Dale brings ACE experience home

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

Elizabeth Dale is working on several campus planning projects this year. (Stan Sherer photo)

resh from a year as an American Council on Education (ACE) fellow, Elizabeth Dale is in a new role on campus as special assistant for Planning and Development in the Chancellor's Office.

     A 20-year veteran of the campus, Dale had been director of Business and Facilities Services in Auxiliary Services prior to her fellowship. Meredith Schmidt is now in that role, after serving as acting director last year.

     In her new position, Dale is acting as a bridge between three related planning processes currently or soon to be underway. She is assisting Vice Chancellor for University Advancement Royster Hedgepeth with the Commission on the Future, a focus-group-style exploratory effort aimed at getting input from alumni and others to help shape the future direction of the University. She will be working on academic planning with the Provost's Office staff, and she is helping Chancellor David Scott with the development and writing of the next multi-year plan for the campus, "Strategic Intent." She also will be working in a yet-to-be-determined capacity with Communications and Marketing.

     Dale said that before working on Strategic Intent she will be involved in creating a retrospective on Strategic Action, the campus's comprehensive philosophical and fiscal framework for implementing its strategic planning.

     "David's been updating this on a regular basis, so it's not as if I'll be working from scratch. It's been extraordinary seeing how many initiatives there are that have resulted in very positive changes for the institution. Each of the vice chancellors are recapping what they think are the four or five truly great accomplishments [during Strategic Action].

     "We are repackaging the information to just give highlights or for various audiences, like alumni. We'll have a full-color brochure, and we're doing a bound report for trustees and people on campus, and a complete analysis on the Web.

     "We are going to use the information to launch Strategic Intent and with the Commission on the Future, so it's a weaving of what I'm doing for David and what I'm doing for Royster."

     Dale said she anticipates that the planning stage of Strategic Intent will take less time than that of Strategic Action because the campus has been doing such a good job of planning. She expects the next capital campaign will be "closely tied" with Strategic Intent, as will the academic planning of the Provost's Office, as the University's efforts become increasingly integrated.

     "It's great to come back and have such a meaningful piece of work," she said.

     "I see my role as facilitating communication," she said. "It's a nice marriage of my 20 years with the institution, my doctoral work and my fellowship." Also a University alumna, Dale, '98G, has an Ed.D. in Educational Policy, Research and Administration.

     Dale characterizes her ACE experiences as "extraordinary." ACE fellowships are designed to prepare people for senior-level administrative roles in higher education.

     "The beauty of the fellowship is you shape it into whatever you want it to be," she said.

     She chose to focus on four goals: gaining both a broad overview of higher education and a presidential perspective, looking at technology as an agent of change, and studying non-traditional providers of post-secondary education, including "for-profit" higher education, corporate universities and distance-learning programs.

     She met with college and university presidents and chancellors from around the country and CEOs of for-profit education enterprises. She went to conferences on a variety of higher education issues, including planning, business, information technology, and academic subjects. She visited campuses, including five in Hong Kong, and she attended as many University of Delaware meetings and events as she could fit into her schedule.

     "One of the reasons I went to Delaware is it is a place that has hosted many fellows," she said. "David Roselle, the president, was my mentor. He said, 'My only expectation of you is that you learn as much as you can.' I had complete access to 99.9 percent of his meetings." Her other mentor, executive vice president David Hollowell, was also open and supportive, she said.

     "In a week, I felt part of that community and totally welcomed," she said. Much of her fellowship was spent shadowing and interviewing campus officials at Delaware.

     In addition to visiting other campuses to meet with chief executive officers and attending conferences, Dale participated in three week-long workshops that brought together the 32 ACE fellows to jointly explore issues in higher education.

     The seminars were both fulfilling and exhausting, she said.

     "We'd meet from 8:30 a.m. sometimes 'til 10:00 p.m., and we would have one evening free in the seven days," she said. The group worked on the problems of an imaginary institution, Pennyfield College, assuming the roles of high level administrative officers.

     "Every night a couple of university presidents would come to talk about what it's like, off the record, to be a university president."

     The result of the grueling schedule and frank discussions, she said, is that "the bonds amongst the fellows are very, very strong."

     "I felt a tremendous responsibility to maximize every opportunity," Dale said of her fellowship year. Because she was so busy, one of the difficulties she faced was that she was limited to seeing her husband and 14-year-old daughter two or three weekends per month.

     "I am lucky to have such a supportive family," she said. "I think the only thing that really suffered was their diet."

     "The capstone of my fellowship experience was a trip to Hong Kong with two other fellows." During the two-and-a-half-week trip in June, Dale visited universities and attended the first Centre for Distance and Adult Learning in Asia conference, as one of only five American participants.

     Dale said the year was fruitful and has given her a new perspective on the campus.
"One of the things that I learned through my fellowship is that we are not alone in terms of issues like deferred maintenance," she said. "And we are doing a good job of addressing the critical areas in a very systematic way. We just need to work with the state Legislature and the President's Office to get funding."