Built to Last – the Value of Core Values

Our external environment is becoming more complex with forces like nanotechnology and drone technology abounding. This is shaping the economic future of our region, so the demands and expectations placed on MVCC by the community will increase accordingly. Couple those demands with the increasing influence of the Power of SUNY Strategic Plan and we run the risk of getting pulled in all directions without focus or clarity. As I spelled out in my previous blog, this calls for a more intentional strategic planning process. To support the process, I invite you to revisit the core values of what makes Mohawk Valley Community College the unique and dynamic organization that it’s been, is, and will continue to be.

Core values define how organizations will go about achieving their potential. They can motivate and unite an organization’s employees and stakeholders, and they serve to tether an organization during periods of ambiguity or accelerated change. As Jim Collins says in his book, Built to Last, “enduring great organizations preserve their core values and purpose while their…strategies and operating practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. This is the magical combination of preserve the core and stimulate progress.”

 Similarly, in his book, Good to Great, Collins states that there are no correct core values. Rather, the mere fact that an organization has a set of core values and knows what they mean sets them apart from organizations that do not have a clear understanding of their core values.

With this in mind, I announced at Convocation last August that we would be embarking on a process this year to revisit our Core Values at MVCC. I placed a call for interested faculty and staff who would like to serve on a Core Values Workgroup last month and received 35 responses. From that list, I invited 13 individuals to serve as a representative group to lead the process. Professor Ron Labuz agreed to serve as chair and the group has met to outline their approach. 

The Values Workgroup identified a number of constituents to survey and collect insights and perspective on what makes MVCC unique. During the remainder of the Spring semester, students, employees, retirees, and community partners will be asked to reflect on what is at the core of MVCC. The workgroup will define and amplify the responses into a statement of enduring values – a statement providing one, unifying point of connection among the many stories told about our organizational culture.

A meaningful statement of core values can serve as our safe harbor amid winds of change. These values can guide decision-making, influence our individual and collective actions, and shape our conversations and deliberations in ways that build on the best of what has made MVCC special through nearly seven decades of service to this community and more than 40,000 alumni.
If you want to have direct input at the front end of the process, please respond to the workgroup’s survey questions—and be prepared to participate and offer your reflections as the process moves forward.

If you have any comments or questions, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Good Planning and Strong Relationships: MVCC’s Priorities for the Future

My college golf coach had a way of simplifying the game to help us play better. Rather than keep track of 20+ different elements of the swing, he had us focus on the most important two or three elements that, if done right, pull together the rest of the swing. Rather than thinking about all 18 holes, his mantra was two shots at a time - hitting this shot well to set up the next one. We competed in some challenging circumstances including one round that had sunshine, rain, and snow in equal doses; and his focus on strategy helped us succeed where other teams failed.

When we are at our best, an MVCC education can transform lives. But when we are not laser-focused on student completion, we leave that impact more to chance. Just like a golf swing, when we try to focus on too many things at once, we reduce the chance of hitting accurately.

In this blog, I share my thoughts on how this ties in to the many other activities of the College – and how we can tee off on the shot right in front of us to position ourselves for the next one. I will share my focus with you, and outline how you, too may be able to understand the process of change.

In short, our most important area of focus is redesigning MVCC’s strategic plan to promote completion. Focusing on strategies for completion will organize and make sense of all the other activities and forces affecting us right now. The shot in front of us is to build our relationships with each other. That’s how we’ll be ready for the next shot, which will require intensive teamwork.

A recent visit from Jim Simpson to our January Institute provided tremendous examples of how this plays out, thanks to Jim’s single-minded focus on increasing the number of students who graduate.

Many key faculty, staff, and administrators attended Jim’s various workshops over two days. The buzz, ideation, and energy for many of us were palpable – a natural response to Jim’s research.

That energy reminded me of the College’s sea change that was set in motion in 2008. Back then, the institution put together design teams who made many bold recommendations. There were many months of accelerated change implementation. This created communication gaps and growing frustration among departments, because the changes weren’t initially prioritized and coordinated. For faculty and staff in many areas the impact was overwhelming and uncertain, but eventually the changes became better aligned. Today their positive impact is evident throughout our institution.

Fast-forward to 2014. Education is anything but a game—but if it were, its rules, courses, weather, and even our clubs would be changing fast. Will we play it safe? Will we hit it into the rough? Or will we focus on what we need to, and hit our next shot straight and far? How will we set up the next shots to lift graduation rates?

