Ch.35 Plan-Roadmap for opening Five pilot campuses, Fall 2035
In Chapter 35 a public Plan-Roadmap for opening five public campuses is revealed.
Serializing Awakening the Inner Teacher: Insight Experiential Colleges. How Women In Congress re-invented liberal arts colleges.
The War Room was apprehensive about response to two new documents intended for the public. The first was a New Colleges Prospectus; the second a Student-Parents FAQs. They needn’t have worried. The same public enthusiasm and goodwill which poured out for Women’s Summer Conference 2033, Insight-like seminar, “Creating or Re-Creating Your Own Myth,” also poured out towards these docs too. The public was asking questions; confusion was present; yet, the public seemed so ready, willing, able and wanting something new. Public trolling and bad-mouthing was trivial by comparison.
It was now possible to articulate the PLAN-ROADMAP for opening in Fall, 2035. A third document was prepared, a Public Plan for opening five pilot program campuses. The following Plan summary reflected in written form the project Management software each meeting participant had before them on tablet or laptop. It only took three draft versions to get consensus from War and Writers rooms on a unified vision.
- In Fall, 2035, open five pilot campuses for a freshman year
Each campus must be 60 miles or more from all other pilot campuses. Each campus to feature:
- Transformed core courses, including sports,
- Transformed classroom instructions methods; and,
- Transformed faculty and administrative interpersonal process.
Re-writing of curriculum, textbooks and teaching methods was already well under weigh.
- Hire and train 100 interns, 25 at a time
The Project needed a great deal of labor and retail selling done in multiple states, a job too big for existing staff. Hire interns. They will complete a three-week Bootcamp; then, apply for, or be assigned, to a work group. Interns are the foot-soldiers who identify, market and sell New Colleges to the public, supervised by both War and Writers Rooms.
Interns would be primarily hired thru the Paid Year of National Service org. (described in an earlier Chapter). Interns were hired from all years of college; and, from graduating high school seniors. In groups of 25, send interns thru a three week “boot camp” orienting them to their tasks; and, to identify who fits best in which position on which work team.
- Criteria for hiring interns was already established
- All intern applicants to complete the HEXACO personality self-evaluation.
Main Intern requirements are:
- High Interpersonal Competency skills,
- Trainability, willingness to learn.
- Honesty and humility.
[HEXACO’s main section in this book is in Chapter 31.] Human Resources was told to additionally prioritize both emotional transparency and intellectual curiosity.
- Interns will be tasked with the labor of:
1) Promoting the vision, spirit, values and details of New Colleges to education officials and prospective pilot campus communities.
2) Contacting each State Secondary Education Board, inviting them to tell us which colleges in their state are most in need of support and investment. Identify and keep a running list of all colleges-universities on brink of collapse. Compile and update a list of the 100 most precarious colleges.
3) Their message: This is what’s coming. If you can learn from New Colleges, great. If not, we appreciate your non-interference and support you can give this pilot program.
As needed to address all questions and concerns, interns will visit struggling liberal arts campuses in-person, as required. Interns will conduct local, public town hall listening events; and, hands-on sample classroom experiences for officials and for the public.
4) Paid interns will research, identify and contact suitable potential candidate communities and campuses, where pilot program colleges can be established.
5) Interns will expand the existing New Colleges website, set up and staff a Public Relations office. Interns will make Experiential Insight Colleges into a known, familiar, safe and trusted “brand” in as many education markets as possible.
6) As candidate communities narrow to a final 12; then to a final 5, interns will host additional public town hall listening events to answer questions.
In this way, most legwork, data collection, and local visits can hopefully be delegated to interns with a few adult chaperones.
7) Within 12 months, narrow candidate campuses down to 12, then to five. Towards the Final Five stage, task each candidate community with coming up with 33% of start-up costs so each community has “skin in the game.” Within 18 months, begin to build/renovate on the final five campuses as needed.
The published, public Plan concludes: “Colleges and communities interested in becoming candidate campuses may contact us now.”
Overview of Intern job descriptions
Three big interns workgroup categories emerged:
1) Office workers, marketers, customer service and legal
Interns will identify ailing college campuses looking for an infusion of new ideas and investment of expertise. Interns promote-sell-market New Colleges to states, cities; and, the general public.
- Writing to the governors of all 50 states, requesting permission to contact failing liberal arts colleges in their state for consideration as pilot campuses. This was partly a PR effort to alert governors and state officials New Colleges are coming; and, to learn which states have the more agreeable legislative and regulatory climates. Interns will invite Governors to nominate struggling colleges they believe will be interested potential pilot program campuses.
Interns will collect and share data and impressions of which colleges can be saved; which deserve triage; and; which should be allowed to close.
For struggling campuses, completing the application process is their first step. Over the year of the sifting process, interns visited candidate colleges who had returned completed applications and who wished feedback, guidance and direction on what they might do immediately.
