Emails from 2005 Conference

Contacts from ADPSouth 05
Name	email		School
Nic Wehmeyer	nfw2a@mtsu.edu		mtsu
Ashley Eddington	ashley.edington@comcast.net		mtsu
Faye Johnson	fjohnson@mtsu.edu		mtsu
Mark Byrnes	mbyrnes@mtsu.edu		mtsu
Roman Cech	cechr@longwood.edu		longwood
David Locascio	locasciod@longwood.edu		longwood
Trip Humphrey	triphumphrey@longwood.edu		longwood
Nikki Clark	anclark@longwood.edu		longwood
Loren Barta	llbarta@longwood.edu		longwood
Jackie Tisdell	jtisdell@uls.state.la.edu		U La System
Mike McCullough	mccullou@utm.edu		UT Martin
Bill Willoughby	wtwillou@latech.edu		La Tech
Molly Kerby	molly.kerby@wku.edu		WKU
Katie Harmon	katie_harmon@bobcat.gcsu.edu		GC&SU
Tracy Norris	tracy.norris@gcsu.edu		GC&SU
Ruel Lee	ruel1@mac.com		GC&SU
Katie Dawson	katherine.dawson@wku.edu		WKU
Gregg Kaufman	gregg.kaufman@gcsu.edu		GC&SU
Anthony Earls	anthony_earls@bobcat.gcsu.edu		GC&SU
Sally Kuhlenschmidt	sally.kuhlenschmidt@wku.edu		WKU
Ronald Sitton	sitton@uamont.edu		Ark Mont
Dennis Wiseman	dwiseman@coastal.edu		Coastal Carolina
Gene Hatfield	genehatfield@clayton.edu		Clayton State
Carl Kell	carl.kell@wku.edu		WKU
Laura McGee	laura.mcgee@wku.edu		WKU
Tom Rakes	rakes@utm.edu		Utn-Martin
Tamara Waggener	pol_taw@shsu.edu		Sam Houston
Mallory B. Wall	sgapresident@mcneese.edu		McNeese
John Olle	jolle@westga.edu		West GA
Sandra Stone	sstone@westga.edu		West GA
John Frevert	jfrevert@westga.edu		West GA
Blake Lord	bmlord54@yahoo.com		West GA
Joshua Eaton	xanandax@gmail.com		West GA
Mattie M Decker	m.decker@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Kevin Teets	kteets@gmail.com		U TN Martin
Noelle N’Diaye	n.lee@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Deandre Poole	dpoole3@fau.edu		Fl Atlantic
Todd Ericson	tericson@fau.edu		Fl Atlantic
Bev McCormick	b.mccormick@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Randy Manis	rlmani01@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Christina Norris	cmnorr01@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Calvin Lindell	c.lindel@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Jeremy Richardson	starwarsfn2003@msn.com		Morehead
Eric McCann	lchief03@hotmail.com		Morehead
Bethanie Skidmore	baskid01@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Christy Parr	c.parr@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Joe Fondren	jbfond01@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Megan Gibson	mxgibs01@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Chad Muncy	wcmunc01@moreheadstate.edu		Morehead
Kevin Wright	ncu_77@yahoo.com		Morehead

Nov 10-12 meeting and some history of ADP South

As the Provost of UT Martin, Dr. Tom Rakes said, it is not that often you get to see the beginnings of organizations and it is interesting. We are still beginning, but we have also come a long way since the original idea in Albuquerque in June 2004. That idea was aided significantly when Carl Kell, Jackie Tisdell, Gene Hatfield and I met in Baton Rouge, LA in Nov 2004. Lea Williams of North Carolina A&T, Linda Summers of Florida Gulf Coast and Marilyn McKenzie from George Mason University joined us by conference call on Nov 19.

The meeting in Portland, OR, June 2005, saw us get interest from a number of new people. Between the 04 and the 05 groups, we have grown into nearly 100 people across the south who are networking around democracy. With the choice of UT Martin as the Center in the Summer of 05, the first infrastructure was put in place. This conference is both the culmination of a lot of work and I think we all believe and hope, the start of something big.

