Objective
In the coming four weeks the Education Committee must define the class line up for our Spring 2024 season.
Needs
We need 2-3 volunteers to work with the Education Committee on this effort – preferably members who have attended a few classes and have some ideas on what topics and formats worked best for them. These volunteeers would commit to assist during 3-4 meetings before year’s end. Remote attendance is fine – participants do not need to be local.
No further work will be required of these volunteers beyond the those meetings and any associated emails/coordination.
The product of this effort will be a list of classes, committed speakers and dates.
Outline
The primary tasks involved are:
- define the types of topics which would be most popular & useful to attendees
- review past speaker & topic recommendations
- identify other speakers (internal or external) to consider
- work within our budget allocation for external speakers
- recruit speakers and define dates
Background
We typically recruit most of our speakers from our membership and occasionally add an external speaker. Our budget this year includes $300 – which would allow an external speaker for both the spring and fall seasons.
Many classes are valuable enough to be repeated every few years, which allows us to fill in part of the schedule without a lot of recruiting. New topics and presenters are needed as research methods and tools evolve – driving a background level of new recruitment.
Since our move, we have offered more remote attendance using an account with Zoom. Most talks have been on Zoom with a few involving both in-person and Zoom access in a hybrid format. These two formats allow the speakers to be remote – opening up a wider set of presenters and topics.
Subcommittee Needs
What the members of this committee would provide are (a) their insights on which types of classes they’ve found most informative, useful, and effectve, (b) what topics they and others have wished we could cover, (3) potential speakers that they’ve hear of and recommend, and (4) a willingness to help us contact and recruit the needed individuals.
Not all volunteers need to be involved in the recruitment phase (although any help there would be really appreciated). But…all participants should be willing to participate in the brain-storming and discussions about what topics are most needed, which past talks should be repeated, and what other speakers might be recruited, based on their own experiences.
Thoughts & Comments
This effort should be a short-term, focused task force with a clear deadline and, time-wise, a limited duration. We also don’t see the participants in this ad hoc committee as being involved in the execution of these talks during the spring on 2024 – that is a job for another group of folks with different skills.
We hope that volunteers will find the interchange and brain-storming enjoyable and informative – learning how past class recruitment worked, how the classes were received by attendees, and where we can find additional speakers – locally and futher afield.
The first two meetings will focus on which topics and speakers we target and the last two meetings will address the actual recruitment and scheduling. We plan on holding the inititial meeting on Monday, November 20th and the final meeting by the week of December 11th, pending availability of the members.
Contact Us
If you would be willing to join our subcommittee or need more detail please write to us at:
education@vtgenlib.org
