Burian Receives Eliason Award

The recipient of the Fourth Annual Leslie
Eliason Excellence in Teaching Award is Professor Laura Burian.  Professor
Burian has a record of excellence in teaching and an ongoing, inspiring
commitment to providing our students the highest quality education
possible.  She has a wonderful rapport with her colleagues and students,
an exceptional teaching record that reflects her ability to provide an
excellent learning experience to our students, and an intensive commitment
to the Institute’s mission.

As a professor dedicated to her students and to delivering quality
education, Professor Burian embodies much of what Professor Eliason also
dedicated her teaching efforts towards.  Leslie Eliason was a strong
woman, dynamic and passionate about her chosen profession of teaching.
She pursued her responsibilities as a teacher and mentor with great warmth
and care for her students and colleagues, reflecting her intelligence,
integrity, good humore, and commitment to quality in all of her endeavors.
Professor Burian has a similar thoroughness in her role as teacher,
colleague, mentor and advisor.  As was true for Professor Eliason,
Professor Burian is interested in building the capacities of her students,
in helping them and the Institute reach their greatest potential, and in
working collaboratively with her colleagues to achieve their goals.  There
is no question that Professor Burian reflects the qualities Professor
Eliason valued the most — hard work, intense and at times passionate
commitment to students and sound academic programming, and good colleagial
interactions and collaborations.  Her commitment to excellence both inside
and outside of the classroom is greatly appreciated and valued.

Congratulations to Professor Burian — we will celebrate her selection on
April 21st during the “quiet hours” at lunchtime in the Samson Center
Reading Room.  More details will follow about this celebration.

Thanks to all of you who nominated faculty for this award and helped in
the selection process.

–Provost Sands

Staff Advisory Team Formed

We are pleased to announce the formation of the new Staff Advisory Team. We’re very fortunate to have a group of volunteers who represent several different departments at the Institute, and bring diverse backgrounds, perspective, interests and skills to the important work of ensuring that issues of concern to Institute staff are articulated.  They are:

Kenley Butler, JMCNS
Rachel Christopherson, GSTI
Trinidad Gomez, ITS
Gail Lu, Student Affairs
Devin Luedekke, Recruiting
Raphael Ochoa, Financial Aid
Edy Rhodes, current GSIPS Career Development Officer, future Advising Staff

Thanks to the ad hoc staff group that has been working for the past several months to develop alternative frameworks for staff organization, and to carry out the process of vetting these frameworks  and implementing  the one favored by the majority of the staff:

Karen Weiss, Dean’s Assistant GSTI
Priscilla Lorenzo, Office Services Coordinator
Toni Thomas, MBA Academic Advisor and Program Coordinator
Lynn McDonald, Postgraduate Fellow in Organizational Development
Susan Wolfe, Manager of Foundation and Corporate Relations
Erika Johnson, Acquisitions Librarian
Kenley Butler, CNS Senior Project Manager, Executive Officer

Once the new team members have had an initial meeting, they will call an all-staff meeting to develop ideas for the agenda for the coming months.

Central campus information portal launched

There are many different sources of information on the Monterey Institute campus today, and it can be challenging to find the information you are looking for in a timely manner. In response to this problem, we recently implemented a new solution that uses RSS feeds to channel information into a single central campus information resource.

This new resource is a campus information portal located on our Moodle site at elearning.miis.edu. The revamped Moodle home page now incorporates the master events calendar and a list of the most recent articles published on our new campus-wide blog aggregator, the Monterey Institute Focus.  The Focus, located at www.miisfocus.com, collects posts from a wide range of campus-based blogs into a single, comprehensive information resource that also feeds directly onto the Moodle home page.

In the near future, Ashley Arrocha will be providing instructions to student clubs on how to set up blogs and/or submit stories directly to the Monterey Institute Focus.

The portal accomplishes many of our key goals regarding funneling campus information into a single point of contact for campus community members that will continue to be enhanced and improved.

Pizza Party Success!

The Pizza Innovation Process is off to a good start. 47 faculty, staff & students enjoyed some pizza and brainstormed ideas to help shape MIIS. To get involved, join the Pizza Process Social Network.

