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One year later…

Last year at this time, we met in a cozy little cafe in Roxbury to finalize our plan for launching a blog together. After way too much coffee, sweet lemon scones, and lots of animated discussion, we decided to soft launch the blog at the end of January and to give our project a name, a brand: University of Venus.

What has 2010 brought us? Mary started the year with a focus on RISK-TAKING and Meg chose to work on ACTION. In retrospect, we are pleased that risk-taking and action continue to embody the spirit of adventure with which we undertook our mission when starting UVenus.

For 2011, we’ve decided to go with ADVENTURE (Mary) and TENACITY (Meg). Risk-taking and action were very much individual goals focused on moving beyond our fears and inhibitions. We are pushing ourselves even further this year. ADVENTURE includes RISK-TAKING, but with an increased sense of community; TENACITY takes initial ACTION a step further, keeping the momentum going and focusing on follow-through.

What’s in store for 2011 at University of Venus? While we continue to enjoy our partnership with Inside Higher Ed, we feel like we have not even begun to take advantage of all of the benefits this partnership offers. From the beginning, we have had a strong desire to grow our community outside of the USA. Writers and readers, we need your help in doing this. Please recommend the blog to colleagues and friends outside of the US higher ed community and urge them to join us as guest bloggers and regular contributors.

We are also planning a series of video blogs, or vlogs, for 2011. We are committed to working with technology and social media to continue to create a community of readers and writers and we are working with IHE to create short videocasts that bring together three or four writers in conversation. Our goal is for these conversations to be lively discussions that brainstorm solutions to the problems we encounter in higher ed.

What are those problems? If you help us to identify the challenges, we’ll help you to develop solutions.

Thank you for the support you gave us in 2010 -- you are the University of Venus community. We welcome your comments, critiques, and conversations in 2011.

In the spirit of adventure and tenacity, BRING IT ON!

Mary Churchill and Meg Palladino
Founding Editors, University of Venus

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