Self-evaluation application process brings clarity to many colleges
By design, the application’s self-enquiry questions led many colleges to self-evaluate — for the first time — how ready they were for transforming their education vision, mission and product. For many colleges, this self-evaluation process clarified how little passion remained for educating, for conveying independent, critical thinking to young minds, for graduating seniors to make the world more wonderful, for stabilizing and redeeming SpaceShip Earth.
For many colleges, the self-evaluation process forced them to face how they had become financial orgs, using endowments as hedge funds for investing in fossil fuels, missile-makers Big Pharma and Big Tech Monopolies only. Self-evaluation clarified how many colleges simply “feathered their own financial nest eggs.” Their education mission had been mostly abandoned long ago; they had not been “institutions of higher learning” for decades. Few were ready for a complete make-over of vision, mission and product. Many college administrations had only unrealistic, paper-thin, “incremental” fantasies of how their failing campuses might be resuscitated
After several months, 52 completed self-evaluation applications had been turned in. The War Room read these enthusiastically. Among candidate campuses, they looked for self-awareness, honesty, humility, willingness to learn; and, willingness to try something new. For all campuses who completed applications, phone-Skype-Zoom interviews were conducted by interns.
Some failing campuses completed self-evaluation applications; yet, did not make it into the final 12. Some of these were still deemed worthy of support. These struggling liberal arts colleges were made an offer. They were invited to send one college-age representative to enroll as a freshmen and take at least the entire first semester (tuition was low, at the level of community colleges). These representatives would be tasked with writing a daily blog what New Colleges were doing; and, which innovations seemed workable for the sponsoring campus. The blogs would be available to the War Room — but not censored in any way. If desired, these “spies” could continue for subsequent semesters, as long as they participated fully, got adequate grades, paid tuition; and, continued their daily blogging.
A sifting process
Determining which struggling campuses were most open and suitable for re-configuration and re-purposing — in part or in whole — as New Colleges — became a sifting process.
At first, two interns were assigned to each state. Initially interns documented the situation in each state, liaised with the office of the College President; and, liaised with state boards of education. As the search narrowed for candidate pilot campuses, interns were moved to fewer and fewer remaining states. Within this state, each candidate state then had a growing number of possible pilot campuses. Each of the final 33 candidate colleges had two analytical interns as the experts on their application to represent their desire to be a final five campus.
Real estate factors
For the Final 33, the file for each failing campuses was expanded to include a real estate section. Each had to have its existing physical facilities documented photographically; each had to be surveyed in person for site-readiness. Many campuses had unused suites of classrooms which ideal for a new college campus endeavor. Many colleges had sports and other facilities which could be shared with a small in-house New College Pilot campus, as had been done frequently with charter schools and charter high schools.
Site visits also tried to get at intangibles such as readiness for a New Colleges pilot program, amounting to a make-over of courses, texts, teaching methods, admin group process and faculty meetings. How ready, willing, able and wanting was this college? A minimum of 12 in-person stakeholder interviews at each college were scheduled to assess the health of local group process. Local teacher union reps were also interviewed wherever possible. This usually took a team of two interns a week of time. It took time to get a feel, behind the words. The crucial readiness factor was invisible, willingness to heal among college and surrounding stakeholders, to upgrade adult-adult group process.
Over a year, candidate colleges were narrowed down to 12, two interns advocating for each site.
SIDEBAR ~ Town hall and “Taste of New College Classrooms” events
Interns were told to be cautious about offering to produce local, live, public Town Halls, where the project and purpose of New Colleges was explained and Q&A taken from the public. New Colleges were in a small way directly competing with failing colleges for new freshmen students. The War Room worried failing existing colleges could use New College live events to steal ideas. Failing colleges could adopt exercises and teaching methods, promoting them as their own. Of course, this was also a danger form the openness of Women’s Summer Conference live events. These summer events were so well-known and well-attended, any stealing of ideas from them would be obvious to the public.
Pre-requisites were established for failing existing colleges to warrant a live town hall or “Taste of the New College Classroom” event:
- A completed self-evaluation application,
- The college was in the final 33 candidate campuses,
- Faculty, administration and student presidents all had to agree to invite the event in writing, and
- Local K-12 teacher unions had to be contacted by the Presidents to explain what was happening and to assess acceptance-hostility of these unions to New Colleges.
Liberal arts colleges were in such shoddy shape, in many cities, local political orgs were open to seeing if New Colleges offered anything new and useful. The first town hall and “Taste of the New College Classroom” events were booked in the towns and cities where the strongest consensus of openness and non-hostility existed. Once potential pilot campuses were reduced to 12, the War Room wanted interns to go in person a second time to interview outside community orgs apart from and around the potential pilot campus location. How ready were community stakeholder orgs for a re-making of college curriculum, teaching methods, and admin methods? In this way, the reception of New Colleges could be estimated and documented.
Town halls turned out to be one of the biggest supports for narrowing down the Final 33 to the final 12 candidate campuses. Real estate and building costs plus local community buy-in (investment) were the biggest supports for narrowing down the Final 12 to the final five candidate campuses.
For the Final Five, interns could then research construction and remodeling costs, take bids, award work, supervise construction.
