CFHE Update—March 23, 2012

Several exciting CFHE events are coming up in the next few weeks, and we wanted to share some information items we hope will help with your planning. 

CFHE National Week of Action (week of April 16)

Let us know about your event or activity:
Thanks to everyone who has let us know what your organization/local is planning—we already have nice geographical representation and a wide variety of events.  That’s wonderful and will definitely help with media outreach!  Next week we hope to send out an update to you all on who is participating and a brief description of the events; so if you haven’t put your event or organization on the list, email Susan at [email protected].

If you haven’t yet scheduled an event, please consider doing so!  If doesn’t have to be elaborate--it could be as simple as distributing flyers.  It’s the fact that so many of us “grass roots folks” from so many places around the country are working together on this project that will make it noteworthy.  The only “requirement” is to tie to our theme (“Invest in Quality Higher Education: The Right Course”) in some way.  Feel free to be creative on that and, of course, to highlight your local issues.

We have prepared materials to help with your outreach and publicity:

1.  a copy of the logo
2. a flier for outreach to other organizations to participate 
3. a flier for publicizing your local event

Both fliers, available on the Quality HigherEd group page are pdf and doc to edit, add local info, etc.

Please consider building some outreach to other organizations into this event if you can.  If you were at the Boston meeting, you will recall that we did commit ourselves to recruiting support organizations for the CFHE agenda with the idea that each of the “supporters” would be added to our public list and help bolster CFHE’s organizational base. 

The enlistment of support organizations has particular importance as we approach the national days of action during the week of April 16th.  Outreach now will help increase the visibility of the event and the impact of the day.  Please let Carla Pinkney ([email protected]) know the contact information for any organization you contact, so we can make sure we update our lists.  Thanks!

Release of First Think Tank Report on April 3 
You will hear more about this next week, but the first think tank report is being finalized and will be released April 3 at the Conference of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education in New York, CUNY.

Local Op Eds on the Local Connection
As you will remember from various calls and meetings, a key part of our plan on using the think tank was to have local organizations write op eds about each report, specifically relating the issues in the report to local problems or concerns.  We all thought that such an approach would not only help get the name of CFHE out there, but also help us use CFHE work to increase our local visibility and effectiveness.

So this is a heads up to crank up your computers!  We will be providing you with a final copy of the report next week and a sample op ed that you can, if you choose, use as a template for your own. 

Events: Third Meeting of CFHE—May 18-20 in Ypsilanti, Michigan
Just a reminder that we are having our third meeting in Ypsilanti, Michigan on May 18-20, thanks to our host, the Michigan Conference of the AAUP.

So things are happening that will make for an exciting CFHE spring!  Thanks to you all for keeping this ball rolling.

Best,
Susan Meisenhelder ([email protected])
Elizabeth Hoffman ([email protected])