Nurturing Talent to Nurture Success: Enabling Experiential Learning Opportunities across Harvard

Project: Nurturing Talent to Nurture Success: Enabling Experiential Learning Opportunities across Harvard

Team: Kris Markman, Jess Rios, Renee DeBlois, Jeff Emanuel

Schools/ Units Represented: Harvard Library, HLS, FAS, HUIT

Mission: 

We propose a pilot project to create formal processes and structures for finding, filling, and assessing experiential learning opportunities for staff, such as:

  • 80/20 or 90/10
  • Job exchange or rotation
  • Shadowing a team on a large project

 

We will centralize these opportunities through the creation of a “job board” website, along with forms, templates, best practices, procedures, and assessments. By formalizing these processes, we make learning opportunities available in a systematic, transparent, and equitable manner across the University. In addition, we will promote the development of shared expectations between staff and host departments, which is critical to the success of experiential learning and difficult to achieve in an ad hoc environment.  Finally, formalizing these processes will allow for assessment -- we will be able to measure who is offering and who is taking advantage of these opportunities, how well they are working for both staff and departments, and what gaps still exist.