MVCC Hall of Fame — A celebration of values

MVCC President Randall J. VanWagoner with the 2019 MVCC Hall of Fame inductees (from left): Professor Emeritus Michael Sewall, Professor Emeritus and MVCC alumnus Robert Decker, Vice President Emerita Dr. Maryrose Eannace, and Administrator/Professor Emeritus Frank Przybycien. 

I recently had the privilege of emceeing the MVCC Foundation’s annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony. It is always an inspirational event that recognizes the incredible careers of individuals who have made significant contributions to Mohawk Valley Community College. While this year’s class of inductees mirrored the same caliber of excellence as current members of the Hall, something in the air seemed to wash over many in the audience.

I’ve always felt that our format reflects the distinctively personal nature of this institution. Many other organizations seize the opportunity to make induction ceremonies important fundraisers, which in the non-profit world is a commonly accepted best practice. Rather than selling tickets and tables and securing sponsors for a big dinner, admission to MVCC’s Hall of Fame event is free with a very nice reception of heavy hors d'oeuvres followed by a ceremony that introduces each inductee and allows them a few minutes to share their reflections and insights. It’s an evening where the focus is intentionally focused on the inductees — their lives, their values, their careers, their contributions — nothing more and nothing less.

When the ceremony concluded, I had separate conversations with multiple attendees who all initiated unsolicited comments following the same theme. As inductees made their individual remarks, many in the audience picked up on three common threads in their stories that connected back to induction ceremonies of previous years. Each inductee has a unique story to tell with their distinctive personal career at the College, whether the person is faculty, staff, administrator, alumni, or friend of the College. First, the words they share speak about how much they treasure their personal relationships with people who work at the College. MVCC seems to be the perfect size that fosters meaningful connections among everyone associated with the place. Second, the inspirational vision of the College to transform lives through learning motivates people over many years of putting forth extra effort to helping students succeed and consequently sustain and improve our local community. Finally, a consistent theme among inductees is the enormous pride they feel in being associated with MVCC knowing the important work that occurs here continues a compounding positive impact on this community that cannot be found in many organizations or places of work. 

Meaningful relationships, transforming lives, and uncommonly enduring pride are three themes that these amazing Hall of Fame inductees bring to life through reflections on their outstanding careers here. It reaffirmed for me that our core values of Model the Way, Inspire Confidence, Encourage Excellence, and Embrace Community underscore the essence of what makes this College so special to those of us with the good fortune to work here. As we collectively face increasingly disruptive times full of accelerating and uncomfortable change, it is comforting to know that the core values of this institution endure and will continue to tether us through the future times — good, bad, and everything in between — on cloudless days and others when we simply have to make our sunshine.

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

The Transformative Power of Holistic Supports in the Guided Pathways Framework

For years, community colleges have increasingly been moving toward a “student-centered” approach to the college experience. Putting students at the “center” of our work may seem like common sense, but unpacking more than 300 years of higher education customs, norms, values, and traditions has not been easy. I’ve seen more fundamental change occur across the higher education landscape in the past five years than I have in the previous 25 years. 

The technological and societal changes impacting our students have accelerated these changes. Less than 10 years ago, most community colleges wouldn’t have considered having mental health professionals on staff — we created two positions nine years ago. Five years ago, most colleges would have thought having a food pantry on campus was going too far and compromising our mission — we created our pantry three years ago, and last year New York State mandated that all college campuses have one. The intense pressures many of our students feel outside of class often dwarf the pressures they feel inside of class. Learning often becomes secondary and fades into the deafening din of poverty, food and housing insecurity, childcare, transportation, domestic violence, gender identity, unseen disabilities, health concerns — and the list goes on ad infinitum. 

Our collective work with Guided Pathways has prompted us to reconsider the entire student experience and account for this broad spectrum of needs by reimagining how students enter our college, and the support they receive while they’re here and even after they leave. We’ve had nine different workgroups examine our programs and services in light of nationally researched evidence-based practices and make 280 recommendations, several of which involve creating a more holistic approach to our student support services. And these recommendations came from just five of the workgroups — four have yet to finish and three new groups were recently charged. 

It’s abundantly clear to those closest to the work, and even those of us at a distance, that Guided Pathways is not a fad, not an initiative, and not a short-term thing. Guided Pathways is a multi-year, ongoing commitment that uses an evidence-based framework to guide thoughtful analysis of how and why we do things for students, and how to demystify the centuries-old myths created by higher education that amount to professional malpractice under a modern lens. 

