Gateway Technical College will begin a college-wide conversation, and you’re invited.

In fact, your words are worth their weight in gold in describing the future state of the college.

Community Conversations will discuss the best of the best – the best experiences you have had at Gateway.

Why is this important to us? Let’s ensure those experiences don’t fade … that they remain a bright, vibrant and integral part of how the college will look in the future.

What will result? Through this, we’ll be able to capture what’s good about Gateway today – and carry it forward to the future. We each know of something that works at Gateway, something about its culture that ensures quality and success – but unless we identify it, that idea might become lost in the changes every group undertakes as it moves forward.
Capturing the best of the best gives us a foundation to dream of how we can become even better than we are today.

How long will it take? The positive conversations take about two hours, but those two hours will have great impact on the college. Encourage your co-workers to take part. Everyone can share their own story of a positive Gateway experience they’ve had – and, through that, help to pattern our future here.

Every effort is being made to allow everyone who wants to join in on the conversation to be able to do so. If you can’t attend one of the scheduled group conversations, or would prefer to offer your experiences in a non-group setting, trained staff will be happy to conduct a one-on-one discussion with you.

Our conversations will help Gateway in several ways. The stories will be used as a measuring stick against information gathered through the college accreditation process. The data we are gathering for the commission will be overlayed by what people are actually saying. The conversations will identify what you feel we need more of, which will help us plan Gateway’s future.

The process, called Appreciative Inquiry, has been used successfully by many large organizations to ensure quality and growth, including the Navy, GTE (now Verizon), NASA, John Deere, and other educational institutions.

Five conversations
Gateway’s conversations will focus on five key subject areas which relate to our accreditation criteria. You can attend any one, or all, of them.

They include:

• Passionate, student-focused teaching, diverse lifelong learning that makes all students better than they thought they would be.
• Planning that positively impacts students and creates value for the students and community’s future.
• Commitment to creative partnering that serves our diverse community.
• Gateway’s responsive, dynamic and collaborative relationship with the community and its changing needs.
• Collaborative inquiry that produces broad and deep knowledge.