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At its July meeting the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents voted to approve a new graduate-level academic minor in the field of integrative leadership, designed to train future leaders to bridge institutional, geographical and national boundaries to address social, economic and political challenges. The unanimous vote of support is the result of years of planning and design work undertaken by the CIL Faculty Steering Committee , including representatives from over 20 academic programs across the University.
The nine-credit minor includes courses in leadership theory and civic engagement, and will conclude with an Integrative Leadership Seminar to stimulate cross-disciplinary groups of students to apply their knowledge by developing ideas to combat real-world “grand challenges” like ensuring global health care access, managing multi-national food chains, addressing global warming, or combatting human trafficking. These global challenges will demand solutions that combine the best of what governments, activists, the corporate community and scholars can achieve when they work closely with one another.
The University’s College of Education and Human Development will serve as the academic home for the Integrative Leadership minor. For more information visit the website outlining all requirements for completion of the degree program or contact the ILM Director of Graduate Studies, Lou Quast at louquast@umn.edu.
Hearty Congratulations to Andy Furco, recipient of the 2012 Thomas Ehrlich Civic Engagement Faculty Award, one of the highest awards given to faculty for research and teaching focused on serving the public good. The award was presented by Campus Compact, a national higher education association dedicated to campus-based civic engagement. The award is given annually to a university or college tenured professor in recognition of leadership in engaged scholarship, contributions to the public good and advancing students’ civic and academic learning.
The Award recognizes Furco's efforts leading the University's Office for Public Engagement where Furco has inspired countless cross boundary initiatives among University faculty, students, and staff. In that capacity Andy’s office has generously suppored CIL’s community and University leadership development initiatives, including sponsorship of our summer leadership forum for University educators and our 2011 statewide conference, Connecting Community Leaders for Renewal and Action.
Our work would not be possible without the solid groundwork he has laid campus-wide.
We celebrate Andy’s well deserved recognition and his permanent, positive footprint on the University of Minnesota.
Furco teaches and publishes on topics that explore the civic purposes of higher education and the role of youth community engagement. For more information, see the news release.
A lot of innovative neighborhood improvements are underway in the vibrant Cedar Riverside neighborhood surrounding the University of Minnesota’s West Bank, and thanks to a course based on principles of shared leadership and community engagement, chances are good there are University students who had a hand in them.
The Humphrey School course, Engaging the Public in Policy and Planning (PA 5990 / PA 8081), also known as the “CHANCE” course was proposed by and developed in consultation with graduate students who were interested in community based research and committed to engaging the University of Minnesota students in community-based initiatives to strengthen the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. Since 2007when the course was first offered, students have completed twenty one different projects with neighborhood organizations, including the Brian Coyle Community Center, the Cedar Riverside Neighborhood Revitalization Program, the West Bank Business Association, Cedar Riverside Partnership and the West Bank Community Coalition. CHANCE reports can be found on the CIL website.
Students in the course collaborate with Cedar Riverside organizations to produce information needed to increase investment of new resources in neighborhood development. Students begin identification of potential projects the first week of class when they tour Cedar Riverside and meet neighborhood leaders. After hearing from area leaders, observing meetings, reading about the neighborhood, and meeting with professionals engaged in the neighborhood, students generate potential project topics. They then present these topics to neighborhood leaders at a community forum and jointly determine which projects are most important, most likely to be useful in the neighborhood and fulfill learning objectives for the course.
This past Spring 2012, students completed projects on neighborhood funding priorities, workforce development and Cedar Riverside street improvements. Read the recent article in the MN Daily about the CHANCE street improvement project.
There is still space available in the 2012-13 course. Contact Merrie Benasutti, benas021@umn.edu, if you have questions. Register today!
Plenty of people hold meetings, many people lead meetings, and some people facilitate meetings. But a challenge for anyone who participates in such gatherings either in their professional or personal lives is that there are too few meeting spaces where people are actually inspired to step in, step up and take action together. "Hosting” indicates a different kind of approach. Being a good host means making sure people are looked after well so that they can do their best work together and step onto common ground. We’ve all been to meetings that have been well managed, but not well hosted and often the result is “same old, same old.”
Just as “hosting” has a particular connotation, so does “art,” indicating that this way of working is not a recipe or a set of tools, but an art form in practice.
