Networking and Community Building: An important aspect of CEE Programs

Kim A. ScalzoDirector SUNY Center for Professional DevelopmentVP Projects, IACEEIACEE 12th World Conference for Continuing Engineering EducationASEE Global Colloquium

October 19, 2010

State University of New York

• Public 64 campus system

• Campuses

30 Two year Community Colleges (A.S. Degrees)

8 Technical Colleges (A.S./B.S. Degrees)

13 University Colleges (B.S./M.S. Degrees

8 Doctoral Institutions (B.S./M.S./Ph.D./M.D. Degrees)

• Campus are located in rural communities to NYC

• Range of institution size - <1000 students to 30,00+

SUNY Center for Professional DevelopmentMISSION

The SUNY CPD develops and delivers customized programs for skill and knowledge development of the IT and academic communities across the SUNY system in support of strategic initiatives for SUNY. Through its diverse programs and services, the SUNY CPD

• provides centralized, regional, and local opportunities for professional development and training - both F2F and online

• facilitates networking and collaboration amongst the campuses

• promotes cost savings on a system-wide basis

Traditional CEE Programs• Masters Degrees

• Graduate Certificates

• Non-credit Certificate Programs

• Short Courses

• Training Programs

• Conferences

• Delivered/conducted online and F2F

What are the top 2-3 benefits you get from attending conferences?

Community Building

Community Building

Proactively facilitating the building of communities to enhance and supplement traditional means of professional development

• Networking - meeting other colleagues who:

• Are facing similar issues/challenges as you

• Have solutions for the issues/challenges you are facing

• Represent perspectives and areas of expertise that might be helpful to you (i.e., customer/provider)

• Collaboration opportunities

• Projects, benchmarking, innovation, other??

• Best practices and resources for future reference

• Other??

Why is this important?

• Communities are geographically dispersed

• We are all doing more with less and no one has time to reinvent the wheel – we don’t have time or money to waste going down the wrong road

• The challenges we are facing are interdisciplinary and solutions require diversity in expertise and perspective – no one can do it alone!

• Other reasons??

Opportunities/Questions for SUNY

How can we facilitate networking and collaboration outside of and in between conferences?

How can we provide networking and collaboration for professionals who don’t have the opportunity to meet with their community face to face?

Social Media Tools Can Help• Wiki Tools - info repository and collaborative

development – both secure and open communities

• LinkedIn/FaceBook/Ning – formation of online groups and communities for communication, info sharing, idea generation

• Twitter – follow people you can learn from and share what you know – links, references, conference sessions– purposely informal, almost like brainstorming

• What others have you used?

Discussion Question – Is this applicable for CEE?• Where could community building help in Continuing

Engineering Education?

• What roles can CE Providers, professional associations, employers, and government play in supporting community building for CEE and Lifelong Learning?

• Are there examples of Community Building that anyone can share with us?

Thank You!

For more information, contact me at:

(518) 320-1860

kscalzo@cpd.suny.edu

http://cpd.suny.edu

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