Wednesday, Day 3

Wow, we had a knockout roster of speakers today. My head is still reeling from all the information and wisdom they brought. They were

• John Hitt, president of the University of Central Florida
• Beverly Daniel Tatum, president of Spelman College.
• Terry Hartle from the American Council on Education.
• Linda Katehi, outgoing provost at the U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and soon to be Chancellor at UC Davis.

They all had either amazing stories or amazing information. Dr Hitt and Dr Tatum presented amazing pictures of what it means to be a president. Dr Hartle was so knowledgeable about higher ed on a national scale and brought the big picture of higher ed. Wow. I didn’t write much down as the ppt slides will bring it all together. There was a recent article on USA Today about graduation rates and explained that the graduation rates do not include transfers or students who took longer than 6 years. So if you did 2 years at one school and then transfer to another school you’re a drop-out, not a graduate. There are a lot of students who aren’t being counted — Obama would be one of those since he transferred schools. Dr Katehi shared her career story (so did Dr Tatum, both wonderful stories) and what it means to be a provost.

Today will be hard to top.

Before dinner I met with my group to talk about our brief Learning Commons sharing Friday morning (groups are sharing a topic of interest every morning). I’ll share some pictures of ours and talk about the project.  I met with Fred from Loyla Chicago and Stacey from U Kentucky.  Stacey is going to Georgia Tech friday to see their Learning Commons and Fred and I are coming along.  I’ll shoot some pictures while we’re there.