The party started with a small group icebreaker activity where teams created pizzas with a topping for each member and a name that described the whole pizza.  The pizza process was then introduced followed by great conversations about the definition of innovation, barriers and drivers to innovation, and some tips for success in the process.  The party ended with pizza for all and ideas shared with the group.

If you couldn’t make the party, you’re not out of the process!  Interested innovators can join our social network and form a pizza group.  To “officially” register your group, set up an appointment with Lynn McDonald.  Groups should be diverse, passionate and fun to work towards finding solutions and making a better MIIS.  Ideas will be shared with the entire community on April 16th at the Idea Fair.

Last years pizza process produced the DMC, CNS Second Life and Delcats along with some good ideas that just didn’t stick.  Innovation is a risk, but also an invaluable learning experience with idea sharing and organizational development.  Groups this year will be working on building community, connecting with alumni, understanding and incorporating competition, building a knowledge base and so much more!

For more information, contact Lynn McDonald at lynn.mcdonald@miis.edu or ext. 4633.  Join us for this pizza journey!

Kropp Wins Award for Research on Entrepreneurship

Prof. Fredric Kropp has received an award from Emerald, a publisher of management research journals, for his article, “Entrepreneurial Orientation and International Entrepreneurial
Business Venture Startup,” published in the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour Research. His article has been chosen as a Highly Commended Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2009.

Congratulations, Fredric!

The Podcast Army is in Training

The Teaching & Learning Collaborative in coordination with the Digital Media Commons at the Monterey Institute is training an army of podcasters.  The one unit, fifteen hour workshop titled Digital Media for Change meets Friday afternoons from 2-4pm.  Participants are exploring new communication skills with digital media with a particular focus on affecting change.  We’re reading and discussing the workshop text by Garr Reynolds, PresentationZen, and we have gathered online on a homegrown social network hosted by Ning: http://dm4change.ning.com.  Participants will be helping the Institute build our capacity to capture campus events, speakers, and other stories that distinguish our community and reflect our mission.  We’re building an army of graduate students, staff, and faculty to help us!  And yes, we like cupcakes.

As the workshop coordinator I am using this as an opportunity to experiment with alternative course management tools and blogging.  We welcome any and all who might be interested in what we are up to, so please feel free to join us on our Ning, or grab the RSS feed for the DM4change blog that is being piped into the main page for workshop updates and thoughts from yours truly.

Google Search Now Live at MIIS!

Have you ever tried to find something on the MIIS website only to be given a PDF campus map as a search result?  You’re not alone and hopefully now those days are over!  The www.miis.edu website now has incorporated a google search function into the website.

Little known fact: MIIS actually is running 5 separate websites – the main site and one for each school.  With our old search function, you had to be on the right site to find what you needed.  Searching for language programs in the Fisher site would have produced less than ideal results.  Our old search function also seemed to give priority to PDFs and menu items rather than actual pages.  The google search function now covers all of our sites and has the google relevancy to help prioritize our search results.

Thanks to Chris Norris and his staff at Middlebury for sharing their Google Search Appliance with us, configuring it to index our sites, and writing the code to make it all run.

In a recent google webinar, it was reported that 50% of the duke.edu web users were using the search function in place of the menu navigation.  This new search function should allow our constituents the ability to find what they need more easily and tap into the google search habits of digital natives (aka most of our students).  The google search function also allows for all google search conventions and has an advanced search function where you can search by program, sort by date, or narrow your search.

This is part of a larger website redesign project that a dedicated group of MIIS staff and faculty members have been working on since November.  To see what we’ve been up to, check out our wiki space.

If you’re interested in giving more feedback about the website or joining our group, contact Lynn McDonald

J.D. Yuan Speaks at Woodrow Wilson Panel on China-Pakistan Relations

J.D. Yuan, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at JMCNS and associate professor of international policy studies, is one of three speakers at a panel entitled “Storm Clouds Ahead for the ‘All-Weather Allies’? Today’s Pakistan-China Relationship,” sponosred by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.  You can watch a live webcast of the panel on January 26 at 3:30 p.m., eastern time.