IA Welcomes Anna Dudney

Last month, Institutional Advancement welcomed Anna Dudney as its new development coordinator. She will provide strategic support to IA’s major gift fundraising efforts and overall direction for its participation-level fundraising initiatives.

Anna knows the Institute well; her mother is a MIIS graduate and Anna herself graduated from the nearby York School. She received her BA from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and is fluent in both Polish and French. Anna will return to Loyola next week for the conference Social Justice & Diversity by the Sea: Spirituality, Creativity, and Activism, where she will be presenting her paper Gender Wars at Work: A Lesson in Ideology from Anchorman. The conference is being convened by the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender.

Please join IA in welcoming Anna to MIIS!

Advancement(and many others)@work

With the closing of the Institute’s fiscal year on June 30th, Institutional Advancement also marked the end of its FY09 fundraising efforts.  While the economic downturn did present significant challenges, there are several bright spots to report:

The number of faculty/staff donors grew from 44 at the close of FY08 to 52 at the close of FY09 (18% increase)

The number of alumni donors grew from 131 at the close of FY08 to 162 at the close of FY09 (24% increase)

Overall cash received grew from $5,315,554 million in FY08 to $5,355,569 million in FY09 (a slight, slight increase)

While Institutional Advancement is the hub of these efforts, we could not have reached any of these results without the help of many across campus.  Special thanks to the Digital Media Commons for their help with our digital solicitation and stewardship pieces, Recruiting and Student Financial Services for providing us with many compelling student stories, and to the members of the academic leadership and faculty who have spent time with both our prospective and existing donors.  We look forward to, hopefully, even better results in the coming year! 

Advancement Leads Off in “Running One MIIS” series

On May 5, Beth McDermott gave the first presentation in the “Running One MIIS” series of discussions on the impact of reorganization and integration. If you missed it, you can download her presentation.

Additional presentation will take place every other Tuesday at noon in the Board Room.  Please check here for a complete list of topics and dates.  Next up, on May 19: HR.

Leslie Eliason Teacher of Excellence Award Ceremony

Please join us for the Leslie Eliason Teacher of Excellence Award Ceremony today, Tuesday, April 21 at 12:00 noon in the Samson Center Reading Room.  Faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend.   This award recognizes outstanding teaching and promotes the professional development of a teacher by a grant from the Payne Family Foundation.  This year’s award recipient is Laura Burian. For more information, please contact Dollie Pope at (831) 647-3545 or dollie.pope@miis.edu.

Additional Administrative Reorganization Decisions Announced

For the last few months, we have focused our discussion about the reorganization of the Institute on the creation of two new graduate schools and a new dean of advising.  However, several other changes are occurring to facilitate a better flow of communications and services to our faculty, staff, students, and the external community.  In some cases these will affect supervisory responsibilities and lines of reporting.

Last September, the Office of Alumni Relations was moved into the Institutional Advancement Office.  A new Executive Director of Communications position was also established and subsequently, Jason Warburg was hired into that position.  Recently, Anne Marie Steiger, the Institute’s webmaster, has been moved, so that she now reports to Jason.

We are also combining those activities related to a student’s enrollment at the Institute.  As part of these changes, the Financial Aid Office will join with our Admissions Office and Enrollment Management Office to become the Office of Admissions, reporting to Jill Stoffers, Director of Admissions.  These moves will become effective as of March 1, 2009.

Finally, in a move designed to strengthen the services provided to students during their time at the Institute, the Dean of Advising, Careers, and Student Services will oversee three areas:  Records, Office of Student Services, and a new Academic and Career Advising Center.  The goal of this consolidation, which will become effective as of June 1, 2009, is to provide our students with enhanced services, especially those involving academic advising and career assistance, so that students engage a seamless support system during their time at the Institute.

New Welcome for a Familiar Face

Maureen Anda recently joined the Institute Advancement team as the Alumni Relations Coordinator. Maureen has been working in the Alumni Relations Office since November of 2007 on a temporary assignment with Office Team, Administrative Staffing. During this time, Maureen oversaw a major data project transferring and cross-referencing more than 13,000 paper transcripts into an electronic format, which will eventually lead to the inclusion of thousands of alumni records into Banner. She also worked with data entry and collection, survey development and merchandise sales.  In Maureen’s current position she will be the lead for alumni record management, as well as addressing the development and maintenance of a new alumni online community, among other projects.

Maureen grew up in Granada Hills, the suburbs just north of Los Angeles. She worked in her family’s real estate school, Miller Schools (a private vocational school specializing in real estate education) from 1983 to 1993.

Maureen and her husband Ismael started their own business in 1993; That’s Our Baby Catalog, a mail order catalog that featured infant and toddler products.  They relocated to the Monterey Peninsula in 1997 and she pursued her administrative career working with A.G. Davi Real Estate, in real estate property management, with John J. Eisinger DDS, Inc., as Financial Coordinator in their Orthodontic practice, and with CreekBridge Construction, a developer of quality homes and retail centers, in their Sales and Marketing Department.