Performance-based funding, enrollment pressures, and far-reaching SUNY initiatives are likely to cloud our budgets and program delivery. New and future programs, like Title III and Achieving the Dream, have the potential to unleash massive changes to our learning environment. Community visioning and strategic planning process changes are beginning to take on a spin of their own. The college completion agenda and the launch of a strategic enrollment plan are starting to stretch our organizational muscles in new ways. Nanotech, local business booms, and drone plans look like they are becoming reality, bringing promises and challenges. I could name many more potentially disruptive changes inside and outside MVCC, and I know that all areas of the College are facing new demands and challenges of their own.

Change will happen to us whether we are ready or not. If we don’t focus on organizing it, we won’t manage it well. If we can find a meaningful priority around which to organize change, we will have a great swing and be able to keep MVCC and our students on line to greater success. This is what we should do to make our students’ outcomes better and our college a better place to work.

Recent changes in our external have accelerated past our existing strategic plan in some ways, leaving a sense we lack that organizing priority. So my vision is that the next update of our strategic plan will become that priority. When we are wondering what to focus on, it should be the plan, as that is the axis around which all other initiatives, challenges, and opportunities will be organized. The planning process will take a hodge-podge of ideas and initiatives and collect them into a steady, focused, and prioritized course of action.

The output of the strategic planning process will help decide budget and staffing. We’ll have clear goals and rationales for how dollars and people will affect student outcomes. Given time and focused planning, our environment will feel less chaotic and more prepared to harness the excitement and energy of doing what MVCC does best.

To explore this point, consider Jim Simpson’s presentations alongside our College’s conversations about Achieving the Dream. Taken separately these could be seen as potentially unfocused sources of change. Viewed together and rolled up under a new strategic plan, they become significant organizational priorities within a larger, coherent plan.

For example, Jim affirmed that excellent teaching that employs active learning is the most powerful influence to increase student completion, but it takes a long time and leaves too much to chance if not supported by well-designed programs, information-rich systems, and intrusive advising. Based on the research he presented, we know that:

• for every course of dual credit or advanced placement on a high school transcript, a student has a 5.9% greater chance of graduating college;
• single points of failure like a graduation fee reduce graduation rates;
• for every credit over 60 in an associate degree program, graduation rates are reduced 2.9%;
• students have a 33% greater chance of completing an associate degree if they complete an embedded certificate along the way;
• and the sophisticated tracking and reporting tools we will develop are only possible if we spend the critical time up-front ensuring accuracy.

Jim Simpson’s message has impact, but is it just a shot into the rough? Or is it setting up our students to win? If we want to give it focus, we must think clearly about how we can roll up his input into our next strategic plan.

Jim’s visit coincided with the College’s application to participate in the national Achieving the Dream (ATD) initiative, which will create a more data-rich support system for student completion at MVCC. I view Jim as a coach for ATD, and his message about graduation rates shows us what we need to focus on most closely. Information like Simpson’s data and ATD’s potential will be fed into the strategic planning process, which will result in clear, focused goals for MVCC. Cabinet and budget managers will use these goals to drive budgets and organizational initiatives.

If we approach it this way, instead of being disconnected and divergent, the energies of Jim's visit and ATD will become focused with clear priorities. With some well-placed and well-informed efforts, we will make significant (even amazing) progress on student completion.

In reflecting on the timing, I think it would have been nice to have Jim join us for the Summer Institute when more of us could have attended. That said, it was necessary to have him join us now – at the start of ATD – to help us aim for the appropriate focus.

Appropriately for a learning institution in a changing environment, many people are asking what we should do next, while strategic planning comes up to speed. My expectation is that we will not hit shots willy-nilly and then get frustrated because the interdepartmental relationships and lines of communication aren’t strong enough. We must not do everything all at once without clear lines of responsibility and accountability.

What we should do next is pay attention now to strengthening our relationships. They will be the key to implementing all the things we will want to do after. For my part I will be focusing on our solid, existing network of committees, councils, and workgroups. I will encourage them to communicate with each other to make focused decisions about how to infuse things like Simpson’s teachings and ATD into our strategic plan. As other priorities emerge, I will be aiming for clarity on who will be responsible for what, and how initiatives will roll up under our strategic plan.

It is my hope that if we proceed this way, there will be less confusion. To reach our potential and maximize the benefits of a shared focus on completion, we’re going to need to rely on each other more. Changing the lives of our students will require us to change too, and this will feel much better if we organize it around something that we all share - a strategy to be at our best for students.

If you have any comments or questions, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Community is the Answer

Community – a deep sense of community – is what will sustain us in an ever-increasingly complex and stressful future. That is what leadership author and inspirationalist Meg Wheatley says, and I agree with her.

