This is not a degree granting program. A certificate of completion will be handed out at the class graduation dinner held at the January start of the new class.

Please contact Arlene Morgan at am494@columbia.edu or at 212-854-5377.

You should email Executive Director Doug Smith at dks2113@columbia.edu to set up a time to talk with him. You can also contact Associate Dean Arlene Morgan at am494@columbia.edu or 212-854-5377 for a general overview of the program.

Fellows often maintain relationships with the program directors, advisors, and their classmates.

The program is designed to help fellows lead successful change against the most important challenges facing their companies and the news industry. Accordingly, the mix of participants reflects the rapidly evolving media landscape: traditional and untraditional, multiplatform, large and small, U.S. and beyond and so forth. In addition, the mix reflects both folks from the edit/content side as well as business side.

You must inform your home office not to disturb you when you are in class. In the case of an emergency, please inform colleagues and family to contact you through Arlene Morgan at 212-854-5377. There also will be sufficient breaks during the day for you to check in with your office.

You should establish a clear working relationship with your superiors and colleagues so that they understand the challenge-centric, performance-driven nature of this program and the teamwork that will be expected of them to execute the selected challenge. You will need to read all of the advance materials we send you because there will be little time to catch up with those assignments once classes begin.

With the exception of group dinners, evenings are free. Several past fellows from out of town have also tacked on days either before or after the sessions in order to enjoy New York.

Yes. You will be sent a form for your needs and we will do our best to meet them.

Messages, packages or faxes may be sent during the class day to Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism 2950 Broadway, Suite 702A, New York, New York, 10027. Contact is Arlene Morgan, at 212-854-5377 or am494@columbia.edu. Please notify her by email if you will be expecting any correspondence.

If you are taking the subway from downtown Manhattan, you should use the #1 train (along 7th Avenue) uptown to the 116th Street station. If you prefer to take the bus, walk to Broadway and catch an uptown #104 bus. Cabs are also abundantly available on all city streets.

Enter the campus at 115th Street and Broadway. After you walk through the gates, the Journalism building is on your far left behind a statue of Thomas Jefferson.

Generally, dress will be casual. If for any reason something more is required, we'll let you know.

Once you have been accepted, your company should send a $10,000 deposit through a check, made payable to Columbia University. Wire transfers are also possible. Checks should be sent in care of:

Arlene Morgan
Associate Dean
Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism
2950 Broadway, Room 702A
New York, New York, 10027

The remaining $15,000 can be paid in two installments. All fees must be paid by July 1 of the Fellowship year.

Yes. The sessions at Columbia are essential. In addition to the challenge updates that are key to Fellows taking advantage of shared knowledge and experience, all of the content of the sessions is carefully selected to help fellows succeed with their challenges.

A laptop is recommended. Also, the key work on succeeding at challenges is driven by a series of assignments that participants accomplish in the workplace. Those assignments, in turn, provide the basis for updates each Fellow makes to the group during the March, June, September/October and final January sessions. The assignments are given to help Fellows complete their challenge. In addition, there are some books, portions of which are to be read in preparation for the sessions.

No. We typically end by 5pm ? and, with the exception of group dinners, evenings are free.

We take steps, once we understand all the challenges that Fellows bring to the program, to minimize these concerns (e.g. by placing Fellows with potential privacy concerns in separate advisor groups). For the most part, we have found that many of the challenges are less about competitive trade secrets than about supporting the Fellows as they implement performance and change in their respective organizations.

Each advisor works with a group of participants. The advisors are deeply experienced in performance-driven change as well as the design of the program. Their role is to provide guidance to participants as they work to identify and then achieve performance at their respective workplaces. The advisors are not consultants and their time is limited. It is critical that all participants take the best possible advantage of this resource during the times you and your advisor establish.

Formal classes start about 8 a.m. and end around 5 p.m.. Breakfast will be available from 7:30 a.m. Lunch is also provided. The initial January session has two or three group dinners. Other sessions typically have one group dinner -- but we always encourage fellows to get together informally during the sessions.

This would be a heavy blow to the participant’s efforts and success in this
program. We encourage participants to work directly with their
superiors, peers and others -- both before and early on in the program -- to
select a challenge that makes sense to the company, and to gain the necessary commitments so that ‘pulling the plug’ is highly unlikely. Having said that, we will of course do whatever we can to make the participant’s experience a success.

Yes. The executive director works with the advisors and the Fellows throughout. Our goal is that all participants succeed. We take that goal very seriously.

Are there limits to the time we can devote? Yes. But as long as participants are doing whatever they can to succeed, we will as well. If our time commitments and budget are too constrained, we'll work with participants to find the best solution possible.

Performance-driven change is setting measurable goals and having a team of colleagues work toward the objectives while keeping each other accountable.

An example of this happened at The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1989 when the former Knight Ridder Newspaper group asked all its newspapers to create pluralism plans that meet the diversity needs of the community. The Inquirer decided to work on its content, recruiting, staffing and community outreach and a senior editor was assigned to lead the project. Instead of taking a 'top down approach,' the editor enlisted all the news divisions and included a range of staff, from senior editors to news assistants to create a five-year strategic plan. The plan offered recommendations on recruiting and hiring with specific percentage goals to improve the number of minorities and women. Within three years, the minority staff in the City Room moved from 10 to 20 percent while women were promoted into key editing and reporting jobs. The editor in charge worked with all level of managers but a key to success was the involvement of the top two editors in every critical discussion.

The project selected needs to be at the top of news organization’s agenda. The project undertaken is at the heart of what matters to the news organization. In effect, the project selected is the participant’s work.

The hard work of performance-driven change cannot be accomplished if the results are ‘nice to have’ instead of a "must have." Because the challenges will be "must haves," there really is no extra work. The time it takes to accomplish success will depend on the nature of the challenge – but in all cases it should will be time that the participant should be spending anyway.

The program runs 12 months, from January to January. The majority of time is spent implementing the tools to achieve an important project or challenge at the Fellow’s workplace. Formal classes at Columbia cover four to five-day sessions over the course of the year, usually in January, March, June, September or October and the following January for two days of final presentations.