A Year in the Life of MVCC

The core of our academic year ended last month with the moving graduation event, followed a few days later with our Summer Institute and springtime celebration of success for faculty and staff. But as we now move to one of our busiest summers in memory, I am moved to reflect on a very successful year in the life of MVCC. Last spring the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) created a forward thinking Strategic Plan with ambitious annual initiatives to coordinate our collective priorities and efforts. The SPC recently evaluated our progress and we were pleased to note many accomplishments from the past year.

Student Success is our first strategic priority. Thanks to the work of many staff and faculty this past year, the College implemented priority registration; developed waitlists for full course sections; hired our first college-wide advisors; renovated testing space and expanded testing services at the Utica Campus; redesigned our new student orientation process; and established the first-year experience office.

Academic Excellence is another strategic priority where we piloted a creative learning community; received national accreditation for our dual credit program; successfully implemented the diversity and global view general education requirement; and thanks to Dr. Eannace and members of the Reorganization Design Team, achieved Board of Trustees approval for the reorganization in Academic Affairs. These steps will foster significant innovations for years to come.

The strategic priority of Creative Partnerships helped CCED staff and several talented faculty members develop summer Career Camps for kids. CCED broke $1 million in revenues and served more than 6,000 individuals last year and we are on track for a similar performance this year. We greatly expanded our transfer opportunities for students (including a transfer agreement for 20 programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell) with the new office of Career, Transfer and Job Placement Services working closely with our university partners. And we strengthened lines of communication with SUNY-IT with biannual meetings of our two President’s Cabinets to discuss ongoing partnerships.

Our Vibrant Culture strategic priority saw much activity and developed a strong foundation for exciting changes in the future. While implementation of a comprehensive professional development program won’t be rolled out until next fall, the New Faculty Institute was by all accounts a tremendous success—I would like to thank David Katz and his many colleagues for contributing time and talent to the effort. Our "Hawks that Soar" employee recognition program was recently announced and will get off to a great start in August. And thanks to Sue Smith and her advisory group, we began implementation of a comprehensive Adjunct Faculty Support System.

Our fifth priority of Leveraged Resources guided us to a 20% increase in annual campaign revenues for the Foundation. We added 720 new donors thanks to Frank DuRoss and his Institutional Advancement staff, who helped us have a great year. We secured funding for the new Robert Jorgensen Fieldhouse and expect to break ground after the first of the year. We secured funding for site improvements to the campuses and dollars for the Master Plan, which will get underway in the fall. And thanks to the incredible efforts of our Information Technology staff, we are in the process of putting telephones in every classroom and lab at both campuses. This will improve campus safety and bring in Internet capability, allowing us to greatly expand the number of smart classrooms at the College with help from our Educational Technology staff.

While many other accomplishments could be named, the ones highlighted here relate directly to the Strategic Plan—they are good examples of the plan’s direction. The Strategic Plan allows us to focus on what we think we can control in these uncertain times. Yet, we know that every day our students come to our Utica, Rome and Virtual campuses and bring us situations and issues that we can’t predict. As influential NASA Administrator Dan Goldin has said, “Overcoming the unexpected and discovering the unknown is what ignites our spirit. It’s what life is all about.” I submit that helping students and helping each other overcome the unexpected and helping students discover themselves is what should ignite our collective spirit – it’s what I believe we are all about at MVCC.
If you have any thoughts on the past year, let me know at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Recognizing Recognition

Looking out at the smiling faces of our graduates at Commencement this past Friday gave me an enormous sense of pride in the work we do at this College. Talking with faculty and staff at the reception back at the Utica campus afterward further confirmed how meaningful our collective work is and how faculty and staff go to this post-commencement reception to personally congratulate the students. Personalizing recognition like that is what inspired changes to in our employee recognition program.

Last spring the Employee Recognition System Design Team made some bold and daring recommendations to build on our current recognition processes and develop a more comprehensive approach to how faculty and staff are recognized and thanked for their contributions to fulfill MVCC’s mission. This past year, we've tried a few new things, like formalizing the end-of-the-semester employee gathering. We've also recaptured some of what worked in the past, like recognizing our Chancellor's Award winners at Commencement - I thought it worked very nicely.

The Summer Institute Luncheon later this week will see a few important changes to the program format with the complete employee recognition program unveiled at the Celebration of Success (end-of-the-semester gathering) the following day. As I recently announced, the employee service awards will not be recognized in the same way as they have in years past. Rather, we will have smaller, more personal, ceremonies throughout the year. The success of these ceremonies will only come with the full commitment of cabinet members, supervisors and colleagues who choose to attend and honor their colleagues for the years of service to the College, our mission and our students.