The Art of Hosting is a practice of looking for the patterns and practices that inspire people in groups so that they can do their best work together. Practically, it is a fusion of some very powerful participatory facilitation tools and practices (appreciative inquiry, world café, proaction café, open space technology, and circle practices). Each of these practices is effective in its own right and many have been in use for several years, spurred on most recently by international practitioner communities and solid case study examples. Used together, they are a flexible way to help people lead and help groups move into connection and deep conversation and action.
From June 27th – 29th, 44 faculty and staff from across the University of Minnesota spent three days together exploring The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter, in a training hosted by CIL, with financial support from InCommons and the Bush Foundation. Participants represented a diverse cross-section of positions and departments, including faculty, teaching and administrative staff, and collegiate deans from sixteen schools, offices, centers and departments across the University. These 44 individuals join around 75 faculty and staff who previously participated in in this training as well as a growing community of practitioners statewide, nationally, and internationally. Many respondents took the time to provide very valuable feedback on the training.
Emerging Community of Practice: As individuals are finding the skills they’ve learned through the Art of Hosting valuable in their personal and professional lives, a community of practice has been sparked. You can follow and contribute to this activity at the community’s Facebook page or on Posterous blog.
If you are a UMN faculty or staff member and would like to be notified of future training opportunities, email Leah Lundquist, CIL Program Manager.
The half-day FREEDOM, HERE + NOW event CIL co-hosted with the Women's Foundation of Minnesota a few months ago was both a raw window into a wicked reality and a hopeful call to collective action. Over 300 individuals joined us here at the University of Minnesota to hear from business leader Marilyn Carlson Nelson, U.S. State Department Ambassador Luis CdeBaca and a number of other business, government and nonprofit leaders. Their key message was this: Combatting the scourge of modern trafficking is the sort of multi-faceted challenge that will require concerted, multi-faceted and multi-sector leadership. Many of the FREEDOM HERE + NOW speakers that day have courageously demonstrated shared leadership to great effect.
In case you missed it or would like to share the day with others, we captured the day in video here.
Following FREEDOM, HERE + Now, CIL is hosting smaller, more informal community conversations focused on eliminating human trafficking here in Minnesota. On July 16th twenty-two individuals with a wide variety of personal and professional perspectives joined the first conversations we transitioned from a focus on global trafficking to domestic trafficking, screening a couple short documentaries including What I've been through is not who I am, produced by ECPAT-USA and WITNESS, and one produced by MISSSEY, a victim-support organization out of Oakland, California.
Participants shared generously of their experience, their questions, and what they were already doing or could commit to doing to support survivors and decrease the demand that leads to children being prostituted. Several participants were already involved professionally as filmmakers, police, direct service providers, and corporate funders. One person indicated they would use their design training to pursue changes that could be made in hotel lobbies and security systems to improve trafficking detection. Many individuals spoke to their ability to help educate and change cultural norms among their families, colleagues, and friends.
The variety of questions posed during the conversation captured the complexity of this issue.
CIL will co-host another conversation with the Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC) in North Minneapolis in September. This event will focus on the nature of sex trafficking and trading on an even more local scale. UROC has been very effective in supporting the neighborhood as they address this issue in their community.
If you were unable to make the conversation but are interested in being a part of the conversation, we encourage you to check out the resources, discussion, and videos in the online forum at: http://www.incommons.org/freedomnow
What does it mean to create public value in a multi-sector, shared-power, no-one-wholly-in charge world?
We live in a world where most major public challenges we face require contributions from governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations, communities and/or other sectors if the challenges are to be met successfully.
How do leaders maximize the good that these sectors have to offer, while minimizing or overcoming their characteristic weaknesses in such a way that public value is created and the common good is advanced?
Join scholars and reflective practitioners from across the country to discuss these core questions and learn about innovative multi-sector strategies currently underway for achieving and measuring public value. During the conference over 60 public value initiatives will be presented and discussed in the areas of public-private partnership, environmental design, health care delivery, transportation and more.
The conference will be held at the University Hotel (formerly the University Radisson) on Washington Avenue; beginning at noon on Thursday, September 20 and concluding at noon on Saturday, September 22nd. Early Bird registration is $300.
Register here before August 15th to receive the early bird discount.