Education Entrepreneur Fellowship

The Mind Trust is offering a $250,000 fellowship for Educational
Entrepreneurs with educational venture ideas for implementation within
the United States. There appears to be a strong preference for charter
school-type interventions, but I would love to see the ideas of
domestic-minded SIPA Education Collaborative members represented in
this kind of forum

Check out more at:
http://www.themindtrust.org/fellowship/apply.aspx

Happy studying!
Debi

SIPA Education Collaborative End of Semester Update

Hi Everyone!

   I apologize in advance for the length of this email.  However, we wanted to announce that between the meetings we held last week and today we have officially decided on a few things:

1. Name of the group - SIPA Education Collaborative.  After much debate, we decided this name best reflected the mission and atmosphere of our group.

2. Description of the group:
 We are a community of students and professors united by a common belief that education is fundamental to International and Public Affairs.  We aim to highlight the importance of education for human development and develop a platform for collaboration between SIPA, Columbia, and New York City to build on our diversity of experiences and interests in education.
While this description may not be 100% perfect, we thought it did an accurate job of reflecting the common thread among our ideas for the group while still being open to other possible initiatives (research, consulting, etc.).  We can definitely revisit the description after we see what initiatives emerge as being the core focus of our group.

3. Posts (Administrative Responsibilities):
There are three main categories of administrative responsibilities:
i) Co-coordinators - external coordinator (responsible for contact with UNSPWG, SIPASA, and any other SIPA student groups we may want to collaborate with in sponsoring activities, etc.) and internal coordinator (responsible for coordination within the larger group - keeping track of what various activity groups need, etc.)
ii) Treasurer
iii) Co-communication Chairs - external communication and outreach chair (This will likely involve outreach to TC, but really this person will be responsible for the blog, a calendar, resource sharing, etc. - basically everything Pablo has been doing) and internal communication chair/secretary (this person will be responsible for taking notes of meetings and sending out emails/posting decisions to the larger group, sending emails to the large group for meetings, etc.)

As soon as we come back in January we will make final decisions on people to fill these posts.  In the mean time, though, if you really want to fill any particular post, please email me back and let me know just so that we can get an idea of whether there will be any competition for the positions and decide from there how we should go about making decisions for filling them for the next semester. 

In the mean time, I believe Pablo has created a blog for the group and will be posting some items, gathering some information, etc. over break (please correct me if I'm wrong!).  We will also decide in January on what activities we will pursue next semester, who will be responsible for them, and what the broad but measurable 2nd semester goal for each activity will be.  Over break, if you want to do any work on a particular activity you are interested in the group taking on or if you want to send out an email with an idea for an activity in order to get an idea of group interest, feel free!!

And finally, thank you to everyone who took time out of these crazy last weeks of the semester to help make decisions for the future of this group! 

Good luck studying/writing!!  And have a terrific vacation! 


Cory

Education Task Force Planning Meeting v2.0 @Lehman study group

Hi, SIPA Education Task Force members,

Based on the information on our Doodle, finally we will meet this Monday Dec 12th, 1pm-3pm. We are going to meet at Lehman Study Group, because we didn't have enough time for scheduling a room for the meeting.

If you can come to the meeting, but you can't stay the whole two hours, it's ok!

See you there!
Pablo

Education Task Force Planning Meeting v2.0

Hi, SIPA Education Task Force members!

We had a great meeting today, planning the mission/ambition of the group, discussing our focus. Many things were part of the discussion: how to build a SIPA community with focus on education, including professors and students? how to collaborate with TC students and professors? what are the next steps? activities? dual degree?

Since there was a lot to be discussed, we decided to schedule a second meeting to continue the conversation. Paraphrasing what Cory said in a previous mail: these are incredibly busy days, but if you have strong feelings about the direction this group should take, we hope you'll be there!

If you are interested, please tell us when you are available, and we'll try to find a slot that works for everyone:
http://www.doodle.com/bmvcgi76a3fhb747

Cheers,
Pablo

Update: Education Task Force Planning Meeting Thurs 12/8, room 902

Hi All,

  The room has been cleared so we will be meeting in room 902 IAB for on Thursday December 8th from 1-2 p.m.I know its an INCREDIBLY busy week, but if you have strong feelings about the direction this group should take, I hope you will be there!

 

Cory

Education Task Force Planning Meeting

Hi All,

We will be having a group planning meeting on Thursday, December 8th at 1pm in a room soon to be announced. We have realized that getting people together and seeing what happens organically has worked really well for resource and information sharing and great conversation, but not as well for the formation of the kind of goal and action oriented group that we know is possible.

Thus, this meeting is designed to be a focused, decision making meeting with clear objectives to be accomplished in the hour that we'll have. By the end of the meeting we want to have come to conclusions about: the name of the group, the purpose of the group, the posts that will be held and who will hold them, and the activities that are really feasible for us to fully pursue 2nd semester (panels, volunteering, research, networking, etc), the people who will be responsible for those activities, the end of year goals that each activity will have, and a plan for following through on those goals as a group when we get back to campus in January. The thinking behind this is that we need to make these kinds of decisions in order to give structure and function to the group and create a group identity and atmosphere of shared responsibility. Our hope is that this will allow the group to really hit the ground running next semester ready to have some serious impact on SIPA and the surrounding community.

If you would like to help make these important decisions that will shape the group and/or are really interested in holding a post or leading an activity for at least 2nd semester, please, please come to the meeting. If you're more interested in the kind of get-your-hands-dirty education work and not really the background planning for the large group, you are still more than welcome to come, but we will not be designing specific activities or talking about logistics of activities at this meeting.

If you can't make the meeting, but still want to have some impact on what we decide and/or want to fill a post or lead an activity, please email me and we will collect and share your opinions and leadership intents at the meeting.

Finally, I know this week is busy and I'm really sorry we didn't get our act together to plan this important meeting until now. BUT, that is why it is so important that we have all opinionated, enthusiastic planners at the meeting- to give the group the kind of structure it will need to make sure this doesn't happen again!

Sorry for the long email, hope you all have a great weekend!

Cory