Education Law

UCEA Reflections

Spent the weekend at UCEA. I am in the Orlando Airport right now, so I thought I would write a few reflections.

1. Disney was not as bad as I thought it would be ... which is good because we are doing Disney (Anaheim) again next year. Ohh joy.
2. THe hotel was not that bad, not as bad a last year. Downtown Disney was not too far away and walked over their to eat at the Rainforest Cafe one afternoon.
3. Continental is not my favorite airline at the moment. I had to miss a presentation in which I was supposed to present on blogging. I am ticked about that. Jon Becker and David Quinn took care of the presentation and here is the UStream of that session (the volumne is low, but if you turn it up you can hear it):Online video chat by Ustream
4. My other presentation went well, I thought. I think people are a little scared of working with state data to begin to evaluate our leadership preparation programs, so folks were a little apprehensive. Here are the slides from my presentation:
5. Universities are really feeling the effects of the economic downturn. The job market was substantially down, which is really not great for current students on the market. 
6. Great session lead by Patrick Paukin (whose work I really appreciate) and Suzanne Eckes on Ethics and Law and Law and Ethics classes, which is the name of the class I am teaching right now. I will reflect more on this in the future at this blog, but it was really stimulating.
7. UCEA's general future increasingly concerns me. UCEA has some great leadership right now and hopefully what Scott McLeod did for CASTLE he can also do for UCEA as he is now the Communications Director. Apparently, there was some debate about which direction to take UCEA in. UCEA needs to find itself in the field and do it sooner rather than later. A LOT of the law people were missing this time. They use the economic circumstances as an excuse, but that is just a facade. The specialty people are not happy with UCEA and I hope UCEA recognizes that. Here is a little suggestion, the purpose for which UCEA was originally created, sounds like a pretty good purpose going forward.
8. Internet Access - Horrible and Inexcuseable. UCEA did provide projectors, which is a great step and they should be commended for that, but conference hotels should not be chosen in the future without free Internet Access in the conference rooms.
9. Money, money, money. I probably spent $1,200 on this conference and some of that will come out of my own hide. $14 for a scotch. $7 for a beer. $11 for Internet Access. $14 for a burger (which wasn't very good). Even after you pay the $400 flight, $400 hotel room, and $150 dollar registration there are still hundreds of dollars of additional costs.

Overall, it was an enjoyable conference. No conference is ever perfect and UCEA got the big things right at this conference, with the exception of the Internet problem. I really hope UCEA finds it way in the future and if you are a person interested in working in Ed. Leadership preparation, I encourage you to check it out.

Full post as published by Edjurist on November 02, 2008 (boomark / email).