The Creative Education Foundation
More details about the executive director search process and the CEF international board meeting ...
(Read the general announcement here from the CEF co-presidents)
December 7, 2005
MORE ABOUT THE SEARCH AND SELECTION PROCESS FOR NEW CEF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Following the successful Creative Problem Solving Institute 2005 in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Creative Education Foundation Board of Trustees formally initiated a search process for an Executive Director to be completed by year's end. Their initial goal was to identify potential candidates and to create a strategy for hiring. CEF Board Vice President C. Hunton Tiffany, chaired the search committee, which along with the CEF Executive Committee, wrote the job description and the call for applications. The position was posted in national nonprofit publications and Web sites, in local Massachusetts listings, and shared widely in the CEF community.
Following broad communication, CEF received more than 100 applications from US and international candidates. The Search Committee narrowed these down to 30 from which 10 were selected for initial telephone interviews in late October. Candidates were notified of the status of the process at that time. From this pool, five candidates were invited for face-to-face interviews at the CEF headquarters in Hadley, Massachusetts, with members of the Search and CEF Executive Committees, and General Manager, Steve Dahlberg. The five finalists were from Chicago, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
Following those interviews, the committee made an offer to Victoria Cliche. She accepted and began working in her new position as Executive Director on December 1, 2005. In the meantime, candidates again were notified of the completion of the process.
"We were very gratified by the extraordinary breadth and depth of the talent
pool from which we ultimately made our selection," says C. Hunton Tiffany, CEF vice president and chair of the search committee. "Many people worked very hard to come to this point, and we are all very, very excited with the
outcome. We look forward to working with Victoria to build on the very strong year we've had in 2005."
MORE ABOUT CEF'S INTERNATIONAL BOARD MEETING IN EUROPE IN NOVEMBER
The Creative Education Foundation Board of Trustees decided during 2004/2005 to create a Global Committee to discuss and address international dimensions of CEF and its work. To that end, the Board is looking to add more international trustees. Since some practical challenges have made that difficult, the Board has sought alternative ways of incorporating international input and ideas into its thinking. One example of this was inviting Olwen Wolfe of France to attend the board meeting held at CPSI. She attended and furthered these efforts by extending an invitation to the Board to host their November meeting in Paris. The Board formally agreed to pursue her offer. Olwen and some European colleagues took on both the practical arrangements of making this happen, as well as the invitational work to involve many other Europeans.
The CEF Board decided that it would commit to holding one board meeting abroad each year, rotating continents. This will provide both a means of learning what is happening in the creativity community in other parts of the world, and a means of sharing more broadly the work of CEF. This is achieved through host country and other international guests attending one full board meeting as "adjunct trustees" of sorts, while providing an opportunity for the CEF Trustees to dialogue with the broader "local continent" creativity community during that same visit.
The meeting in Paris from November 4 to 6 accomplished these initial goals through both formal and informal meetings. On Friday night, the planning group hosted CEF Trustees, representatives of the European creativity community, and other guests. International cheeses, brought from all over Europe by the participants, and French wine provided a wonderful way for people to begin informal introductions and conversations. Dinner followed. Saturday morning, an even larger group of Europeans joined the meeting to share what they and others in their countries are doing in the creativity world - ranging from conferences and publications to academic programs and consulting practices. For an online listing of many of the international creativity programs and services, check out the International Forum of Creativity Organizations at www.ifoco.org .
Following lunch, most of the Europeans met with each other to take advantage of this "face time" for further planning of their own interests regarding creativity in the region. A small group of Europeans worked with the CEF Trustees Saturday afternoon about how CEF might collaborate further with them and about what is needed from CEF. The afternoon ended with a very special presentation by French creativity expert Guy Aznar. CEF's French hosts brought most of Saturday's participants for a dinner cruise on the River Seine, which again provided an opportunity for conversation across languages.
On Sunday, the CEF Board held a regular business meeting, in which Olwen Wolfe and Sandra Minnee participated. The CEF Board also invited them to participate as "European liaisons" at the June 2006 board meeting following CPSI 2006 in Chicago.
For more information, contact the Creative Education Foundation:
www.CreativeEducationFoundation.org
contact@CreativeEducationFoundation.org
Phone: +1.413.559.6614