Jackie, Gene and I planned the 2005 conference with support and guidance from Lynn Hall, Trisha Boyer and Petra Kohlman. The three of us have been together in the same location now four times, Albuquerque June 2004, Baton Rouge Nov 18 and 19 2004, Portland June 2005 and now Atlanta November 2005. Countless emails and files have been exchanged, numerous conference calls have occurred and local arrangements have been made.

Jackie hosted our November 2004 meeting and we even had some time with the system President. Gene hosted the first conference and I have put together the financial and web infrastructure at Tennessee-Martin.

The 2005 conference started off well with a successful business meeting and proceeded well from there. Elizabeth Bumiller from the NY Times spoke to an overflow crowd of over 300, on the subject of the President's push for democracy around the world.

The 2005 conference had 76 participants from 21 Institutions and nine states. The only states not represented were North Carolina, West Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi. Morehead State in Kentucky, brought the most people with 17 registrants. It was decided that the 2006 conference will be held in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

The council for 2005-06 was voted in as follows:

Alabama – none

Arkansas – Ronald Sitton UA –Monticello 2

Florida – Deandre Poole proxy for Becky Mulvaney 1

Georgia – Gene Hatfield 2

Kentucky – Bev McCormick 3

Louisiana – Jackie Tisdell 1

South Carolina – Dennis Wiseman 2

Tennessee – Mike McCullough 3

Texas – Tamara Waggoner 1

Virginia - Dave Locascio 3

The number after each council member's name, indicates the number of years left on their term.

The executive council for 05-06 will be:
Chair - Gene Hatfield
Vice Chair - Bev McCormick
Executive Director of the ADP South Center - Mike McCullough
Past Chair - Jackie Tisdell

Committees decided upon, to be appointed by Gene Hatfield were:

National-regional coordinating committee

Membership

Conference

Awards

Publication

Joint initiatives/projects

Some possible constitutional amendments discussed were:

Amend the constitution to allow council to hear grievances

Nature of student involvement

Size and composition (e.g. student/staff) of committees

Student leadership will be done on an interim basis to be ratified or not at next meeting

Another vote was taken that:

Allow for email vote on student membership to be determined before for amendment

ADP South Conference Nov 10-12

The First Annual ADP South Conference is upon us. It is the night before I drive to Atlanta from my home in Jackson, Tennessee. Jackie Tisdell and Gene Hatfield have been incredible partners in this effort. I wish you all teammates like these.

My respect for George Mehaffey and Mary-Kathryn McKenna is much greater after helping plan this conference. Their conferences have been much more elaborate and attended by many more and they make it look so easy.

It appears a large number of students will be joining us in Atlanta. And with this in mind, I must single out Morehead State University. If it is an ADP meeting, you can bet Morehead students will be present in droves. Something is being done right on that campus.

By the time you read this, the conference will be underway or already come and gone, but I want you to know my deep gratitude for helping sustain this dream...giving us all the chance to do something significant for the generation of young people we are now serving.

See you in Atlanta

Purpose of Blog

The purpose of this Blog, for those who are new, is to facilitate communication among those of us interested in seeing ADP South succeed. The post below contains my thoughts on the awards for this Fall's conference, and although it is written in a way that makes it sounds like that everything is written in stone, such is certainly not the case. It is intended to spur conversation and suggestions for improvement. Thanks for joining.

Planning the Awards

The following are my thoughts thus far on the ADP South Awards for this Fall's Conference. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. One thing we need for sure are sponsors for the awards, that is, companies, organizations, etc. that will give money to have their name attached to the award. I would especially like to hear from people on suggestions for such donors.