As I write this, I think about the time and energy of the employee recognition design team - and thank them for their creativity and commitment to providing a thoughtful approach to recognition. However, I also find myself thinking about the importance of saying thank you in recognition of a job well done and how no matter how comprehensive our recognition program becomes as it evolves over the next few years, the power of saying thank you to one another is often the best recognition of all. If you have any thoughts on how recognition occurs at MVCC, please let me know at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Celebrating Our Graduates

This week we celebrate student success. On Friday, May 15th at 4 p.m. we will collectively rejoice in the accomplishment of Mohawk Valley Community College's most recent success stories - the graduating members of the Class of 2009. They join tens of thousands of thriving MVCC alumni who have come to us seeking personal, supportive learning experiences - received them - and accomplished their goals of graduating from MVCC. Many graduates have overcome obstacles that could have easily sidetracked their dreams, but they persevered.

To help us celebrate the faith and persistence our graduates demonstrate, we have the pleasure of welcoming Immaculée Ilibagiza at this year's ceremony. Her story of faith and survival of the Rwandan genocide serves as a powerful reminder that, through faith and persistence, we can all overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

This week we celebrate the community college student at MVCC. Unlike any other place of learning, a community college like ours is a place where 22% of the top 10% of high school scholars, and 30% of all high school graduates in Oneida County find their way to us every fall semester. Ours is a place where those students are joined by others who return from larger four-year schools, to find what they needed at home - a more intimate learning environment that can provide the critical study skills and personal discipline required for academic success. Ours is a place where the single parent finds a way, against all odds, to balance the demands in her life, get to class and earn good grades. Ours is a place where the unemployed or underemployed come to gain new skills and script new, successful chapters in their lives. Ours is a place where the English language learner joins the GED completer to find that they can achieve in college and do it well, to accomplish more than they ever thought possible, starting life anew.

It is this beautiful mosaic that comprises the profile of students at a place like ours. It is a mosaic that comes through our front door every day seeking advice and support from our talented staff to chart a path for a brighter future. It is a mosaic that displays a daily kaleidoscope of learning styles in our classes, bringing out the best our faculty and staff have to offer. Through countless obstacles they navigate unimaginable circumstances and they persevere. Our graduates did not let anything distract from their focus that would have left them wondering what could have happened if they would have finished – instead, they did finish.

The spirit and accomplishment of our graduates reminds me of a poem by Shel Silverstein - Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas:
All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin' in the sun,
Talkin' 'bout the things
They woulda coulda shoulda done...
But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All ran away and hid
From one little Did.

The Rhythms of Change

Changing the way we think about change is important, but trying to understand the underlying rhythms of change is important as well. I did my dissertation on factors that influence the perception of change in community colleges. I reviewed the literature and research on how organizational change occurs and how it is perceived from nearly every angle I could imagine. However, one model of change that really informed my study and anchored my thinking was the punctuated equilibrium model by Tushman and Romanelli (1985).

The researchers described various organizational life cycles and the extent to which they are healthy for the organization. They posit that organizations go through natural periods of equilibrium (very steady periods of little change) that are periodically interrupted by points of punctuation (large-scale change) - taken together, this makes up the foundations of their punctuated equilibrium model. They continue that if the periods of equilibrium last too long, the organization can drift into entropy and decay. Similarly destructive, if an organization experiences too many periods of continuous punctuations, fatigue and negative energy can also lead to drift and decay.

In contrast, a healthy organization can move from a state of equilibrium to punctuation and emerge stronger and healthier as it experiences the next period of relative equilibrium. When the next punctuation occurs, it's generally shorter because the organization is better-equipped to handle it. Over time, as the organization becomes stronger and more effective, the periods of equilibrium are shorter so the punctuations come quicker, but they are less significant because the organization is better equipped to respond and absorb the associated changes. The strength and collective ability that develops within the organizational culture minimizes the effect of staff turnover and other shifts that can decrease momentum and inhibit effectiveness.

