point University (GA) and guided discussion of a career-oriented and strengths-focused approach to retaining student-athletes from backgrounds in poverty who are often oriented to their college experience by their participation in their sport and need additional support to feel connected to college and the importance of earning a higher degree beyond their sports motivation and experience.
Strategic Planning as Collective Imagination · A Collaborative Planning Workshop (via Zoom)
Tuesdays, April 2 and April 16, 2024, from 3:00–5:00 pm Eastern
The Yes We Must Coalition offered a workshop to college/university teams on Strategic Planning as Collective Imagination, a two-session workshop on April 2, and April 16, 2024. The workshop was led by Adam Bush, President, and Sylvia Spears, Provost & Vice President of Lifelong Learning, of Yes We Must member school College Unbound (RI). The workshop opened the radical potential in strategic planning. College Unbound shared their methodology of strategic planning grounded in values of organizing and social justice, including examples of how their strategic plan has guided them through post-pandemic changes, leadership transitions, and the college’s continual evolution. Teams learned outcomes harvesting, values clarification, and shared assessment practices with equity at the center and mapped out a portion of their own future planning process with equity and justice at the center.
Well-Being Intervention for Vulnerable Students: Strengthening Systemic Suicide Prevention · A Planning Workshop (via Zoom)
Tuesdays, February 20 and March 5, 2024, from 3:00–5:00 pm Eastern
The Yes We Must Coalition offered a workshop to college/university teams on Well-Being Intervention for Vulnerable Students: Building Systemic Suicide Prevention, a two-session workshop led by Dr. Jane Wiggins, Director of Training, and Tara Nunley, LPC, Programs Manager, of the Campus Suicide Prevention Center of Virginia. This workshop will provide strategies to reduce risk for suicide in campus communities by strengthening systems as well as individuals.