Purpose of Awards

Awards are designed to recognize individual, team or institutional leadership. Whether people help others in order to get public acclaim for having done so or not, is a philosophical question we will not presume to answer. We know motivations vary. However, actions do not occur in a vacuum. E.L. Thorndike’s Law of Effect states that behavior rewarded tends to be repeated.

Higher education is replete with evaluation. Students receive grades or other forms of feedback that range from positive reinforcement (a grade of A) to punishment (failing a class due to cheating or underperformance on assignments), faculty are evaluated on their contributions and either promoted or tenured or not, staff receive annual performance reviews which can mean more money or being stuck near the same level of pay for years, or keeping their job or being asked to leave. The assumption underlying such systems is that excellence is tied to incentives. Steve Kerr (management theorist) points out that rewarding A while hoping for B is foolish. That is, by placing great emphasis on class grades, for example, we may be rewarding students studying just to do well on exams as opposed to studying to learn the material for their lives.

Our awards are designed to provide a type of incentive system to positively reinforce behavior we would like to see become more prevalent on our campuses. The awards will be given at the individual, team or class and institutional levels. Individual awards promote individual initiative among campus members, team or class awards promote joint initiative among campus members and institutional awards promote right action among member campuses.

Awards can provide formal appreciation for contributions that are currently going unrecognized. Many institutions are investing a good deal of money in ADP efforts and Chief Academic Officers will need to be able to demonstrate the value of such an investment. Awards help in this regard.

Awards process

Here is how the award process will work. Each campus’s ADP representative or committee will nominate activities they believe deserve recognition at the annual ADP-South Conference. For the first year, the nominated activity can have occurred any time since the campus ADP initiative began. Representatives of activities nominated for an award are expected to attend the conference where they will make a presentation or display a showcase that gives the details of the awarded activity. Campuses can nominate as many activities as they would like, bearing in mind that it will be the campus’s responsibility to pay the registration fee for all delegates who attend the ADP – South conference. This year’s nominations should be sent to ADP – South by October 15, 2005. The nomination should be accompanied by a narrative that indicates who, what, when, how and to what effect the nominated initiative was carried out.

Awards will be given in the categories of service learning-, individual or team- and institutional-initiatives. Service learning initiatives will involve projects for which class credit was given (curricular). Individual or team initiatives will involve projects that were non-curricular, projects carried out by any combination of university students, faculty or staff. Institutional initiatives will be major ADP-related efforts funded or otherwise supported by the institution.

At the conference a panel of judges (needs to be determined) will be convened to determine winners in each category. Three awards will be given in each category. Judges will consider:

Podium skills

Presentation package

Informational value on inputs, throughputs and outcomes

Inputs

Teamwork

Principle team members were fully engaged

Evidence of having worked through conflicts around obstacles

Interaction with other groups/organizations/individuals

Involved groups, organizations and individuals did their part

Those who worked together persisted through obstacles

Planning

Clear mission for the project

Mission translated into a workable plan of action

Processes

Implementation

Carried out phases of the project in timely fashion

Anticipated and maximized use of human and other resources

Outcomes

Service benefit

Who benefited from the project’s outcome and how

Special recognition to projects whose benefit outcome would have been difficult to accomplish without this initiative

Learning benefit

How to manage projects

Awards

Plaques and ADP-South scholarship awards will be given to the winning initiatives. (Award amounts need to be determined.) This means all nominated projects will be honored, but only a few will receive special recognition.

June 18 fom Portland OR

Yesterday began with a speech by Ernesto Cortes, Jr. You can learn more about him at: http://www.forumforcorporateconscience.com/agenda/cortes.html. He apparently follows in the footsteps of Saul Alinsky organizing under the auspices of Alinsky's (who is now deceased) Industrial Areas Foundation. Mr. Cortes spoke with great passion about the plight of undocumented, and legally unprotected, Mexican laborers in the U.S. He said there is growing resentment between public and private sector workers in the U.S. and I recalled an NPR broadcast I had heard last week about how Governor Don Carcieri of Rhode Island is attempting to reduce the pension benefits of state workers. It strikes me that this is an example of those who had secure incomes and pensions (private-sector employees) being envious of state workers whose jobs are relatively secure and whose pensions are as good as the private sector, not that long ago enjoyed. Mr. Cortes made numerous references to the Bible, including one about Esau selling his birthright to Jacob, making the analogy to people in our society who have given up their birthright to speak and be legally protected, against injustice. I was greatly moved by his speech, as were many others in the audience.

