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Alliance-building focus of University Forum
2:42 p.m., March 16, 2007--Larry D. Roper, guest speaker at the University Forum “Building Partnerships, Building Community: The Critical Nature of Academic-Student Affairs Collaboration," focused on the role respect plays in building solid interdepartmental alliances within universities in his noon lecture held Thursday, March 15. Speaking to an audience of approximately 130 UD administrators and faculty in the Multipurpose Rooms of the Trabant University Center, Roper, vice provost for student affairs and professor of ethnic studies at Oregon State University, made the point that collaborations are voluntary alliances and emphasized the importance of using dialogue to create strong foundations of mutual understanding and respect. “Partnerships are relationships that people enter into by choice,” Roper said. “You can't have mandatory partnerships, because when people collaborate by choice, they bring a different level of energy and a different level of commitment to a project than they do if they are coerced.” Roper defined collaboration as an alliance that requires a firm purpose with a mutually beneficial outcome, and said that achieving a successful goal requires team effort and shared responsibility. “A successful collaboration should reflect the integrated nature of an educational institution,” Roper said. “The idea of trying to have a relationship within a hierarchy isn't beneficial to a partnership.”
“The characteristics of successful partnerships are fairness, clearly defined goals and mutual respect,” Roper said. “Some factors to consider when building partnerships are what your vision is for the educational experience of UD students and what the current conditions of relationships are among those who need to collaborate.” Addressing roadblocks that frequently get in the way of good partnerships, Roper touched on territorialism, buried prejudices and perceptions of inequality among colleagues. He also mentioned absences of focus and lack of communication. “Collaboration is producing something together that you can't produce alone,” he said. “But collaboration also comes out of differences, because if you already agree on something, it's not collaboration. Breakthroughs come from wrestling with dynamic tensions.” Roper concluded his lecture, which was cosponsored by UD's Office of the Provost and the Academic and Student Affairs Council, by encouraging feedback and fielding questions from participants. The co-editor of the recently published book, Teaching for Change: The Difference, Power and Discrimination Model, Roper is a respected educator and agent of change in higher education and has written and lectured widely on creating interdepartmental alliances. Before his tenure at Oregon State University, he held positions at the University of Rochester, University of Maryland, St. Joseph's University and the University of Delaware. Article by Becca Hutchinson
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