The combination of implementing our Strategic Plan and responding to the current enrollment demands seems to have created a period of punctuated activity for us. I am very proud of how faculty and staff are responding during this time and believe we'll emerge from this stronger and more effective than ever. If we maintain our collective focus on our mission of promoting student success and community involvement through a commitment to excellence and a spirit of service, I am confident that the punctuated equilibrium model will come to life for many years to come at MVCC. If you have any thoughts or reflection on this post, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Growing Pains

We are headed into our seventh (summer) and likely eighth (fall) consecutive semester with an enrollment increase - a streak not experienced for some time at MVCC. Despite the economic forces bringing growing numbers to our front door, my expectation is that this is not a streak but a strategic direction of managed enrollment growth. I recently created a charter for an Enrollment Management Council to review enrollment data and community trends to coordinate our efforts and, to the extent possible, manage enrollment rather than have our enrollment manage us. However, the current enrollment increases seem to be outpacing our expectations and testing some of our recently refined systems and processes.

With enrollment up between eight and nine percent this spring, faculty and staff have stepped right up and responded with proportional support and services for students. Thanks to some bold initiatives by a number of staff, we have implemented two critical processes that have changed the way we operate. Priority registration allows students with the most credits to enroll first to give them the best opportunity to enroll in those classes they need to graduate. In addition, implementing waitlists for full class sections allows us to track where the enrollment pressures are greatest and do everything we can to open additional class sections on demand. With these new processes in place, we're likely to see even more students this summer and fall (and on into the future) along with increased parking demands and substantially more students through processes designed perhaps for fewer students...something we need to think about very quickly.

Although this may be a recent phenomenon for MVCC, community colleges around the country have been experiencing periods of double digit increases throughout the last decade. Large enrollment increases will require us to be as creative as possible to maintain access for so many new students. It will also require that each one of us bring the best we have to offer to work every day and recognize that nearly every challenge will be best met through teamwork. Everyone will have to do their part and rely on everyone else to do the same - even more so than normal. It's times like these when I emphasize locus of control and sphere of influence. To keep stress to a minimum (for our students and ourselves), it's often helpful to reflect on what you can and cannot control and use your abilities to communicate and influence things you may not be able to control. Walking in each others shoes and recognizing the solution may seem simple from your perspective, but not as clear from someone else's viewpoint.

I've often referred to the importance of all of us working collaboratively in new and different ways. We've made progress with this these notions the past few semesters and have seen enrollment grow ever so steady, between one and four percent. Now that we're up toward double digit growth, it's time to really magnify and employ these skills - believing in ourselves and perhaps more importantly helping all of us believe in each other. If you have any thoughts or feedback on this post, please email me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

MVCC and Stimulus Dollars - making a difference

Talk of the stimulus package is everywhere these days. The last time the federal government jump-started such a desperate economy it was called the New Deal. A few years later our College was founded. The New Deal and World War II transformed our nation’s workforce by pouring money into job creation and making higher education more accessible. MVCC and most other community colleges owe their early existence to these developments.

Fast forward to 2009 when the White House and Congress are again pouring money into creating jobs, retooling the workforce for new challenges, and making higher education more accessible. What does all this mean for MVCC? For one, federal stimulus funds have made it possible to restore the state-aid funds that Governor Paterson had proposed cutting from MVCC and other colleges. The stimulus package will also make Pell grants available to more of our students. Nationally, an additional $3.95 billion is being directed toward youth and workforce retraining with emphases on energy efficiency, health care and other high-demand fields.

Offices and departments throughout the College are working together to identify which credit and non-credit offerings are linked to stimulus priorities. Building on our productive partnerships with Working Solutions, the Workforce Investment Board and other agencies, we are tweaking these programs - and creating new ones - to meet abundant needs. To expedite commerce and hiring, faculty are collaborating to resequence courses and accelerate programs - - thus making them more accessible to those bumped from the workforce who can’t spend two years in a traditional semester format.

Staff are spending more time at local One Stop Centers, matching future workers with needed skills and funding sources to cover tuition and fees for students enrolling in MVCC programs. We’re conducting placement tests on site and will soon roll out a new math refresher course that is needed by many eager to be part of the emerging post-stimulus economy. Information sessions will be held for current students to help them take advantage of new programs and new funding.

I recently had the opportunity to join City, County and federal officials to announce five programs being launched locally with stimulus money to cover instructional costs, tuition, and fees. Three of five programs will be administered by MVCC. We will train youth to construct an Internet café in the Utica Veterans Outreach Center; train another group of young people to construct retail space for entrepreneurs in Rome’s REACH arts and cultural center; and teach a third group to conduct and present environmental research on brownfields. Proposals to expand our capacity for healthcare training and green technologies are under development along with a half dozen other strategies to focus stimulus funding where it will do the most good.

