Partnership Meetings

Our team will be resubmitting a strengthened NSF INCLUDES Alliance proposal in fall 2023, building on the solid and favorable panel reviews from 2022. 

We seek to re-engage partners across 2-year and 4-year institutions to outline appropriate strategies, collaborations, and networks for our collective work. 

Anyone wishing to receive information about upcoming partnership meetings in spring 2023 semester should indicate via a short RSVP form. There is no other commitment at this time, and all are welcome! 

It took a hive mind of many across the country, but we were able to submit an NSF INCLUDES Alliance grant by the January deadline! 

The leadership team will continue to touch base, analyze pilots, and learn from each other and our learning communities as we continue to seek opportunities and design interventions for our collective aims!

Coming off a successful series of partnership meetings, our grant team is working now to summarize our co-created ideas to support the five elements of the GAIN infrastructure for the NSF INCLUDES Alliance grant: 1) shared vision, 2) partnerships, 3) goals and metrics, 4) leadership and communication, and 5) expansion, sustainability, and scale. 

We will elicit formal letters of collaboration from our partners as we complete our grant proposal in the coming weeks.

Summary documents that were shared with all GAIN partner meeting attendees:

• Strategic planning exercise: Cascade Agreement. Questions asked and answered: How can we best address inequities in STEM pathways through faculty development?
• Strategic planning exercise: SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Questions asked and answered: How can faculty support equitable pathways? What do they need to achieve that? How can faculty development support student-centered teaching and promote a sense of belonging? How can remove barriers and hear student voices? 
• Strategic planning exercise: Stakeholder Analysis. Questions asked and answered: Who are relevant stakeholders for our aims? How do we reach and work with them?

For November 2021, potential partners will take part in a series of short, focused strategic planning workshops to help us build an action plan for a collaborative NSF grant that will address student success in STEM gateway courses for transfer students.

Designed for cohorts, clusters, and existing networked communities, the convening will serve to further define the vision of the partnership to ensure that the design of the grant activities is authentic to the needs of our partner institutions and faculty.

This strategic planning convening will have 3 parts:

1) Welcome and introduction video  Provides an overview of the project and the strategic planning activities to be undertaken by partners.

2) A series of three synchronous Zoom workshops where we will work in small groups using Mural collaborative software to identify and prioritize interventions, areas of action, and stakeholders. Each day represents a different strategic planning activity. Attendees can come to any or all meetings as their schedules suit.  

Attendees who signed up have received the meeting links from Jenny Brown. Still need to sign up? Click here to rsvp. 

• Meeting #1 - Thursday (11/4) from 12:30-2pm EST - Activity: Identifying and prioritizing areas of concern and interventions in the realm of transfer student success in STEM gateway courses.
• Meeting #2 - Monday (11/8) from 12-1pm EST - Activity: Collective Strengths- Weaknesses- Opportunities- Threats Analysis
• Meeting #3 - Wednesday (11/10) from 4-5pm EST - Activity: Identifying and prioritizing stakeholders and how to reach them

3) Two short asynchronous follow-up activities: Building a contacts “talent bank” for moving forward, and completing an exit survey. Links and activities will be sent to participants the week of November 15.

We look forward to seeing you there! If you have any questions leading up to the workshop, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our facilitators: Dr. Karen High at khigh@clemson.edu or Jenny Brown at jpshaff@clemson.edu.