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Retreat or Meeting Design and Facilitation Case Studies

Case 1. A small student-support department asked CLOC to facilitate a short-term planning retreat so that the director could fully participate. The CLOC consultant facilitated a four-hour gathering that clarified roles and responsibilities and resulted in a clear action plan with specific timelines. All participants indicated that they made significantly more headway with external facilitation than they would have if they had run the meeting themselves.

Case 2. A department's faculty wanted to hold a retreat to review and respond to an external report that identified numerous possibilities for improvement. CLOC consultants worked with a planning group to design the retreat and then conducted faculty focus groups to identify topics for discussion. These focus groups identified additional concerns about the department's climate and culture. A number of activities addressed key academic issues, while also identifying solutions to the negative elements of the culture. Participants worked together to create a climate more conducive to faculty productivity and student learning.

Case 3. A cadre of CLOC facilitators helped design and facilitate a meeting attended by 300-plus university faculty and administrators, community college faculty and administrators, and staff from two state agencies. Various factions identified barriers to the meeting's overall success; they then worked with CLOC to develop a plan to collaboratively remove the barriers. The result was prevention of the highly contentious meeting that many initially feared.

Case 4. A governor's task force asked CLOC to help facilitate a statewide conference on the future of science and technology education. CLOC worked with the external consultant to help design and facilitate morning and afternoon small-group sessions between high-level educators, business representatives, and government officials for discussion and analysis of remarks by the lieutenant governor and other influential leaders in the state. In the afternoon session, the facilitators captured action items to inform the governor as he moved forward on this issue.