As chaos and its consequences manifest themselves (think our federal government gridlock, economic uncertainties, environmental issues, and global unrest), the larger context of our daily lives grows more unsettling. Simultaneously, everyday life in our country seems to grow a little more unpredictable on a regular basis with technological advances and accelerating social changes. The issues and problems can seem overwhelming, but Wheatley also posits that “whatever is the problem, community is the answer.” The values of collaboration and community lead to win/win solutions if people are willing to deal with a little uncertainty and trust in principles of community.

MVCC is an anchor institution in this region – influential companies and other entities have come and gone, but this College has persevered. We have the word “community” in our name and we are inextricably tied to the Mohawk Valley. Our vision statement speaks to our commitment to meet the rapidly changing needs of our community. For us to pursue and carry out that commitment to our community, we must model the way for the region with the approach that this area needs to move away from a win/lose orientation that only goes to protect turf or the status quo. For this region to truly prosper, notions of either/or and yes/no need to be replaced with yes/AND – true to the values of collaboration and community. Resources are indeed scarce, but they will be even scarcer if we work within a competitive, isolated, self-serving mindset.

We’re starting to see this more cooperative approach as governmental agencies are increasingly dipping their collective toes in the merger/collaboration waters; the local agribusiness sector is also modeling the yes/AND mindset as they find ways to support one another and complement related lines of business; and increasingly the business and education sectors are rapidly coming together to find new ways of collaboration and partnership to better prepare the workforce for accelerating, exciting, and even daunting changes on the horizon.

A yes/AND mindset doesn’t always mean that everyone always gets exactly what they want when all is finished. However, through a commitment to collaboration – with a little give and take and a willingness to shift in order to accommodate the needs of others in some manner – this larger context allows for a deeper sense of community that moves its members from simply surviving to a far more desired state of thriving.

Richard Florida’s recent presentation to the community at the Stanley Theater tied all these ideas together as he spoke about what distinguishes cities from one another and attracts what he calls the creative class. His framework said communities need to focus on the three Ts: technology, talent, and tolerance. He closed his remarks by saying that not only does this area have the foundations of these three concepts, we also have a very distinct history that is part of a continuing narrative for this community. 

He said that in the past, many communities used to be defined by large employers, and when those employers would leave, the sense of community would have to be reborn. We have certainly seen our share of large employers leave, but the essence of this community has remained – through events like the Boilermaker and the Heart Run/Walk; through organizations like MVCC, other colleges, and countless service organizations that have existed for generations; and local assets like the incredible homegrown restaurants, the Stanley Theater, the Utica Auditorium, exquisite public parks, to name just a few! As Florida reminded us, up-and-coming cities can’t recreate our sense of shared history that helps to draw a community ever-closer – and in the end, amidst all the chaos in our world, isn’t a sense of belonging what we all long for as humans?

If you have any comments or questions, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Trends Worth Watching

To understand what higher education industry might look like in the future, I often pay close attention to what’s happening in the healthcare industry. There are, in fact, many parallels that can be drawn, but some of the most important  include:

• Patient outcomes = student outcomes: Hospitals were increasingly accountable for patient outcomes in the mid-1980s as colleges did the same for student outcomes in the late ’90s.
• Performance-based funding: Medicaid reimbursements went to performance-based funding more than a decade ago. Today 15 states currently have PBF in place or in process to implement for public higher education, and another 20 states have legislation in discussion. More recently, Medicaid funding has incorporated “patient satisfaction” as a factor in reimbursement. What would – or will – it look like if higher education funding incorporates student satisfaction levels as  means for determining the value of the public dollars spent on higher education?
• Increasing government influence: PBF has been implemented to increase accountability in the healthcare field. Over the past two decades, costs have been spiraling out of control; outcomes have been questionable; and performance measures have not clarified the value of the public investment. As a result, the federal Affordable Care Act has been passed and will fundamentally transform the healthcare industry. Looking at higher education today, it’s evident that costs are spiraling ever-upward (making community colleges increasingly a first-choice option for many); outcomes are still questioned; and the value of public investment is under a microscope. Fast-forward two decades (or less!) and consider the healthcare parallel with regard to the relationship between government and public higher education.

Another consideration for all of higher education is the advent of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Delivering free content from faculty members at the most prestigious universities to reach hundreds of thousands of individuals in a single section is a novel idea suddenly brought to scale. 

Last year, we went from watching an interesting TED Talk to suddenly seeing a news story seemingly every other day about how MOOCs were beginning to take shape and catch the eye of other colleges that might use MOOC content to shape degree programs. While MOOCs are worth our attention, I am not so sure they will replace campus-based education. Similar to the advent of online education 15 years ago, I see them as a "yes/and" proposition
– likely to supplement rather than supplant face-to-face education. They do, however, represent a significant adjustment in our way of thinking about content delivery and how the Internet can so quickly bring things to scale – 100,000 students in a single section was hard to conceive with the concept of a MOOC.

