All-cohort gathering February 22, 2017

All past and upcoming seminar participants were invited to the second all-cohort gathering. This gathering served as an introduction to the ADVANCE community for the summer 2017 participants that attended, in addition to facilitating continued reconnection within and between cohorts. Future participants were seated at tables with a mixture of members of the Internal Advisory Council, previous cohorts, and ADVANCE PIs and staff. Conversations included the history of the program and grant, and the value and sustainability of the ADVANCE seminar.

At this event, participants heard from a panel of seminar graduates about what had planned and accomplished following their completion of the seminar. You can watch a video of this panel presentation below.

    • President Ed Ray spoke about the close relationships built with his seminar cohort, and starting a process to expand child care, family medical leave assistance, and a dual career hiring program, as well as looking at start-up packages for men and women in STEM to see if they are equitable. 
    • Interim Provost Ron Adams spoke about the importance of our new provost going through seminar for the sake of sustainability, and the value of the cognitive and emotional learning in the seminar. He has started conversations with the ADVANCE Leadership team and Susan Capalbo, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, about sustaining ADVANCE at OSU. His bottom line: “I found this to be extremely valuable, worth about 10x the time I put into it.” 
    • Tiffany Garcia, Associate Professor of Fisheries and Wildlife and ADVANCE Fellow spoke about her Faculty Fellow project to create a survey to assess climate in her department, and the challenges and opportunities of working with the climate data she collected.
    • Troy Hall, Department Head, Forest Ecosystems and Society and ADVANCE Fellow spoke about her ADVANCE fellow project – facilitating the diversity action planning effort in the College of Forestry. After data collection, analysis, and brainstorming phases of the project, they are now in the process of wrapping up focus groups to reflect on/validate the goals and strategies that emerged from the planning project.