Penn State Public Broadcasting
As the coordinating agency for a multi-site collaboration called “Partners in Public Service,” Penn State asked WolfBrown to facilitate two retreats involving all the participants plus the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the primary funder. These retreats were working sessions, designed to help the collaborators in each participating community discover ways that they could work together to augment one another’s resources for the benefit of the public. Museums, schools, libraries, and broadcasters teamed up to fulfill that promise, set benchmarks for success, and then report to a national audience on their achievement.
Building on previous work WolfBrown did for Penn State Broadcasting in guiding discussions that explored how museums, libraries, and public broadcasters might augment each others’ efforts to serve the public, consultants facilitated a major conference that brought almost 100 leaders from K-12 and higher education, government agencies, and the museum, library, philanthropic, and public broadcasting communities together. WolfBrown also prepared a report on conference outcomes, “The Penn State Conference on Public Media: Engaging a Nation of Learners.” The document articulates the conferees’ vision for collaborative effort, and in a “call to action,” details the activities they recommended be taken at the local, state, and national level to foster such effort.