In the short term, the most important thing for us to consider is the flexibility in our "credit for prior learning" processes and the extent to which we'll be able to accommodate non-traditional learning, like MOOCs, and evaluate it against our academic standards.

Finally, the Power of SUNY warrants our attention and commitment as system-wide initiatives will increasingly affect MVCC's future. SUNY's Strategic Plan is focused on leveraging the largest single higher education system in the country to maximize public investment and return economic and community vitality to every region of the Empire State. Initiatives like student mobility and transfer, common general education requirements, credit limits by degree, and shared services are all intended to call the question, "if we're not truly a system, why wouldn't we be doing these things?" They all require a great deal of conversation from every constituency group in the system, but if done well, each one will make the system stronger for students and communities throughout New York State. It's easy to think of them as SUNY initiatives off in the distance, but each initiative has tremendous implications for changes at all SUNY campuses – including MVCC. 

As fall semester classes are well under way now, we are in that joyous rhythm of the academic year. We carry out our work in a larger, ever-changing context, and these are just some of the more visible trends that will likely continue to shape our future endeavors.  

If you have any questions or comments, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Fine Arts Programs at MVCC

Please click on the link below to view the video about the Fine Arts programs at MVCC.

http://youtu.be/QSgUbwuW14E

A Look at the Admissions Department

Here at Mohawk Valley Community College, we strive to make a college degree an attainable goal for everyone, whether they are just out of high school or an adult in need of a career change and new skills. We have staff dedicated to helping every type of student start out on the right path, and our faculty and staff are here to help every step of the way, right up until graduation.

It all starts with our Admissions Department, where all potential applicants have the opportunity to discuss their program options and preparation, and get some assistance navigating the application process. 

Check out this video, which offers an inside look at MVCC's Admissions Department.

 

Fall 2012 Commencement

A Focus on Strengths

An Attitude of Gratitude

A wise colleague recently reminded me of the power of gratitude and the often forgotten notion that a few words of appreciation go a long way in fostering positive energy in an organization – and it doesn't cost a thing! I’ve also been revisiting Professor Kim Cameron’s work on positive organizational psychology and found the following very interesting.

A research study (Emmons, 2003) required a group of students to keep daily gratitude journals and another group to journal their frustrations. “The students who kept gratitude journals, compared to frustrated or neutral students, experienced fewer physical symptoms such as headaches and colds; felt better about their lives as a whole; were more optimistic about the coming week; had higher states of alertness, attentiveness, determination, and energy; reported fewer hassles in their lives; engaged in more helping behavior toward other people; experienced better sleep quality; and had a sense of being more connected to others” (Cameron, 2008). 

Could the positive effects of journaling gratitude also come from simply practicing gratitude more frequently? Each year our visiting professors from Kien Giang Community College in Vietnam observe and comment on how often we say “thank you” – “Americans say thank you three times for everything.” Expressing appreciation for gifts and other tangibles is, indeed, deeply layered into our society. Regularly showing gratitude for a job well done, however? Not so much.

One of my favorite “Thank You” cards has a cover that says, “Thanks for being...” The notion of expressing appreciation for simply being who they are, is to me, a powerful message. We’ve all done some very good work developing a comprehensive recognition program at MVCC. However, the most meaningful recognition often comes from the simple, positive, supportive individual interactions between caring colleagues every day. Equally as powerful might also be what is not said – people being more intentional with their choices to find their words, and deliver their messages, in the kinder, gentler ways more likely to sustain or build effective working relationships. 

I think human instinct most often favors paying close attention to negative signals – probably going back to our early days of hunting and gathering when ignoring negative signals was often fatal. We need far more positive interactions to outweigh the significance of and orientation toward negative ones. It’s often too easy to spend time at the end of a workday reflecting on one negative interaction, despite having had plenty of positive interactions. With a greater emphasis on gratitude, perhaps we can help create a more supportive, more reaffirming environment of gratitude and inspire a reciprocity that might provide results similar to those achieved by the students who journaled their gratitude in those studies a decade ago.  

If you have any comments, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Emmons, R.A. (2003). Acts of gratitude in organizations. In K. S. Cameron, J.E. Dutton, & R.E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship (pp. 81-93). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Cameron, K.S. (2008). Positive leadership: strategies for extraordinary performance. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Meet MVCC's New Mascot, Mo