I attended the California AAUP 12th Annual Meeting with the intent to learn how to organize faculty at National University.
The workshop conducted by Jason Elias, "Organizing a Chapter: Inspiring Case Histories," was most useful in supporting my intent. I learned about the need to develop power by exploiting internal strengths: leadership recruitment and development, building a communication infrastructure, and creating a "two-way street" for communicating ideas and issues. I learned the importance of leverage: determining which (internal and external) players matter, forging strategic alliances, developing long-term relationships, increasing and activating members, and building reciprocal relationships with allies...We will use SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-constrained) goals in planning our work.