Below is a summary of the feedback from the breakfast meeting on April 10, 2013.  There were 18 tables, and their responses were qualitatively grouped.  For each question, these groups are listed from most popular to least, with the number of tables that generated that response indicated.  Only responses that came from at least two tables are included.  If you would like to review the complete set of data, contact adminsteering@lafayette.edu.  After each question and its ranked feedback, there is a response from the Administrative Steering Committee.

Q1: What did you like about the breakfast meetings from 2012-13?

• Meeting colleagues 13
• Breakfast/food/bacon/healthy options 12
• Assigned seating 11
• Trustee/college updates from president 8
• Lightning round 6
• Informative/relevant/valuable 5
• Meetings after board meetings 4
• Board chair presentation 3
• Variety of topics and format 3
• Interactive 2

We all seem to enjoy getting the opportunity to break bread (or as many of you specifically mentioned – bacon) with one another.  We will continue to have these breakfast meetings with max-mix assigned seating and name tags.  These meetings will continue to be scheduled to follow the trustee meetings, and will feature an update from the President.  We will also continue to try to keep topics interesting and relevant for our diverse group, while maintaining some level of interactivity.  The topic suggestions you provided below will help us greatly with that.  The lightning rounds are here to stay.

Q2: How could the meetings from 2012-13 have been improved?

• End at 10:30/90 minutes /shorter 6
• send topic/agenda before meeting 4
• Use technology to report / maybe tweeting /smart classroom capability 4
• longer lightning round sessions with fewer topics – longer lightning round 2
• Have meeting minutes available or updated online – report ups summarized and made available 2

The normal breakfast meeting schedule will now run as follows:

• 8:45 – get your food and socialize
• 9:00 – meeting content begins
• 10:30 – meeting ends

Some topics may run long, and others may be short, but this will be the new baseline.  We will include a more informative agenda whenever possible in future invitations.  Some meeting minutes are already available on this site (see the side bar), though we could certainly be doing a better job of that.  If anyone would like to volunteer to keep better minutes, please email adminsteering@lafayette.edu.  We would be grateful for your help.  After compiling all of these responses from hand-written worksheets, the idea of using technology for feedback at meetings is very appealing.  This is being discussed with ITS.  The challenge is that it would be wasteful to buy equipment for 18 tables that will only get used 3 or 4 times a year.  We are trying to determine the best way to utilize an existing technology resource for this.

Q3: What topics would you like covered in future meetings?

• Department presentations (HR, ITS, student life, Plant Operations, Public Safety, admissions, athletics) 11
• Student/alumni involvement/presentations, student leaders/student government, why Lafayette 8
• fundraising efforts and allocations, capital campaign, budget, financial challenges and decision process, GAP accounting 7
• Session about Easton relationship, farmers market, main street initiative, City Planning Office, town and gown, mayor 6
• Faculty presentation, Academic initiatives, academic policy, faculty committee, faculty member at each table 6
• Professional development topics, staff evaluations, dealing with difficult topics, path to promotion 4
• Online learning, effect on liberal arts colleges, academic trends 3
• ITS – FAQ, helpdesk protocol, email management, prioritization process, learn about new technology 3
• HR info: handbook, life/work balance, updates, benefits, employment policies, activities, resources, academic support 3
• Laf360 update 3
• Admissions, student demographic info, update 3
• Almuni pulse survey results, alumni career info 3
• Regular board of trustees presentations (every 2 years?) 2
• Athletics – patriot league membership, future initiatives, defining success 2
• Arts program, new director of arts 2
• Presidential transition, getting to know new president and her thoughts on issues 2
• Role of staff in changing alcohol culture, alcohol and drug committee presentation, alcoholism 2
• Wellness, positive work environment 2

There were a lot of responses showing interest in the workings of individual departments, or specific programs and projects.  However, most individual topics only garnered one or two votes.  This may indicate that such presentations would not have broad appeal, and would thus not be appropriate for this meeting.  To that end, and based on positive feedback HR has gotten about their new staff orientation series, we will be piloting a presentation series that will cover these topics.  This is still in the early stages, but keep your eyes open for an email announcement about this in the future.  We also have some ideas for involving students.  Again, there will be more on that later this year.

Q4: What topics would you be interested in presenting at a future meeting?

We got some good feedback on this, which mainly consisted of presentations on major departmental projects.  As seen in Question 3, this is a popular theme.  If the pilot of the presentation series is successful, we will be reaching out to those of you who volunteered topics to solicit your participation.

Q5: Do you have a project that might benefit from the input of a future brainstorming meeting? (Please include your contact information.)

Again, we got some good feedback, and we’ll be in touch with those who volunteered projects.

Q6: Do you want to see more or less of a particular meeting format?

• More lightning rounds 12
• Mix of formats, depends on topic, variety 4
• Less lectures/presentations, keep interactive 3
• President updates at the beginning are important 3
• Longer lightning rounds 3
• Happy hours, social meeting, bbq, dodgeball 2
• Less assessment brainstorming, assessment too general 2
• Random seating is good 2

Lightning rounds are informative and a lot of fun, but they are also a lot of work to organize, and they prevent the various presenters from having the same chance to participate as everyone else.  With that in mind, we will try to have one per year.  With all of the topic suggestions above, we should have ample material.  The update from the President is a fixture of the meeting, and is here to stay.  We will continue to find creative ways to make these meetings interactive, fun, and informative, while maintaining the social component.

Q7: Can you suggest any other meeting formats, or useful changes to the existing formats?

• Other venues (athletics, arts campus, dept. open house, campus field trip) 4
• Panel discussions 4
• Student involvement – performance (singing, etc), student group updates, present on topics 3
• Concurrent sessions in multiple locations 3
• Campus tours 2
• Professional development 2

Field trips and campus tours?  That’s a great idea.  Let’s do that right away.  Our October 8 breakfast meeting will conclude with an offering of various tours of the campus.  The panel discussion and professional development ideas might be better suited to the presentation series mentioned above.  The idea of concurrent sessions is interesting, but we have not been able to come up with a way to effectively implement that for these breakfast meetings.

Q8: Do you have any other thoughts to share about these breakfast meetings?

• Thanks for organizing them 3

You’re welcome.  We hope that you enjoy them, and we really appreciate your feedback.  If you are interested in getting involved in the organization of these meetings, or any of the other work that the Administrative Steering Committee is conducting, please let us know by emailing adminsteering@lafayette.edu.