2009 Meeting of the Presidents' Forum
The last meeting was held on October 13, 2009 at the United States Chamber of Commerce – Hall of the Flags - located at 1615 H Street, NW, Washington, D.C.
Schedule: Attendees met early with breakfast at 7:45 a.m., with the meeting commencing at 8:30 a.m. with a Keynote address and adjournment no later than 4:00 p.m. For those who were able to stay, we continued sharing over drinks immediately following adjournment.
Planning and Cost: Attendees stayed at the following hotel: JW Marriott, 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20004; Phone: 1-800-393-2503.
Registration fee was $195 per person. Checks made payable to Presidents' Forum and sent to:
Laurie Keenan
Assistant to the President for Trustee Affairs
Excelsior College
7 Columbia Cirlce
Albany, NY 12203
Registration and Contact Information: For additional information about this meeting, please contact Laurie Keenan at Excelsior College (telephone: 518-464-8575, email: laurie@excelsior.edu).
This Year's Agenda
Download the detailed program.
Our principal agenda for this year’s meeting was Aligning State Approval and Regional Accreditation for Online Postsecondary Institutions: A National Strategy. During the past year, a special task force of FORUM has worked on this critical issue faced by distance institutions, namely the processes and barriers we often encounter when institutions offer instruction across multiple state political boundaries. Although the processes of the individual states are central to maintaining academic quality and student consumer assurance, the Task Force Report recommends to FORUM reforms in the state processes that could streamline the complex tasks that face individual institutions and individual states. If successful, such reforms would conserve both substantial staff time and expense while promoting sharing of expertise and qualitative judgments.
The Task Force Report was shared, discussed, and acted upon at this meeting. We had invited a number of experts to join us and inform our discussions. Advanced copies were mailed to each attendee shortly before the meeting. We appreciate your joining us to aid in demonstrating the broad support that exists to promote this national agenda.
FORUM Projects
FORUM is an informal organization that provides a unique venue where presidents and lead officers from all sectors of online and distance universities may convene to address and solve issues of concern. Below you will find only two among a number of agenda items identified by FORUM in the past several years where our collaboration has proven essential:
Access to Learning
This project aims to overcome misinformation and misunderstandings about distance and online learning among the wider educational, policy and political communities. Spearheaded by Excelsior College, a CD is widely available to help explain distance process and content and to demonstrate accomplishments and viability to those who have not been exposed to distance learning. Read more.Transparency By Design (TbD)
TbD (Web site expected to go live August 1, 2009) was funded at WCET by the Lumina Foundation and is designed to promote the public sharing of qualitative data regarding distance institutions and student performance. Transparency is already taking its place among other more well known systems as a reliable evaluation measure. Read more.Next Forum Event
October 13, 2009
Washington, D.C.
Forum Archive
Read programs and notes compiled from Forum events.