So how does MVCC benefit from stimulus funds? We've already begun to do so, and more good things will come. MVCC is embracing change as we bring our programs and services closer to emerging community needs. If you have any thoughts on this, please let me know at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Diversity and a Global View

I've been using this blog to share different ideas I encounter as I continue to learn about the world around us and the shifts associated with that world changing in unprecedented ways. We hear from so many sources that the changes we're experiencing are making our world smaller and that we need to increase our understanding of diversity and expand our global view. In response to that need, MVCC has been working on a far-reaching Diversity and Global View (DGV) initiative that pre-dates me, so I've only tried to fan the flames so they burn even brighter.

This fall, MVCC added a new Diversity and Global View general education requirement where all degree-seeking students will need to satisfy the DGV requirement by successfully completing four tutorials, a DGV approved course and attending four approved events through our MVCC Cultural Series or other approved experiences. DGV sets MVCC apart from so many other institutions that espouse a commitment to diversity - we're bringing it to life through a fundamental shift in our general education degree requirements. Our Diversity and Global View Committee coordinates this significant effort at the College and will continue to refine our processes and procedures in the future.

The momentum created by the DGV initiative recently carried over to help make the 4th annual International festival at our Utica Campus a tremendous success. Thanks to the hard work of the International Initiatives Committee and a number of other helping hands, more than 400 students, faculty and staff learned a little more about each other, other cultures and themselves by attending the festival. I had the pleasure of welcoming everyone in the crowded event space in the lobby of our Blue Cross/Blue Shield Conference & Training Center. As part of the initial program, we had close to ten of our international students provide a welcome in their native languages, had a Buddhist monk say a few important words of welcome and then Mr. Khang sang a traditional Vietnamese song of welcome to get the event started. Mr. Khang is the Department Head of English at Kiang Gang Community College in the Mekong delta region of Vietnam. He is visiting MVCC for the entire month of April as part of the increasingly strong relationship between our two institutions and the ever-expanding diversity and global view efforts at the College.

The information booths, the music, the dancing, the smiles and welcoming atmosphere of our International Festival made the world feel smaller somehow; it made the world feel more personal, like all the change going on around us is just a reminder that culture to culture and person to person, we're all just people no matter where we are. If you have any thoughts on this, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Changing How We Think About Change

I recently attended the American Association of Community Colleges annual conference where a number of sessions confirmed for me that our Strategic Plan is guiding us in the right direction in these uncertain times. A number of sessions underscored just how much change we face as individuals and as community colleges. I saw a presentation that included a pretty interesting video on the speed of change.We know change is all around us in our daily lives when we read the newspaper…online, when we talk to distant relatives through our computer screen using skype – change is now a constant. However, in any organization change is not easy. Change is a blinking word that gets people’s attention. Change sets off internal switches that play against human nature and emotions that strive for stability and predictability.

Today’s most effective organizations are the ones that embrace change. Like my college golf coach once said, "let the wind be your friend - hit the way the wind is blowing, don't fight it, but make it work for you." I've always thought the same about change - work with it and make it your own, at any level. I believe positive change comes from intentionally shaping the future through ideas. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about where new ideas come from at the College and how they get surfaced. If we don't create an atmosphere of inquiry and conversation, our vibrant culture will never reach its potential. If we don't question our processes and find ways to problem-solve through more positive and collaborative means, these rapid changes happening all around us will consume us and pass us by in the next ten years.

Since our vision statement at MVCC speaks to meeting the rapidly changing needs of our community, we must work to reflect those changing community needs – making change an inherent part of who we are as an organization. In its simplest form, I think change comes down to mustering our collective will to make things better and continually working to close that gap between community needs and College programs and services. If you have any thoughts on this, please let me know at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Education is the key

George Carlin once suggested that, since we have too many golf courses and too many homeless people in the US, we could solve both problems by letting the homeless move from our city centers to one of our underused golf courses. The merits of this idea are debatable, but I give Carlin an “A” for creative thinking. A recent newspaper article in the Observer-Dispatch prompted me to reach out to Steve Darmin from Social Science Associates and ask for his insights on putting this blog post together.