Per New Colleges charter, pilot campuses ideally would be geographically and demographically diverse.
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2) Technical office workers:
- Research, buy, learn and operate sound, mic and video equipment. Provide audio-video support at live and virtual events (10 interns estimated).
- Set up, engineer and extract new mailing list contacts and demographics from online promotional events. Extract data from online promotional events
- Set up, engineer and extract new mailing list contacts and demographics from live town halls and promotional events.
- Registration workers for both live and virtual events; overlap with customer service.
- Staff bus and equipment truck drivers.
3) On-stage personalities, co-facilitators
Identifying and developing young facilitation talent as quickly as possible was a top priority. Interns who met additional criteria, were invited to be trained to lead large group partner exercises and facilitate town halls, forums and debates themselves. Most of these became future group training facilitators and group consensus facilitators.
Younger facilitators, always in pairs, ideally, male~female pairs, was what public audiences responded to most. These were the most prestigious positions. This work paid only $1.00 an hour more per hour as all other intern labor.
This was the smallest group of working interns, individuals with the highest emotional intelligence and interpersonal competency. 9/10 were female. They underwent additional training in MBTI, Compassionate (nonviolent) Communication and leadership per Mark Andreas’ Waltzing with Wolverines, Finding Connection and Cooperation with Troubled Teens (2015).
The job description for on-stage interns was to conduct local town hall meetings, answer questions from the public and handle media interview requests.
Town hall pubic listening events
Public town halls were conceived of as:
- Opportunity to personally share enthusiasm for the Vision, Mission, Product of New Colleges,
- Listening events to respond to most-asked questions,
- Talking one-on-one with parents, teachers and prospective students and classroom facilitators. At town halls, interns frequently found themselves in the position of refuting and calming down wild rumors and mis-conceptions.
Interns did what they could to return public focus to the new, healthy Story of Restoration could be understood and widely heard. The goal was always to fill people, especially the young, 18–25, with hope for their own futures.
Two-hour, single theme, Insight-like workshops
These were a separate event, an opportunity to deliver two-hour Insight-like workshops on single themes, using scripted sequences of lecturette, milling, dyad, triad and small group exercises.
Some town halls, in some locations, were ready for a “taste” of what New Colleges classrooms would be like. Intern facilitated scripted sequences of live partner exercises with audiences. “A picture is worth 1000 words.” Demonstrating heartfelt, healthy group process conveyed more than words alone could explain.
The public filled out feedback forms after each presentation. These workshops were also intended to stimulate a national conversation about HOW colleges could be transformed and what classrooms would FEEL like. This might seem like “magic” to the public. To interns and the Writers Room, it was simply the converging of many Best Practices in group process, large seminar learning; and, large seminars with a heartfelt look and feel.
From 12 to 5 campuses
Funding would only cover five pilot, Freshman campuses. Candidate campuses were initially narrowed down to 33 then to 12, then to five finalists. This lengthy process was deemed needed to nudge more colleges to self-evaluate their curriculum, teaching methods and local stakeholder orgs in light of the changes New Colleges would bring. This stimulated discussions of “How much change, for whom and how fast?” at multiple campuses. This further a goal of War Room: which of the final 12 colleges can endure an extended, years-long, process of self-examination?
Given the entrenched nature of many educational thinking, the distribution of the Final Five guinea pig colleges surprised some. Two locations were on the Eastern Seaboard, in the South, two histrionically black colleges ready, willing able and wanting support to transform.
Two were housed in California, one at Arcata, CA, at Cal Poly Humboldt. The other in Pasadena, CA in support of Pacific Oaks College. The last was housed in Boulder, CO, in support of the failing Naropa University.
These five locations were deemed the most suitable fertile ground to plant seeds to grow secondary liberal arts college transformation.
Winning colleges received an in-person visit by an elected member of Women In Congress who publicly awarded the college; as well as, publicly lay out the challenges and potential rewards.
Asking for local community buy-in (RSF)
When a prospective community moved into the final 12 or into the final five, it was time to have serious-but-friendly, live, on-site visit to ask the local community to invest in the success of a New College campus in their community. The win in jobs, additional and/or not lost student enrollments to the local economy was a real-world community issue. NCs refused to operate in the vein of the Federal Gov. telling small towns what to do.
On-stage facilitating talent were frequently the best personalities to return to communities where they where known because they had led town halls.
To train for these delicate discussion, where New Colleges asked local community to contribute 25% of start-up costs or in-kind donations, each on-stage talent was sent to spend a week shadowing the Rudolf Steiner Finance staff on RSF site visits. Since the 1980s, RSFinance had more experience with assessing the future potential of green-holistic biz than anyone else. RSF did mostly matching loans to community orgs, mostly independent schools and local organic food producing orgs.
RSF not only assessed staff and balance sheets, they assessed local and regional support of neighbors, customers and business allies. The more networked into making all allies more wealthy, the stronger and more sustainable a local biz was deemed.
It is hoped interns will soak up practicalities of RSF wisdom, such as, “Relationships matter more than financial transactions.” https://RSFsocialFinance.org
