Given all the interest, and the range of interests, we've decided to try something a little different for Phase II of the higher education project. Given the nature of this phase, we are hoping people will be willing to participate in an online process. Here's why:

1. It's more accessible for more people.  We think it's really important to give people from outside the metro to get involved, and this is very hard when everything is done through in person meetings.  And many people have trouble making meetings.

2.  "Transparency" is one of the Citizens League's core principles and online processes are about as transparent as possible.

3.  Phase II is going to investigate two issues in detail: a) what, if anything, would help non-completers finish their post-secondary education, and b)  how to close the skills gap in manufacturing (CNC machinists and welders). To be successful, we must heavily involve people who have experience about these topics. Citizens League staff will be gathering information from them offline, but we also hope to attract additional discussion online. 

Your role: We are using both Phase II topics to dive deeper and "test" the Phase I findings (see attached). Your role would be as a discussant and moderator. (We can provide training as need be). We would provide our offline findings to you, and you would use them to raise questions and discuss those questions online--with respect to the specific findings, ideas for solving the problems, and most importantly, what overall findings we can generalize for higher education.  

For further detail we suggest you review the following three documents: Phase I summary; Phase II summary; and online participation overview.

We know this is an unconventional approach, but we hope you are willing to give it a try!  It's an experiment for the Citizens League - we feel we need to keep pushing the envelope on providing ways for people to get involved.  We do think it's important for the participants to know one another, so we will kick it off with an in-person meeting on April 3rd (details below) - and we'll probably end that way too.