Future Considerations

The BTSE Research team conducted interviews with Institutional Coordinators and faculty members who had participated in the BTSE Consultancy Program. From these interviews, it is possible to identify some factors that consistently informed success of the Consultancy. Consultancy Programs were the most successful when 1) the challenge was articulated in a way where the scale and boundaries were aligned with both the institution structure and with what the project (BTSE) could support, and 2) the faculty could make sense of and develop effective strategies to address the stated challenge. The sections below discuss recommended considerations for future programs based on learnings from BTSE.

Scale and Boundaries of Change

• Address well-defined, actionable challenges: vague, general, generic, broad, or overarching deep rooted challenges may not lead to successful consultancies
• Design challenges that are aligned with the project's purpose, resources, and limitations

Alignment Between the Challenge and Project Resources

• Tailor Professional Development (PD) events to campus-identified priorities
• Engage with other sites to expand the sense of possibilities and what is apt to be most effective

Faculty Mobilization and Engagement

• Prioritize adequate introductions to the consultants and their role in supporting pursuit of a challenge identified by members of their campus community
• Recognize competing expectations and demands
• Provide flexibility of timelines and activities
• Acknowledge and cooperate with existing institution efforts
• Recognize and mobilize the diversity among faculty, interests, expertise, culture, and other dimensions. This includes
  • creating opportunities for contributions of faculty with diverse expertise and preferences to build engagement, reduce resistance, and ultimately foster a more effective change effort that builds and draws on the strengths of the full community, and
  • Aligning PD opportunities with faculty learning and development goals.
• Broadly disseminate consultancy and PD learning at every step of the way

Build and demonstrate institutional support

• Provide tangible institutional support to participants. Examples include (but are not limited to) financial compensation, time allotments for participation, partnerships with administration, and opportunities to participate in decision making.

Integrating support for strategic planning development early in the project

• Integrate PD around strategic planning during initial project phase. This foundation setting would allow institutions to refine and tailor their challenges to align with priority needs on their campus that could be impacted by the types of interventions that the project is designed to provide. Ideally, this would prevent selection of challenges that are vaguely worded, open to varying interpretations, too broad, or that would require transformative societal change well beyond the scope of support to fully address.

Extend consultation and support services through implementation

• Engage with consultants for a longer period through the implementation process to assess progress to-date, help diagnose and develop strategies to address problems in implementation, and ensure the transformation was well established by the end of the project