OCP hosted the 2013 Town Hall on Thursday March 7th. Students expressed their concerns with the CRP curriculum, scheduling, funding, and other issues to the faculty.

OCP hosted its annual Call to Action meeting on February 16, 2012.  During this year’s edition of Call to Action, members of the OCP board and general body brainstormed ways for CRP to be improved.  What resulted was plenty of lively conversation and debate over how to better the CRP program for current and future students alike.  In order to facilitate these conversations, the OCP members decided to put their participatory planning skills to use by employing the Affinity Diagram Method.  Each person was given post-it notes to write down ideas along with green dots and red dots.  After everyone had written down their ideas and posted their post-it notes on the wall, everyone placed green dots on post-it notes with ideas they liked and red dots on ideas that needed further clarification.  After the voting process, each idea was categorized by topic.  Categories were then consolidated so that every topic will be broached during the upcoming Town Hall meeting.  Teams were then formed to present on each topic for the Town Hall meeting.  All in all, Call to Action 2012 was a success and generated lots of positive ideas for the Town Hall meeting.

Town Hall was hosted on March 8, 2012 and a wide range of faculty and students were in attendance to collaborate on ways to improve the department.  Presentations were given on the curriculum, jobs & advising, funding issues, improving workshops, and improving the concentration system.  After the presentations by students, small groups of faculty and students gathered based on topic to discuss ways to address the concerns of students.  Each group was tasked with brainstorming implementable ideas on a large sheet of paper and roughly develop the ideas for a potential action plan.  After this meeting of the minds, the action plan for each presentation topic was further developed.  Students have come forward to see that the action plans from Town Hall will be implemented.  Hopefully, our department will be stronger as a result of the Call to Action and Town Hall meetings.  Thank you to everyone who participated.  We look forward to improving our department for current students and future students for years to come.

Ottoman Empire Strikes Again

September 2^nd      Disorientation Party

September 9^th           NYC Workshop

September 16^th    CIPA Field Day Event (CANCELLED)

September 23^rd        NYC Workshop

September 30^th        BWBD / APA Conference & Apple festival

October 7^th                FALL BREAK

October 14^th           CIPA/CRP Dance Off

October21^st           NYC Workshop

October28^th           Halloween

November 4^th            NYC Workshop

November 11^th      Bowling Event

November 18^th         Thanksgiving

November 25^th         Thanksgiving

December 2^nd       End of the World Party

December 9^th       Exam Week

CRP students are committed to their educations. Every spring semester, the student body of CRP formally presents to each other and to the faculty things they would like changed in the department. It’s a long tradition that aims to raise the quality of education and experience at CRP both short-term and long-term. Organized and facilitated by the Vice-President of OCP, Call to Action and Town Hall form a two-part participatory visioning and planning process. Generally, Call to Action occurs in late February and Town Hall occurs in early April, with a follow-up on the goals in the next school year.

Over 47 students participated in Call to Action in February 2011. They used the Affinity Diagram Method (also known as The Sticky Notes Method) to gather concerns and sort comments into categories that could be formally presented at Town Hall. The method requires physical movement, which not only engages participants, but also allows ideas to detach from individuals and be impartial. People committed to task groups based on the categories so that they could further solidify suggestions and practice their presentations.

During Town Hall, faculty and students were asked to consider how they could turn CRP into an even better version of itself. The format of Town Hall was divided into two parts: presentations of various categories and focus groups for each category. The categories presented were: Short Term Curriculum, Long Term Curriculum, Advising, Professional Development, Communication and Technology, and Inter/Intra-departmental Relations. The event provided insight and allowed for better mutual understanding between faculty and students. Many walked away motivated to follow-up with actionable plans; focus group notes were collected and distributed by the end of April.

While some plans from the focus groups were long-term goals that hinge on departmental changes, many short-term goals have already been implemented during the fall semester of 2011. For example, OCP has created a website to serve as the go-to communication platform for resources and events. OCP has also worked with the department to formalized Free School, which are extracurricular sessions that focus on professional development and skills-building.