The holistic approach we’re taking through our Guided Pathways work is timely and critical. Seeing our students as individuals with complex lives — individuals with challenges in their student life and pressures and obstacles in their private life, which can limit their success as students — will only become more critical as society advances and the options to learn and gain skills increase. 

To provide effective and meaningful support for students with this depth and breadth of life complexity can be a significant challenge when we add the rigors of an academic schedule into their environment. A tenuous existence can quickly turn to chaos without someone to help a student make sense of the experience and to adapt to the new environment. A focus group done by the Paige Group showed us that the most successful MVCC students are the ones who make a meaningful connection with a member of our faculty or staff. Without this support, students often are left to consult with friends or classmates on critical decisions that may result in a more challenging outcome. The importance of a student having a strong connection to our staff and faculty is often echoed in anecdotes shared by many colleagues over the years, and this connection is too important to leave to chance. 

While much work remains to be done, the changes that have been made thus far are bringing the best of the emerging practices from around the country and here at MVCC to scale in an effort to make a significant difference for the future success of our students. It’s hard to imagine, but this is just the beginning. 

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

Organizational Healing

Seeing the faces of several hundred new graduates walk across the stage last week prompted a period of reflection for me. It was enlightening talking to graduates at the post-commencement reception back on campus. Multiple grads shared their mixed emotions about how excited they were for their next step while also feeling sad to be leaving MVCC. This made me think about how excited I am for all the changes soon to come with our Guided Pathways efforts while still processing the emotional toll of another extremely challenging budget process that included several difficult personnel decisions.

I found insight in a quote from Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church, in his TED talk about “How to Remain Relevant.” He says, “There is no growth without change; there is no change without pain; no pain without loss; and no loss without grief.” In all my years of studying and experiencing change, I’ve never connected the two cycles. However, if you overlay accepted change models with the five stages of grieving, they’re almost identical. Warren goes on to say that many times it’s not that people are resisting change, it’s more likely that they are grieving. Recognizing this as a natural organizational reality surfaces the notion of organizational healing.

Change is often referred to as a constant in our lives, but it seems that regardless of how well-managed change may be, it likely will be experienced across the spectrum from minimal to traumatic depending on the impact. This is especially true when the change is dictated not by innovation, or in the name of student success, but rather is driven by external factors like money or lack thereof. Budgetary cuts are just that — cuts that serve as wounds to the organization. And, like surviving any trauma, there is a period of recovery with necessary self-care. Organizations are complex adaptive systems much in the same way the human body is, and as such they need time to heal. 

While we experienced enrollment growth during the Great Recession, change was comparatively easier because there was “more.” In the subsequent years of enrollment decline, the organizational growth has been harder because there was “less” and we challenged ourselves to do “better” — our new mantra of “more and better with less.” This has come from our adopted philosophy of “preserve the core and stimulate progress” that requires us to manage the paradox of personnel reductions while adding new positions to meet emerging demands. 

The annual rhythm of balancing a budget under increasingly complex constraints can wear on us as individuals and test our collective resilience. However, the organizational will to march on is what makes the difference and this requires a period of healing to absorb the impact of the change, pain, loss, and grief. This is how we gather our strength, lift each other up, and find the resolve to continue. During these times we must rely on our organizational rituals, continue celebrating and recognizing the bright spots that make us who we are to feed our souls and nurture our hearts. It is indeed different for all of us, but as many colleagues have said, “We’ll get through it, because we always do.” That enduring spirit of finding a way, of modeling the way, is what inspires confidence and encourages excellence, and allows us to embrace our community.

Change is hard. But recognizing grief as a natural part of the change process allows us to take the necessary deep breath and move toward healing that will allow us to endure and focus on the future that holds ever-more inspiring stories from students and colleagues going beyond expectations in ways we have yet to imagine — all of which make change, however difficult, worth it.

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

Aligning Organizational Culture: The Importance of Why

With the overwhelming pace of technological change and the complexity and divisiveness of changes in society, people may increasingly find themselves not only overwhelmed, but less than inspired in their daily work. As changes at our colleges accelerate in the midst of intensifying external pressures, it can be natural to feel anxious about all that is not within our immediate control regardless of our job or position. An ever-changing context like this increases the need for a tether to provide some level of consistency and emotional security as we go about our work.

The extent to which people can link their j-o-b to a higher purpose can serve as that tether in all the disruption. I always come back to the parable of the person in 16th-century Europe who came upon three workers doing the same job and asked them what they were doing. The first worker said, “I’m laying brick.” The second worker said, “I’m building a wall.” The third worker said, “I’m creating a cathedral.” They were all doing the exact same work but had three very different views of how they were approaching that work, with the last one having a deeper sense of why they were doing what they were doing.

