thoughts on the Educause Institute Leadership Program, volume 1
A while back, I did a series of relatively short posts on a leadership program I attended. The Learning Technologies Leadership workshop offered by the Educause Institute. Many may wonder why I am now reviewing this program again. In fact, this is a different one. One month later, I find myself back at the Hilton Orrington in Evanston, IL. This time, it’s a general leadership program, with a very different crow.
Yesterday was just a half day so my observations are more about the differences in the crowd. I don’t think I know enough to make comments on the curriculum. I can certainly talk about my trepidation prior to the start of the session.
Before things commenced I was very concerned about how I’d fit in. Would everyone be from really big universities? Even against a director, my experience at such a small college might not translate. I might be this useless appendage. I’d still learn just from hearing everyone’s experience but I want to contribute.
Fortunately, my fears did not come true. While I am a bit surprised by the number of folks that work in administrative systems (rather than customer-facing programs), but overall there is a lot of diversity, in jobs, age, years in job, and institution (or department). I think things will work out. More on that as the week goes by.
The team project, which was a linchpin of the LTL program, is handled a bit differently. I ‘m sure the actual presentation will be similar an the team dynamics will still be key. But we heard about the team topics last night – we had to pick two, and therefore had no idea what we’d get. And for me, this is especially harrowing because I don’t know if I’d end up doing a potentially big topic – but one that interests me – with really big institutions that just won’t speak on the same terms as me.
Because this is a group that are aspiring CIOs, we did spend a big section yesterday talking about the changing role. On the one hand, this is a critically important topic and discussion (one might think differently based on my recent post about an article in Educauseu Review, but that’s because I felt that was intended for other CIOs, not aspiring ones). On the other, I felt that we jumped a bit too far into the changing role. We discussed the changed role – what it is now, under the presumption that we had preconceived notions. Maybe we did. Just an observation.
Overall, while I had a pretty full afternoon, it was not as intense as the first day of the LTL. But I am perhaps more excited overall, and look forward to the week.