Commissioner College and Venturing

[Buffalo Skipper]

I have been asked to teach a class at our upcoming College of Commissioner Science, specifically MCS 308 Venturing and the Commissioner.

 

I have found some files online, including a power point presentation, but the to call the material thin inaccurate, as it contains 8 slides on general Venturing and a single slide with 6 bullet points on commissioner issues. Hardly an hour's worth of presentation for what will likely be a very small class.

 

Any suggestions on where I can find some more material?

[John-in-KC]

PM me, I will put you in touch with one of my Council's ACCs who is charged with Venturing support, as well as my District Venturing RT commish (I know, I know, that ain't the PC term, deal with it).

 

Where is your commish college site and when? Family matters had me 1500 miles away from mine this spring.

[emb021]

I had to do a similiar session. I basically mined my data on Venturing, and did a sort of hour-long intro to Venturing, but geared to what I felt the commissioners should know. I found a presentation someone else did aimed at Commissioners, and did some updating and minor revisions and used it.

 

Some of the areas I touched on:

 

* What is Venturing (including crews specializing, uniform, etc)

* Crew operations (how crew is organized)

* Venturing advancement (plus how Venturers can earn Eagle)

* Venturing training (youth & adult)

 

At many points I had to emphasis how Venturing is different from Cub/Boy Scouting.

 

[Buffalo Skipper]

Good info. I agree, there needs to be some background, but the focus, in my opinion is exactly what the MCS 308 course title states: Venturing and the Commissioner. I think I should be focusing on what Venturing crews need from their commissioner, and what a commissioner can offer for a crew. I also expect my audience to be familiar with the Ventruing program, which around here is very small (10 or less active crews in the whole council, including 2 ships). The only other commissioners I know of who work with Venturing are advisors to a crew they organized several years ago.

 

What our council needs, more than anything is more crews and a push to grow the program (the potential here is truly untapped), but I do not feel that a Commissioner College course is the place to push that agenda, or at least not hard.

[emb021]

"I also expect my audience to be familiar with the Ventruing program"

 

I've found that you can't expect that.

 

Thus the need to go over the high-level basics of Venturing, and encourage them to consider attending Venturing Leader Specific Training for more indepth info.

 

Its important that Commissioner have a decent understand of what Venturing is (and isn't) so they can better serve their units. Simple as that.

 

[bacchus]

"* What is Venturing (including crews specializing, uniform, etc)

* Crew operations (how crew is organized)

* Venturing advancement (plus how Venturers can earn Eagle)

* Venturing training (youth & adult)"

 

I'm about to teach this so appreciate the comments. I will especially talk about the Methods, and how they differ from the Scouts'.

[qwazse]

This is good stuff, but not much different than VLST. Of course you need to recap some basics, but I think commissioners need to know some council-specific stuff:

 

Who needs a crew? (Talk about some of the back-and-forth that was typed on these other threads. Selling points to a scoutmaster/youth leader, etc... Possibly identify some CO's that have yet to be approached.)

What are the top 5 crews in your council doing this year?

Names and contact info for the council venturing officers association advisor, committee chair, and executive (whatever you have).

 

My crew got a good "jump start" by partnering with another crew on a Philmont trip. So I feel the whole issue of networking is a bigger deal when commissioning a crew vs. a troop. Add this to your syllabus, and I think you've got a primo class.

[UCEagle72]

Here is a Venturing Commissioner Orientation presentation that I include in my "Commissioner's Toolkit" (a 4Gb thumb drive) that I hand out during Commissioner Basic Training: http://www.box.net/shared/g6nn9lpriz