I went from there to the session in which I presented. The four presenters in the session were from art, psychology, sociology and then I was there from management. Our presentations were as diverse as might be expected. Conrad Schumacher (art) discussed the potential of art as a catalyst for social change. The best point he made was that a project should be managed from the outcomes back to the present and not forward. Although that rings true, I wonder how many of Van Gogh’s paintings were created that way? The ensuing discussion did not stay at his level of abstraction and it would felt disrespectful given the agreeable atmosphere in the room to raise such a question (even if I had thought of it at the time and not later).

Carol Parker from psychology at Sam Houston State reported on service projects she had done with her graduate students. She and I had that in common, that we were talking about graduate students. I get the feeling that ADP is effectively an undergraduate project, but my question would be, “So what then does one do if his/her assignment is to teach graduate students?” I will never raise the issue and so maybe it will not come up and those of us doing graduate service learning can at least remain undetected if not blessed.

I presented on who I was, where I was and what I did this past semester. The best question I received pertained to prompting students in their journal writing. I will incorporate that idea. It was gratifying to see that several people appeared to be interested in my approach and dutifully wrote down my email address at the end, that I spoke aloud to them. (I remain defiantly paperless, even at a conference that appears to have launched an all-out assault on the nation’s forests…just a minor peeve for me.)

David Rudy finished our session and did a great job of keeping us on schedule. His students had done a project unrelated to sociology, or at least it seemed to me so, but it did involve setting up a research study and carrying it out. I think his class was a research class, so that made it relevant.

We then heard Mary Fetchet, founding director of Voices (http://www.voicesofseptember11.org) who tearfully spoke of her 24 year old son’s death. He worked on the 89^th floor of the second tower hit. Mrs. Fetchet has worked tirelessly to hold the government to their early promises to make the nation safer after that day and to get to the bottom of why we were not able to thwart the attack. Her speech was memorable.

I then heard Ron Kates (English at Middle Tennessee State University) talk about art, writing and other less-easily categorized projects, his students did, including a mosaic about Etta James the great blues vocalist. One of his students created a “Socrates Café” for high school students. For some pointers on conducting such a café I found (

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall00/socratescafe.htm). Also, in that session, a recently graduated and past SGA president from IUPUI told of how he conceived and brought to fruition a public chalk board for free expression on campus and some of the free speech issues it has brought up. Chris DeHart of Humboldt State in Northern California, told of the graduation pledge alliance started at Humboldt in 1987. The pledge is: I (name) pledge to thoroughly investigate and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job opportunity I consider.

The other person was a substitute presenter who told of a content analysis done on student writing about the 2004 election, by her colleague Norfolk State (VA), Nuria Cuevas. The issues students thought candidates should have been talking about were: the economy, health, security (including homeland), education and social-moral issues (e.g. same-sex couple marriage).

From that session I went to one and then left that one for another. The first presenter told of the blighted area of the North Eastern San Fernando Valley (she was from UC-Northridge) and service projects students were conducting to help with the situation. I left before she finished and moved to the section on institutional Marketing of ADP and heard from John Broderick of how Old Dominion had taken an audit of all the ways faculty, students and staff were serving organizations in the surrounding community. They were serving over 500 organizations, which if nothing else, tells me they live in an area more densely populated with organizations than we do at UT-Martin.

