Desirable Support

• Traveling Workshops (tell us about them)
• Information about other departments' administrative structure and history
• Information on field trips/sites
• Information on regional activities (including departmental seminars)
• Compilation of data from curricula sessions (Carol has added these to the program page)
• Citations/bibliography of resources that the leaders mentioned
• Getting buy-in hotline: if you would like help getting buy-in from your colleagues, email Carol and she'll send it to just the workshop leaders or email Cathy and she'll send it to whichever leader(s) she thinks will be most helpful
• Each other.... share our successes and failures: email strong_programs@serc.carleton.edu
• Information on how many departments have participated in Building Strong Geoscience Departments (and Cutting Edge) workshops
• Checkpoint to see how we're doing -- prompt the email list to send progress reports once/semester
• Letter to Presidents/Provosts recognizing participants' contributions to this workshop (and a copy for ourselves)

Lessons Learned

• We are not alone; we have lots in common
• Each of us is doing some things well
• Simple ideas can launch complex action plans with profound impacts
• Think proactively
• It's important to consider multiple perspectives: colleagues, students, alumni, and administrators
• Meeting regional colleagues is valuable

Recommendations

• More workshops (including the Traveling Workshops)
• Workshop on Environmental Science/Environmental Studies/Geosciences and how they fit together
• Export this workshop to related disciplines - or at least share with them what we did and what worked well
• Update the list of characteristics of thriving departments
• Workshop on how to be an effective department head/chair/leader (CCAS has such an annual workshop)
• Workshop on working effectively with administration