Tsuneo Akaha Shares Experiences in Japan

MIIS welcomes back GSIPS professor Tsuneo Akaha, who has been teaching in Japan for the summer and fall semester.  We thought you would all be interested in his activities:

  • Tsuneo taught an MA seminar at Waseda University in Tokyo in the fall of 2008.  The topic was Asian Regional Integration, a very hot topic in the region.  His experience in the seminar included serving not only as the instructor but also as an interpreter for two of the students.  One was a Nepalese student with fairly advanced English language skills (despite the fact that he never used English until he enrolled at Waseda) but little or no Japanese language, and the other was a Chinese student with highly developed Japanese language proficiency but very limited spoken English.  Hence, when either of them gave their presentations or spoke up in class, Tsuneo served as their interpreter.
  • (more…)

Why Wii?

The unveiling of the Wii in the Digital Media Commons last Friday added a dimension of hilarity, energy, and friendly competition to a successful Institutional Advancement and TLC sponsored event that was designed to blend learning with play and build community among MIIS staff.

It also raised questions for some: why are we buying toys when we need (you fill in the blank)…?

Here are some things to think about:

(1) Generally,  “play” unleashes creativity and enhances learning. To explore this idea, check out Tim Brown’s TED Talk.

(2) Specifically, the Wii controller makes possible a particular kind of activity that invokes our kinesthetic learning ability.  There is a great deal of interest in using this new tool to enhance learning in virtual spaces.  For example:

Lane Kuhlman, a graduate student at Ohio State, is studying gesture based interaction and its role in educational multimedia.  This kind of research could have major implications for the design of simulations for intercultural communication, negotiation, or conflict resolution.

MIT Research Fellow David Stone was featured in a recent Wired article for his work building Wiimote-controlled simulations in Second Life. To the already information-rich experiences available in this virtual world, one can now add the ability to take your hands off the keyboard and speak, gesture, and move naturally through virtual environments ranging from your favorite international city to an exhibition of the latest green building technologies.

The Educause Learning Initiative is encouraging its members to investigate the potential of the Wii. See their white paper, “7 Things You Should Know about Wii.”

Finally, in another TED talk, Johnny Lee demonstrates how he turned $40 Wii controllers into a multitouch display, and into a close approximation of a $2000 interactive whiteboard, increasing access to these technologies for schools and organizations with limited resources.

(3) We would like for MIIS be at the forefront of thinking about how people learn and experimenting with ways to enhance the quality of our education.  Our limited resources have, in the past, caused us to bypass many of the technologies that our peer institutions were adopting at great cost.  Now we are in a position of competitive advantage, in that we can leapfrog some of the less versatile earlier tools for learning, and focus on tools and strategies that match our pedagogical commitment through Monterey Way 2.0 to immersive learning, high performance thinking, and open architecture.

Agree? Disagree?  Join the conversation with your comments!

Graduate Writing Center Receives Grant

The MIIS Graduate Writing Center has received a $50,000 grant from the Monterey Peninsula Foundation to expand and improve its services.

The center offers writing workshops to students to prepare them for academic and professional assignments, such as cover letters, resumes, CVs, policy memos, and op-eds..

With increased funding, the center will be able to:
•    Support French, Spanish, and Arabic tutoring sessions that began this fall;
•    Offer workshops on giving and receiving effective peer feedback;
•    Provide professional development opportunities for its tutors;
•    Develop print and online resources for students seeking help from the center.

The center is directed by Kelley Calvert.

Grant Writing Workshop for Faculty, Staff

The offices of the Provost & Institutional Advancement have teamed up to offer a special workshop for faculty and staff interested in grant funding opportunities.

The workshop will consist of two, two-hour grant writing overview sessions, to be
taught by Jonathan Berkey, Adjunct Professor, GSIPS, on February 24th & 26th from 12-2 PM. (Note: The second session will build on the first.)

Learn about:
•       Foundation and corporate database searches
•       Proposal writing techniques
•       Strategies for writing successful proposals
•       Project management
•       Developing good relationships with funders

Please register with Susan Wolfe no later than Monday, December 1 as space in these session will be limited to 15 participants.

Once registered, you will be contacted in early February concerning your interests and needs related to specific information that will be presented in the sessions.

A free lunch will be provided for participants.

Permission to Be Great

This video was produced in collaboration between the Advancement office and the Digital Media Commons and presented Friday, October 24th during a tribute dinner for President Yu’s leadership in helping to foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and appreciation.

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Engaging with Change: a Workshop Series for Staff

As a community, the Monterey Institute is experiencing change on many levels, from integration with Middlebury to the reorganization of schools and services within the Institute. At the same time, as a society, we are facing  economic dislocations and uncertainty about the future of everything from the planet to our retirement accounts.

