…Umm, next question

It’s been very interesting for us to see all the different opinions that people have to offer when we do facilitations. Students share one opinion, faculty share a completely different one and community members are completely different from the first two groups. While it’s fun to be able to talk to all types of groups, it’s been a challenge to reign in all of the diverse opinions to form a productive conversation. At a facilitation the other night, a participant brought up a good point.

“Everyone complains about the bad, but no one praises about the good.”

Period. End of story.

He’s so right! People are so quick to voice their opinions when it comes to things they want to complain about, but when things are going well, they very rarely share their thoughts. So how do we change that? How do we find out what people think the positives are?

Our hope is that we can find some common (positive) themes to be able to change the future of the university through a new strategic vision. But the challenging part is, how do we get those positive opinions out of people when a lot of the time people want to complain?

Your initial reaction when someone gets you off topic is to say “let’s move on to the next question.” However, we’ve been taught and have practiced facilitating productive discussions. We’ll persevere!

–Kelly

I Swear.. I’m Not A Telemarketer.

Melissa Esing

I always look forward to spending my summers at home. I’m from the King of Prussia area, which is about 30-45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. (No, I’m not a fan of any Philadelphia sports teams. Pittsburgh, all the way.)

I had a lot of mixed feelings toward staying in Indiana all summer. Many of them came from the uneasy feeling of not having many peers left around Indiana. I was also unsure about how the balance of two internships and an online class would work out. As of now, everything seems to be balancing out nicely.

So far in the Strategic Visioning Project, I’ve been making a lot of phone calls to different departments within IUP and scheduling meeting dates. Phone calls typically aren’t my specialty. I’m the type of person that has to leave the room when I’m ordering pizza from Dominos.

The phone calls are such a small step in a large process. Setting up dates for three students to attend meetings and facilitate really makes me think about how much bigger this project is going to get, and it’s exciting. It’s awesome to hear the enthusiasm of the phone call recipients. No one is treating the calls as if they’re from an annoying telemarketer. They’re all eager about contributing to the efforts of this project.

-Melissa