Thursday, March 28, 2024
The RP Group

 Making the Most of Your Team’s SSSC Experience

The Strengthening Student Success Conference (SSSC) highlights practice at all levels of the community college from individual interactions to institutional change.

The strands and sessions address issues that cross colleges’ internal boundaries, so it is natural that many colleges send cross-functional teams composed of faculty, counselors, administrators, researchers and others from across the campus. Professional learning is powerful when it is shared.

Coming collaboratively allows a team to organize and attend more sessions. This approach saves money and provides your team members with ideas and connections that can motivate and encourage them as they work to implement changes on your campus. If you and your colleagues are attending SSSC as a team, we offer the following recommendations for making the most of your experience.

 Recommendations

Before the conference:

  • Meet before the conference starts, either in a formal meeting or an informal get-together. This may be a chance to meet colleagues from across your college whom you didn’t know before.

  • Look over the conference schedule to identify possible sessions of interest, particularly topics that are currently a focus of work at your college.

  • Organize who will cover different sessions, given that there are always several potentially interesting sessions in the same time slot.

During the conference:

  • Touch base with your colleagues as you pass in the halls. Share ideas while they are fresh and in the moment.

  • Get together for a meal: meet over breakfast or debrief together over dinner.

  • Keep track of ideas and people from sessions that you and your colleagues want to follow up with. You might take notes individually or create a shared Google Doc, Jamboard, or Padlet to post your “aha” moments during the conference.

After the conference:

  • Meet after the conference to discuss how to apply the ideas you have gathered.

  • Decide how to share ideas with a broader college audience.

  • Plan how you will contact people or programs that you want to learn more about.