Attendees at the Advisory Board Meeting
Is it helpful to have lead instructors at an advisory board meeting? I have only one program.
Joyce,
Welcome to OP-110!
Yes, it is very desirable to have a lead instructor at advisory board meetings, but it's important to ensure that he/she doesn't dominate the meeting. His or her role should be to listen and ask questions that are germane to the program content, technology, career opportunities and future direction for the occupation with your market reach.
Can you think of other school personnel who should be included in the meetings and topics that might be discussed to enhance your program's performance and student success?
R. Roehrich
Not only instructors. I believe in integrating instructors, graduates and employers. I always have members of management and education as well because while employers always outnumber the rest of attendees, everyone has a different outlook on things and I can better benefit from a larger pool of ideas and points of view. It also keeps my administration focused and informed on the progress of the school's mission and saves me a meeting having to inform them on the PAC's outcome.
Julio,
I can support your approach, but would caution you on “overwhelming†your outside members or biasing the outcomes with so many internal members. How do you address that potential?
R. Roehrich
Thank you for your "heads-up". I make sure that inclusion of internal memebers, including graduates, does not represent more than 49%.
I believe it is absolutely helpful. We have 8 programs and have a supervisor of each program that oversees those programs' instructors. This program supervisor attends all PAC meetings and listens and questions the advisory committee for their opinions, then relays this information back to the rest of the instructors for that program. For our accrediting body, if more than one instructor is present, we must have more than three advisory members in attendance.
Pam,
Do you share the information with your faculty, either by posting it on a web site or distributing notes summaries from the meetings for input?
R. Roehrich
Our program supervisors discuss the feedback received from our PAC members with our faculty, definitely! We try to implement as many suggestions as possible that our advisory committee members give us...they are the future employers of our graduates!
Bringing in a lead instructor is quite helpful. As we are moving to establish a new advisory board for an up and coming program, we pulled a lead instructor and advisory board member from a separate program to share their experiences.
Nick,
Bringing in a lead instructor is a great idea and using representatives from other advisory boards is also an admirable approach. How do these individuals contribute to the formation and functioning of the new board? Do they merely reflect on their experiences or do they actively participate as "mentors" for the new board?
R. Roehrich
Sorry for the response delay, I've been traveling this past week.
