With attendance of more than 20 presidents and representatives from our institutional members; HETS celebrated its winter Board Meeting on February 9 and 10, 2017 at Inter American University, Central Offices in Puerto Rico. The meeting agenda included the Opening Session of the Virtual Best Practices Showcase, held on the afternoon of February 9, 2017. The Board meeting discussed the first semester of academic year 2016-2017 with positive report on our Strategic plan results, and envisioning numerous new projects for next academic year, including further development of the recently implemented HETS Commons initiative.
Among the initiatives HETS shared with the Board were highlighted the major activities to support the organizational programmatic goals such as: the development of tailored online workshop offerings; additional tools and services added to the HETS Virtual Plaza, also a summary of the Student Leadership Showcase held in PR on September 2017, and the 2017 Virtual Best Practices Showcase Conference. Other HETS initiatives shared with the Board included; the results of the Online Journal publication and approval of its publishing agreement, HETS Spanish online workshops and the self-paced online workshops in English.
During the first day of meeting, HETS Chair Dr. Carlos Vargas-Aburto welcomed the representatives of two new member institutions: Dr. Mary Jo Parker from University of Houston-Downtown, and Dr. Viridiana Díaz from California State University, Sacramento. In addition, a corporate session was held on Friday 10, 2017, in which various partners’ representatives shared with Board Members their latest trends to support Hispanic Serving Institutions and its educational community included. Among these representatives were: Ms. Dorotha Ford from Blackboard; Mr. Matt Baker, from Dialpad Inc.; Mr. Malcolm Fleming, and Mr. Julio Ayala from Transworld Systems; and Mr. Eduardo Díaz from Internet Society of PR. We are looking forward to continuing strengthen our HETS initiatives in the upcoming year to foster a greater collaboration among all of our affiliates and widen our partnerships with other organizations, as we continue developing new strategies to innovate and support our services.
After the first day meeting, all Board members joined the attendees of the 2017 Virtual Best Practices Showcase Opening Session at Inter American University of PR, Central offices. This session included a presentation regarding retention and assessment by Dr. José Jaime Rivera, former President of Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, and Esq. Linn Collazo from Inter American University Law School, presenting its initiatives of internationalization.
HETS invite and encourages all members to register free of charge to access all live and asynchronous presentations selected, at the following link: http://hets.org/hets-events/virtual-hets-best-practices-showcase-2017/registration. For more information about HETS projects, please contact the HETS office anytime via email info@hets.org or at 787-250-1912 extensions 2372 or 2373.
A playlist with all videos is available at our YouTube channel, you can access it here: Opening Session of the 2017 Virtual Best Practices Showcase – YouTube