ORCC Student Advisory Board Conference Call 7/15/2009

In Attendance:

Erick Castillo (PCC)

Emily Johnson (Willamette)
Colin Jones (Linfield)
Emily Gilliland (ORCC)
Elizabeth Wells-Thulin (ORCC)

What were some of the outcomes from the SAB Retreat in June?

 Decided to hold a conference

 Decided to hold the conference in the fall as opposed to the spring
o After students are energized by the conference, they will have the rest of
the school year to put their plan into action. If the conference were in
spring, then students wouldn’t have much time to build on the momentum
generated at the conference
 We had not decided what the focus of the conference was going to be
o Focus on one issue? Non-smoking?
o Provide students the skills with which to enact change on their campus?
o Should the conference be the starting point for a state wide campaign?

If we plan by starting with the end in mind, what kind of outcomes do we want from
the conference?

 Arm students with the tools to enact change on their own campus
 Provide an opportunity for students to network with students from other campuses
and to pool/share resources
 Issue-related outcomes?

Do we want the conference to focus on specific issues or on general student

engagement? What are some different options for the focus of the conference?

 Focus Option 1: Focus on one policy issue, e.g. non-smoking

o Pros: Would provide the conference with structure
o Cons:
 Not all campuses are facing the same issues, e.g. some campuses
 are already non-smoking—too narrow of a focus would make the
conference irrelevant to students from some schools
 Everyone has their own ‘pet issues’; some students wouldn’t want
to attend if conference focused on specific issue that wasn’t
interesting to them
 Focus Option 2: Focus on 2-3 broad issues
o What issues might interest students?
 Environment
 Education
• Advocacy for adults with disabilities (Best Buddies)
 Health Care
• Student access to health care (access to health care through
campus organizations no longer available to PCC Students)
o Suggestion for organizing a conference of this type: each SAB member or
group of SAB members could focus on a different issue
o Pros:
 Leaves focus broad enough to engage students with different
passions
 Gives enough focus to provide structure to the conference
 Focus Option 3: Focus on giving students the skills they need to enact change
around the issues that they are passionate about
o Give students the skills to identify issues in their own communities
o Give students the skills to create plans of action to address those issues
o Pros:
 Would appeal to engaged students regardless of their specific
passion
 Valuable to engage those with different passions
 Specific skill outcomes could serve as focus and provide structure
to conference
o Cons:
 Without a specific-issue focus could conference be too vague to
provide structure to planners?
 Focus Option 4: Focus on days of service—give students the skills to plan them
o Pros:
 Provides clear structure to the planners, while allowing participants
to focus on the issues they are passionate about
 Would be valuable to programs with emerging service day
programs.
o Cons:
 Some schools already have institutionalized service days, e.g.
Willamette. Conference focused on service days would be less
valuable to students from these schools.
o Possible adaptations to address cons:
 Focus could be on planning service projects in general, not just
 service days
 Focus could include tying service days to a more long term impact
 Focus Option 5: Increase student civic engagement across the state, i.e. student
involvement in service and advocacy
o According to a recent study, the number of hours students in Oregon spend
volunteering is below the national average—conference could aim to
address this
o Build on United We Serve
 United We Serve is an initiative which was kicked-off by Michelle
Obama on June 22. The aim of the initiative is to have every
American serve in their community at least once before September
11.
• http://www.americorps.gov/about/newsroom/releases_detai
l.asp?tbl_pr_id=1404
• http://www.serve.gov/
 We could have a similar goal of getting every student in Oregon to
volunteer at least once.
 Attaching our plan to United We Serve to closely could be
divisive.
• We could work with the theme without attaching it to the
plan. Suggested title: “Oregon Students Serve United”
• If we did associate ourselves with United We Serve, we
would have to be careful and make sure that there was not
“too much Obama” as that might turn some students off
o Conference would serve as catapult for action and advocacy in addition to
volunteering
o Like Focus Option 3, conference would give students the skills to identify
issues and to enact plans of action around those issues
 Pros:
• Like Focus Option 3, would appeal to students with a broad
range of passions, while still providing a clear goal and
structure to the conference.
 General Consensus: Head in the direction of Option 5

How do we want to structure the conference?

 “Babson Model”
o Amber attended a conference at Babson College which could be a model
for our conference.
o Babson Conference Process:
 Students attended skill-building workshops
 Given space to make plans in small groups
 Plans were then presented to whole conference
 Plans evaluated by a panel
 Winning plan received a mini-grant to help fund putting the plan
 into action
• Mini-grant was not essential to success of conference; it
was a bonus.
o Possible adaptations to Babson Model for our conference
 Small group formation
• Small groups at Babson were random; this would probably
be difficult. What if group members were interested in
different issues?
• Small groups are necessary because it would be difficult
also to run a conference with 90 different people and 90
different plans
• Groups could be put together based on similar interests or
based on geography
 Focus of plans
• Plans could be focused on specific issues
• Plans could also focus on increasing student engagement
state-wide
 Proposed 4-day conference, from Thurs. evening through Sunday
o Thursday evening: Kick off event: General speaker, rally, etc.
o Friday: Team-building, service fair, community members, and students
could talk about various issues facing Oregonians
 If we used the Babson structure and the 4-day conference plan, event could look
something like this:
o Thurs evening: Kick off event highlighting examples of involvement
around the state.
o Fri.: Panels w/student examples of how they got people involved.
o Sat-Sun: Creating plans in small groups and then presenting them to the
conference; plans would focus on how to get students involved on a state-
wide level.
 General Consensus: Head in the direction of a multi-day conference based on the
Babson model with adaptations.

Next Steps
Who What When
1. ORCC Send out notes from conference call Immediately
2. SAB Consider strength and weaknesses of plan to Send feedback to
center conference on campaign to increase Elizabeth by
student involvement state-wide Monday, July 27
3. Set a date for the conference
ORCC ORCC will send out potential dates to SAB Wednesday, July 22.
Members.
SAB SAB Members respond with their preferences Respond to
for dates. Elizabeth by
Monday, July 27
5. Create a plan for developing and implementing the conference: what will happen
when?
SAB Contact Elizabeth if you would like to Contact Elizabeth
volunteer to help with this; we will need at by this Friday, July
least two volunteers. 24
ORCC and Hold conference call to create plan. Between July 27
SAB and July 31
volunteers
6. SAB Consider publicity: What will be the “big Bring feedback to
draw” for the conference? A musical act? A meeting the week of
speaker? Do we have any connections? August 10
th
6. Set up next meeting/conference call for the week of August 10 .
ORCC ORCC will send out potential dates and times Monday, July 27
through Meeting Wizard;
SAB SAB members respond to Meeting Wizard Friday, July 31
requests