The day ended with a walk to Portland State where a conversation among a professor, community partner, grad and undergrad student and a college dean was staged. They told of the many great things Portland State does in the city from these various perspectives, apparently having taken down notes on the words of people who actually perform in the various roles being depicted in the simulated dialog. At the end of their marketing effort, a student strode to the microphone as the applause was dying down and began to tell of how Portland State discriminated against gays and lesbians and how she had brought a lawsuit against the school of education. There was a rumble in the room, but what we had just seen, speaking the truth in a democracy, was so clearly out of place in the sanitized context, that we all walked away with the irony dripping off us. I doubt if anyone will remember much of what the actors said, but this real girl’s message was timed so well for effect that none of us can forget it, no matter how much we may try.

We then rode Portland’s marvelous light rail to the Dan and Louis Oyster Bar (208 SW Ankeny Street) in the area where they hold the Saturday market. The food and conversation was delightful. We rode the rail back to the Hilton and retired to some well-earned sleep.

June 17 from Portland OR

Portland is wonderful. Arrived 11:30 or so pacific time on the same flight as Jackie. We talked ADP and ADP-South over lunch. Attended plenary, hearing among others, Chancellor of Oregon University (former President of Portland State) who was given a rousing introduction by a smart Portland State student named Tammy. Attended roundtable session afterwards, talking with Shari Bax (Central Missouri State), Melanie Marks (discussion leader from Longwood in Virginia), Merdis McCarter(Winston-Salem State interim provost who knows Bob Herron), and Melanie Blumberg (California University of Pennsylvania who actually lives in Youngstown, Ohio).

During this session we told of ADP experiences on our campuses. Shari Bax: they had Jen Chapin, Harry Chapin’s daughter, on campus. She sings folk music and is the Chair of the Board of World Hunger Year (http://www.worldhungeryear.org), and organization started by her father in 1975. She said Jen was not that expensive and the students loved her. Shari also said they had a monthly ADP breakfast where area elected officials talked to a host class with other classes joining having up to 150 people in attendance when the speaker was talking on a subject related to teacher education and education faculty let their classes attend. I think it was Shari, but it may have been one of the others, who said they had legislative fellows at her University. These fellows (state government officials) would give regular talks on campus.

Melanie Marks told us she had been given 20 to 25 K as a budget and they had a campus civic-engagement project competition. She was a winner of about 5k and with that she took six students and two other faculty members to Slavakia and other Eastern European countries for travel study. She (and I think Shari also) said they had computer science students doing their ADP website and Shari also said she had a logo competition with thirty good entries. The winner also got $100.

Melanie Blumberg had Donna Brazile (Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000) at California of PA and she said she did not cost that much and she was terrific. They also sent students to campaign consulting workshop in Washington, D.C. They had the former head of the KGB who was great and also not expensive and they are having Juan Williams.

Gene Hatfield (Clayton State in Georgia), Jackie Tisdell (Louisiana System) and I talked about our session Saturday and the ADP-South meeting this Fall 2005. First on the meeting. George Mehaffy is checking his calendar and says if it is clear, he will be there. Gene said he would try to get a notable politician from GA to speak. He also introduced us to Barbara from Humanics (www.humanics.org). Jackie will be checking to see if her system President can speak. We want students and faculty to present on their ADP-related successes with first-, second- and third-place awards given in the categories of institution, faculty and student. We hope to learn what the best categories might be during this year’s conference and improve if need be by the second annual conference.

The NY Times will be donating 300 t-shirts for our conference, they will send a speaker and they will help sponsor our awards.

As for our Saturday session, we have decided to ask questions that will organize a round-table discussion. One question Jackie suggested was:

When you think about your campus ADP what is the biggest type of support you are missing?

I have also thought of these questions:

Thinking back over this last year, what ADP events would you submit to be showcased at our Nov 11 and 12^th meeting?

Other than you, can you identify a handful of people (students, administrators, faculty) that have been helpful to ADP? How are they currently being honored, recognized?

What contribution do you think you could make to ADP-South?

Those are some of the questions we might use. I am sure there are things I have left out, but it is nearly time for breakfast. Let the day begin!!