Although homelessness in our region is largely invisible to many of us outside of our city centers, it is a serious, costly and growing social problem. A point-in-time census of homeless persons and families in Oneida County conducted by Social Science Associates for the Mohawk Valley Housing and Homeless Assistance Coalition on January 28, 2009 revealed that there were over 400 homeless persons on that single day. Many more are homeless at other times during the year. Over 40% of those surveyed in January reported that this was the first time they were homeless as an adult, and most homeless persons and families are re-housed within a short period of time. However, approximately one of every four homeless adults in Oneida County are “chronically” homeless, i.e. they’ve experienced more than four episodes of homelessness in the past three years or been homeless for a year or longer.

Most chronically homeless people are struggling with serious mental health, substance abuse, and other disabilities. Unlike George Carlin we’ve failed to come up with any creative ideas to make a dent in this social problem. Instead, we “manage” our chronically homeless neighbors ineffectively and at great expense using local shelters, addiction crisis treatment, emergency medical, psychiatric inpatient and other hospital care and with our police, courts, and jail. We’ve fallen short when it comes to finding and providing solutions that empower and enable them to end their homelessness and stop the drain on our publicly funded service and criminal justice systems. One third of the chronically homeless adults in Oneida County report that they used a local Emergency Department three or more times in the past year. This is the most expensive and least effective way to deliver health care services to this or any other population.

The US Interagency Council, a consortium of federal agencies, recently approached Oneida County Executive Tony Picente, Utica’s Mayor Roefaro, and Rome’s Mayor Brown and asked them to work together with other community leaders to develop a 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness in Utica, Rome, and Oneida County (for more information see the Federal Interagency Council website at http://www.usich.gov/). I was asked to chair this initiative and have accepted this responsibility. Working with Steve Darmin and so many other concerned professionals on this effort, I'm confident we'll make a difference on this challenging aspect to our community.

What is the relationship between chronic homelessness and MVCC? When someone is on a path out of homelessness, education and training is a key component. Like Liz Murray, the famous "homeless to Harvard" icon, people can do it. Yet, these individuals are not likely to find their way to an open house or a career fair. We must find creative ways to reach out to the many underserved populations, whether homeless or otherwise underserved, who haven't thought of how College fits for them and create pathways that make it possible. If you have any thoughts on this, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Beyond Nanotech

Last week I had the good fortune to deliver the keynote speech at the Leadership Mohawk Valley (LMV) "Follow the Leader" awards banquet. This gave me an opportunity to reflect on the Mohawk Valley and what I've learned about the area thus far. It’s been said that "the economy never goes too high nor too low here in the Mohawk Valley." Yet history tells us that this region is capable of substantial highs including the Erie Canal, the railroads that followed, and the bustling mills and factories that were nourished first by the Canal and railroads and later by the Thruway. All this led to the era of Griffiss Air Force Base. From the Canal through the Air Force Base, the Mohawk Valley enjoyed a 175-year high.

True, there were less prosperous periods of economic transition during that century and three-quarters. That’s exactly what I believe we’re experiencing now. The Mohawk Valley has lived through a transition for the past 15 years as manufacturing and military employers departed. Yet this same recent period has seen the local emergence of a very strong high-tech sector and our region’s largest employer didn’t exist before 1993. My recent trip to IBM research headquarters (see last week's blog) piqued my appreciation not only for the latest in emerging technologies, but also for the incredible talent, spirit and organizations that make these technologies come alive in the Mohawk Valley. From the Air Force Research Lab to the Griffiss Institute and SUNY-IT, and from IT-based employers to cybersecurity researchers and nanotech entrepreneurs, this region is actively laying the foundations of another defining period of economic prosperity.

Landing a large nanotech chip fabrication plant would be wonderful. The efforts of Mohawk Valley Edge to develop the Marcy Nanocenter site will yield fruit at some point, but the future of this region must go beyond nanotech. We need to change our community focus in the headlines from "chip fab plant to employ 1,000 people" to understand the importance of expanding broadband access here locally; to understand the emerging green technologies and how to best position this area for the myriad applications that are yet to be invented; and to recognize the importance of quality of life issues in an increasingly mobile society where people don't always have to physically locate where their employment is (e.g., telecommuting, etc.).

As I said in my keynote address at the LMV banquet, I believe the next five years will define the next fifty for the Mohawk Valley (and perhaps the nation). To make the most of these next few years, we need to align the priorities in this region and move toward the next definitive period for this region. Emerging technologies are going to redefine how we work, live and play and the Mohawk Valley is poised to reap the benefits of what is just now coming in to view - it's up to all of us to look for it. If you have any thoughts on this, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.