Elevating to New Heights

Elevating to New Heights: OEL Staff Attend 2023 GACE Conference

Monday, June 5, 2023

After a whirlwind spring semester, OEL staff members Kay Stanton (Assistant Director), Amy Sweet (Business Development), and Annelise Norman (Scholarships & PR) attended the annual conference of the Georgia Association of Colleges and Employers at the end of May. This year, the theme was “Elevating to New Heights” – rather appropriate for the North Georgia Mountains conference destination, and, more importantly, for the team’s focus on scaling up EL programming and administration.

The very nature of experiential learning as a concept and an institutional initiative made the conference programming all the more valuable to the OEL team. “Our office is in a unique position when it comes to partnerships and supporting the EL initiative for students. We have partnerships to cultivate and nurture both within the university and outside of it with external businesses and organizations. This requires a lot of code switching and flexibility of perspective. Just learning how to communicate with our various partners is quite an undertaking, and one of the reasons that the GACE conference is so important to us is that the programming is developed for both colleges and employers. They provide great models for navigating those different perspectives,” explained Annelise.

In addition to learning about the latest trends and approaches to experiential education and partnerships between colleges and employers, Kay, Amy, and Annelise contributed their own insights and experiences to the programming at GACE. Seeking to create a dialogue about strategic programming, Amy and Annelise brought both college and employer perspectives to the table in their panel "Scaling Together: Project-Based Learning Partnerships.” Annelise served as the moderator, and Amy joined three other institutional and industry representatives to discuss and reflect on mutually beneficial experiential opportunities resulting from campus-employer partnerships. Amy said. “I was so excited to be a part of a panel representing both colleges and employers around the topic of project-based learning, and as a result, I gained valuable insights and professional relationships.” Annelise added, “Preparing for this panel with the group was so enriching and inspiring. All of us on the panel had very similar goals for our home programs, but our ways, means, and resources for accomplishing those goals for our students looked very different. Coming together to share our perspectives really helped us and the audience to understand how nuanced the processes of developing these partnerships between industries and institutions can be.”

Annelise (second from left) and Amy (far right) pose with the other members of their panel.

Kay helped to facilitate the conference’s Experiential Learning Summit, presenting on EL in the world of AI and co-leading a design sprint for participants using human-centered design to identify innovative ways to operationalize EL in their school or company. “The EL Summit and design sprint were a huge success, with over 75 participants coming together to brainstorm how universities and companies can work together to create and define high-quality experiential learning for students. One of the interesting concepts that came from the sprint is the importance of a common language or definition of important competencies across higher ed and industry,” said Kay.

Attendees participating in the design sprint

A major objective of the OEL team is to position UGA as a thought leader in experiential learning, and their efforts have not gone unnoticed. At the GACE conference, OEL Director Andrew Potter was recognized for his service on the Experiential Learning Committee. Kay also received recognition for her incredible taste in footwear, claiming a victory in the Best Sneakers Contest during the award ceremony.

Kay posing with the shoes that won her the "Best Sneakers" title

The OEL team relishes the networking and professional development opportunities that organizations like GACE provide throughout the year. “GACE provided so many opportunities to meet with like-minded professionals and network with higher ed institutions and employers from across the state,” explained Amy. “The annual conference was a fantastic event to learn about what is happening at other institutions and to show off how UGA is preparing our students for what’s next,” Amy added. Engaging the field of experiential education and contributing to the discourse helps us to stay on the cutting edge with new ideas and initiatives for experiential opportunities. The sharing of experiences, perspectives, and partnerships beyond campus supports our efforts to ensure that UGA students are ready to thrive.