The Hispanic Educational Telecommunications System (HETS) will be celebrating its Second Annual Workshop for Institutional Leaders on Inter-institutional Collaboration from June 21st to the 23rd in New York City, as informed by Dr. Nitza Hernandez, the Consortium’s Executive Director. This year’s workshop on “Reaching Policy Agreements for Collaboration Initiatives among HETS Partner Institutions” intends to foster administrative strategies in support of three online professional certificate programs being developed by ten HETS partner institutions.
The faculty working toward online academic programs in Bilingual Journalism, Security Management, and Cross-Cultural Health Care will have the opportunity to find out, with their administrative leaders, effective ways of making inter-institutional academic collaboration work beyond distance, institutional, and policy barriers. This time, the HETS annual workshop has been designed for top level institutional administrators who will be guided to work with faculty and academic leaders involved in the HETS Online Learning Collaboration Initiatives. The goal is to reach financial and academic agreements that will help launch the online programs in progress. This great effort constitutes part of the collaborative strategies established through the HETS’ Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnerships (LAAP) project, now in its last year of implementation with a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE).
The executive staff of the Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (GPIDEA) at Kansas State University will help facilitate the workshop sessions, together with outstanding leaders from Montana State University, the Electronic Campus of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), and the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCACS). GPIDEA is actually co-sponsoring this HETS workshop as part of another grant support they have received from FIPSE to offer expert consulting to other consortia organizations and universities that are trying to build alliances for distance learning. Due to the transcending significance of this workshop, observers from the Western State Commission of Higher Education (WICHE) will be attending in order to learn more from this inter-institutional collaboration process.
“Our workshops for institutional leaders make up an important part of the Consortium’s strategies to keep enhancing the benefits of online learning initiatives within, among, and outside our member institutions. This Second Annual Workshop could be the setting for the creation of new alliances and online initiatives to widen educational and training opportunities for Hispanic learners”, said the HETS Executive Director.
Last year’s workshop brought about the interest of a vast group of academic leaders who actively engaged in working jointly towards the creation of new online learning opportunities for Hispanic students. The Second Annual Workshop for Institutional Leaders will take place concurrently with this year’s HETS Board of Directors Meeting.
Contact information: Wilmarie LaTorre, HETS-LAAP Executive Assistant. Tel. 766-1912, ext. 2221.