The question: "How can we develop faculty to be committed, understanding, and engaged partners on campus & in our community?" Answer: "Connect". Join us to discuss the details behind how this leadership program was built to successfully connect & engage our faculty & staff with the Nashville community.
Professional Development often gets stuffy & boxed into the idea of bringing employees into a room, having a speaker, & hoping they don't fall asleep. At Lipscomb we had the idea what if we took our faculty & staff off campus to learn from one another, engage with our community, & inspire innovative ideas/relationships that could impact our students. Thus our Connect Program was born and has continued for 8 years impacting 20+ employees each & every year.
In this presentation we will discuss...
- The Vision: The need for leadership, community engagement, rewarding employee experience, bonding faculty & staff, creating networks for our employees on & off campus, etc.
- The Details: Everything from selecting the class, hours of planning, to making the day a seamless experience for the participants. We will discuss the individual days, how we selected the themes, the scheduling, and the logistics of moving 20+ people around town to be in the right spot at the right time. Our theme days included, a Kick-Off Retreat, Regional Overview Day, Transportation & Safety Day, K-12 Education Day, Higher Education Day, Culture & Tourism Day, Business & Commerce Day, Government Day, Healthy Nashville Day, Closing Luncheon.
- The Lessons Learned: Over the eight years we have learned many lessons and tweaked the program based on best practices & experiences. Dealing with issues related to absences, meals, transportation, meeting locations, and more has been challenging, but each year the program ran smoother as solutions to those challenges were discovered.
- The Impact: We will share a few of the countless stories we have collected from our faculty & staff forming relations with each other as well as with community partners. Examples of partnerships that have grown out of Connect and impacted opportunities for our students. Ways our employees have been able to serve the community and open doors for diversity, leadership, & collaboration on our campus.
Finally as two of the Connect Leadership planners Dr. Brian Mast and myself have now used these lessons learned from the Connect program to start a similar program called LINC (Leaders In Nashville Connecting) for a local non-profit looking to engage those they serve with the Nashville Community. This has led us to realize this program can and should be duplicated/adjusted for any University, Business, or Organization looking to engage their community & build employees into leaders.