On Fridays at noon, our office suspends the hustle and bustle of meetings, report writing, and phone calls and becomes a seminar room. We gather around our conference table to eat lunch and turn our attention to a topic, trend, or technique important to our work. At some point these lunches were dubbed (somewhat ironically) Slover Linett University, which was inevitably shortened to SLU.

These seminars run the gamut from skill-building workshops about, say, linear regression or ethnographic observation, to broader knowledge-building discussions about newly-released studies or articles, our own recent research findings, or a conference one of us just attended.

I learned about SLU during the interview process before I began working here, and I remember thinking how great it is for a workplace to provide a structure for employees to stay up-to-date on issues relevant to their field. I’ve only been here a few months, but I’ve already learned so much from just a handful of SLU sessions.

With eleven people here in the office, we’re still small enough that communication is pretty easy. But with our three senior associates specializing in different sectors — higher ed, performing arts, and museums — it’s harder than it looks to keep everyone up-to-date about what we’re learning. The weekly SLU lunches keep us all in the loop across all of our projects, so that important findings, ideas, and lessons learned stay fresh in our collective mind.
 

SLU was on vacation over the summer, as vacations and work-related travel took many of us out of the office. But now that it’s Fall, we’re beginning the new “academic year.” Here are a few of the topics that will be on the table (along with our lunches and notebooks): ...