Pre-Conference Skillbuilding Workshops

The Chair Academy offers each conference participant, an expanded Conference experience. For $125.00, conference participants can attend a full day, pre-conference skillbuilding workshop. These day-long workshops can provide you with essential skills and knowledge, that participants can can bring back to their organizations.

		THE TRICK TO BEING A CHAIR OR ORGANIZATIONAL LEADER Presented by Bill Lamb, Kirkwood Community College The workshop will present a variety of strategies for new front line administrators, including chairs, directors, deans, and other organizational leaders. Activities throughout the day will help participants define their role as leaders and share strategies to develop cohesive teams. Topics will include: • understanding leadership versus management in organizations • understanding yourself and how you work with others • skills for building teams and working with diverse work styles • time management and work best practices • recognizing and managing conflict • adapting to and guiding organizational change The activities will involve small group interaction and allow time for sharing strategies as well as applying new methods to real work examples. The afternoon session will encourage the sharing of “successful practices" through guided group discussions. Participants will receive a variety of written materials to use as guides and references, and information related to the Academy for Leadership Development will be shared. About the Presenter: Dr. Bill Lamb, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Kirkwood Community College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa Bill Lamb is the Vice President for Academic Affairs at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Until 2007, Bill was the Dean of Liberal Arts and Distance Learning at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS, where he served in the role of assistant dean, department chair, and writing teacher. He received his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Kansas State University in 1984. His Master of Arts degree is in English literature from Pittsburg State University and his Bachelor’s degree is from the University of Kansas. Dr. Lamb has received numerous awards including the Paul Elsner International Excellence in Leadership Award in 2011. He is active in his local Rotary club and several community organizations. Additionally, he is a member of the Leadership Editorial Board and a member of the Iowa Liberal Arts Curriculum Articulation council. He is a member of the STEMhub Regional advisory group, and serves as the treasurer for the Oak Creek Homes Association. He is also a representative to the League for Innovation Board Representative group. Dr. Lamb has a number of publications and is a frequent presenter at international and regional conferences and workshops. For the last seven years, he has also served as a reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission.
		UPLIFTING WISDOM: LEADING WITH APPRECIATION AND RESILIENCE Presented by Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell, Cockell McArthur-Blair Consulting Join Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell for a day of learning and exploration that will uplift your leadership as you seek to create positive generative change in your institution. Formal and informal leaders in higher education are asked to be business people, educators, politicians and fundraisers. In this environment of high demand leadership, every leader needs to deeply understand how to uplift the wisdom of their organization, capitalize on their own strengths as a leader and deeply understand what can make them resilient over time. This one-day workshop is built upon the work that Joan and Jeanie have done and are doing in appreciative inquiry and resilience. In particular it draws on their book Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education: A Transformative Force and their current thinking regarding working resilience. Participants in this workshop will: • Use an appreciative inquiry process to explore their own leadership and how that leadership can uplift their institution • Reflect upon how some of the notions of appreciative inquiry, positive psychology, social constructionism and critical appreciative inquiry can be generative for education leaders • Use the concepts underpinning resilience and reflect on how as leaders they can understand their own generative capacity • Take away ideas to use with their own teams and institutions Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an energizing approach for sparking positive generative change in people, groups and organizations. It focuses on what is working well (appreciative) by engaging people in asking questions and telling stories (inquiry). The focus on the positive generates life in people, allowing them to move effectively toward their goals. As well as a process for facilitating positive change, AI is a way of being and seeing the world every day. Its assumption is simple: every human system (individual, group, organization, community) has something that works right – things that give it life when it is vital, effective, and successful. Working Resilience is a deep exploration of three key ideas that intersect as we lead in higher education over a life time. As leaders much is asked of us and we experience our successes and failures in deeply human ways. The notions of hope, despair and forgiveness are a cornerstone to understanding our own resilient leadership life, providing the opportunity to flourish in our work. About the Presenters: Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell are Co-Presidents of Cockell McArthur-Blair Consulting. They profoundly believe that education is the most powerful force for social and economic good in the world. Together they have more than 50 years of experience in higher education and have taken that experience to build a consulting practice that specializes in collaboratively designing strategies to surface the wisdom of individuals, groups and organizations in order for them to build positive futures and to respond effectively to change. They are both authors of several articles on resilience and appreciative inquiry and are co-authors of the book Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education: A Transformative Force. They are currently working on their new book Working Resilience.