Change can be frightening, but times of change can also unleash powerful creative energies and offer opportunities for growth. To develop skills for constructive participation in a changing organization, the Human Resources department invites staff to take part in an exciting workshop series, Engaging with Change.

Dr. Paul Porter will facilitate the series of four half-day workshops designed to help staff members learn skills to assist with organizational change. Dr. Porter is a highly respected trainer, consultant, workshop leader, and speaker.  His background includes serving as a teacher, counselor, school principal, director of special education, university professor, and school district superintendent for 17 years.  He is well known for his practical and engaging style and work in the areas of change, leadership, team building, positive intent, organizational development and communications and has spoken to and worked with many public and private organizations in these areas.

The workshops will take place on November 4 and 11, and December 2 and 15. (There will be sessions from 9-12 and 1:30-4:30, and you can register for either the morning series or the afternoon series.)

We think you will find the workshops a positive and enjoyable learning experience. Not only will you acquire new skills to enhance your own career, but you will have a  chance to interact with other staff across departments.

The workshops will cover topics such as the following:

  • * Discovering and Utilizing Your Strengths
  • * Ideas and Techniques for Dealing Productively with Change
  • * Working Together Productively as a Team with Positive Intent
  • * Productive Utilization and Styles of Dealing with Stress
  • * Appreciative Inquiry
  • * Communication Skills:  the Key to Change

Staff members should check with their supervisors before signing up to make sure essential services are covered, but these workshops are considered part of the paid work day for those who participate. Each workshop builds on the learning from the previous session, so please check to make sure you can attend the entire series before you register.

Register HERE. (Enter your name and click “morning” or “afternoon.”)

Illustration: Plate from Metamorphosis of a Butterfly, Maria Sybilla Merian (1747-117)

Advancement Announces Reorganization

The Office of Institutional Advancement is pleased to announce some organizational enhancements designed  to build an even more effective division working to support the Institute’s goals.

Tony O’Brian has agreed to take on the position of director of advancement information services.  In this expanded role, he will provide leadership for ongoing business process analysis and other advancement services integration initiatives with Middlebury.  We have all benefited from the great skill and energy he brings to his responsibilities, and we are fortunate that he has agreed to take on this position.

To better reflect the demands of building a robust event program for both advancement and the Institute as a whole, Linae Ishii-Devine’s role will shift from manager of events and advancement services to manager of events and administrative services.  In addition to her leadership in the events area, Linae will partner with Beth McDermott on identifying and implementing continuing education opportunities for the group, the first of which is the guest speaker series at bi-weekly Advancement staff meetings.  Her organization, enterprise, and institutional knowledge have been and will continue to be key components of our success.

Finally, at the end of this month, Leah Gowron and alumni relations will shift their reporting from the provost’s office to institutional advancement.  This move will enable us to more effectively strengthen our ties with alumni and other constituencies as we build broad-based support for the Institute.  We are lucky to have had Leah as one of our closest campus partners, and look forward to all that we will accomplish in the years ahead.

–from the Institutional Advancement Office

Traveling? Connect with MIIS Alums and Prospective Students

Traveling for work this semester?  Interested in spending an evening with fascinating people?  If so, please contact Leah Gowron, Director of Alumni Relations, or Jill Stoffers, Director of Admissions, regarding your travel schedule!  You can make a tremendous contribution to our recruiting and alumni affairs efforts with a very small invstment of your time.

The Alumni Office regularly coordinates alumni reception and happy hours in conjunction with faculty and staff travel.  Fred Wehling (Vienna), Ed Laurance (New York), Laura Burian (Beijing) and Lynn Goldstein (Portland & Seattle) helped host events over the summer, and  there are many more events planned for Fall 2008.  We are particularly interested in adding European cities, locales in the Middle East, and Korea to our Fall event schedule.

Hosting a reception is easy, and only takes two hours of your time.  All arrangements will be managed by the Alumni Office; your role is to “host”, communicate the many exciting changes and activities on campus to the attending alumni, and collect business cards/contact info. Occasionally supplemental travel support can be provided if scheduling a reception requires an additional night’s stay.

Current alumni events can be viewed here.

The recruiting staff can also use your help recruiting future classes for MIIS. There are several ways you can help:

  • • Meet with prospective students for drinks or coffee. With enough notice, we can set this up in your hotel.
  • • Take MIIS recruiting material to your contacts. Let us know and we’ll give you a small supply before you leave!
  • • Give a substantive presentation on a topic in your area of expertise or information session about MIIS. In some cities, we have concentrations of students who would love to learn more from you.

Depending upon the location, the Recruiting Office may be able to help with some of your expenses. Please notify contact Jill Stoffers or work directly with an Enrollment Manger. Thanks for thinking of ways to help!
–from the Alumni Affairs and Admissions Offices