Thursday, Day 4

I didn’t think yesterday could be topped.  I was wrong.

The day started out with our peers sharing about 360 degree leadership — how you can lead from anywhere in the organization.  That got my interest for something to help develop my team members.  Then we heard from CFO Peggy Plympton from Lehigh University.  Wow, she was a riot.  She was so funny and so wise.  After lunch we heard from Carie Windham Page from ELI talk about our students.  Carie wrote the “student perspective” in the 2005 Educating the NetGen book.  She had some activities for us that got us out of our chairs — always good.  Then we heard from Michael Schoenfeld, Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations at Duke, on communications.

Then after diner a group met informally to talk about work/life balance.  It was convened by Jim from UW Madison who is becoming our “guru.”  He took a group to Sanskrit chanting last night and today before lunch we spent 5 minutes listening to the same chanting and clearing our minds.

My key take-aways today are

• 360 degree leadership
• To check into NIH grants for building projects (stimulus package)
• Think about an unconference
• Re-look at the flip cameras we were thinking of buying (heard bad stuff about them)
• Find the ELI keynote on students in gaming environments matching up to NSF skills
• From Michael on communication strategies – “think about what you want them to hear, not what you want to tell them”
• “From Where I Sit” videos for CLASS
• Work/life balance tips