Having a sense of why jobs exist and how work gets done can serve as intrinsic motivation and inspire work/life harmony for each of us. When we’re motivated and inspired in our work it doesn’t seem like work, and the time seems to pass quickly. When motivation and inspiration are absent, it’s the exact opposite and we’re not likely to do our best work while our levels of stress, frustration, and unhappiness increase. 

We are fortunate to work in a community college where our collective efforts have the power to transform the lives of our students and better our community in countless ways. If we apply the “laying brick/cathedral” parable to work here at the College, it could be said for any of the following:

• I’m teaching my classes/I’m helping my students learn/I’m transforming lives by challenging and supporting them to learn and grow to become all they hope to be.
• I’m taking care of the grounds or buildings/I’m making the campus look good/I’m transforming lives by creating a beautiful learning environment.
• I’m doing the task in front of me/I’m helping others/I’m transforming lives by helping the College serve students a little better every day.

Author and speaker Simon Sinek offers a similar three-level framework for organizations in his book, Start with Why. He talks about the golden circle of organizations thinking about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. The most successful organizations flip this model and think first about why, then about how and what they do. For colleges, it’s easy to think of our vision statement as our why; core values as our how; and mission statement as our what. Thinking in this way adds an emotional element to the work and subsequently increases engagement, motivation, focus, and performance for the entire organization.

Connecting to a higher purpose and having a shared reason for why we do our individual work can create a collective energy and shape our overall organizational culture in positive ways. Having a common why is the fundamental building block to an aligned, healthy, and high-performing organization. It’s not easy and takes constant reinforcement, but the more we can all hone in on why we each do what we do — and the extent to which we share the same why — the better we can continue to make this a special place to work, learn, and grow as members of the MVCC community.

Ideas shared in this post are informed by my book, Competing on Culture: Driving Change in Community Colleges. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu. 

In Search of Abundance & Connection: Stress and Exhaustion in the Modern Workplace

Peter Drucker is credited with saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If colleges and universities are to pursue new strategies for success in the future, culture had better be a major priority. However, as the foundations of nearly every industry are undergoing fundamental change, the dynamics of the modern workplace are growing increasingly complex and make tending to culture and the variables that  shape it more difficult than ever. 

I recently saw a presentation by Future of Work Strategist Heather McGowan, who pointed out that society may be changing even faster than technology. Consider modern-day politics and media outlets that are increasingly filled with subtle (and not so subtle) messages and issues of race and “otherness” related to the impending minority majority — where whites will no longer comprise more than 50 percent of the United States. It’s also no longer about male/female: gay/lesbian, as now gay marriage, transgendered, and gender fluidity are more common in society. A record number of women and racial minorities were elected to Congress last fall, signaling a major change in political leadership and representation. The legalization of marijuana in several states is just one more example of societal changes that few would have predicted 10 years ago. And finally, the daily energy required for the critical thought to parse through what is real and what is “fake news” within the negative rhetoric too easily found in the media only increases the likelihood of negative cycles associated with getting through a typical day.

For those working in public community colleges across the country, we have watched competition, shifting demographics, and changes in the economy lead to negative effects on enrollment in many regions. All of this at a time when public postsecondary education is increasingly moving from a public good to a private commodity for those who can afford it. As a result, many colleges are basically operating with the same amount of operating dollars (or less) than we had seven years ago, which has prompted difficult decisions and fewer people to do the important work of our colleges. Increasingly constrained resources combined with accelerating technology and significant changes in society naturally create a higher level of intensity in the modern workplace. This constant pressure annually compounds itself with no rest. The difficult changes keep multiplying, which can wear on even the strongest of souls.

The increasing intensity from societal change and the accelerated pace of work manifests itself in greater incidents of anxiety and exhaustion. All of it leaving individuals with little reserve to invest in relationships that are the core to our well-being as humans. It’s easier to just go home and plop in front of a screen rather than coordinate social calendars. Over time, we may lose sight of our own needs and the needs of those closest to us. For those with children, divorces, ailing or aging parents and family members, disabilities and other variables, the stresses can be even greater. The fraying of social relationships has helped foster what Dr. Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General, calls an epidemic of loneliness. He talks about how people want to be seen and known authentically in ways that John Zogby predicted 10 years ago in his book, The Way We’ll Be. 

These variables show up in every modern workplace on a daily basis in ways that quietly and often invisibly influence our interactions and decision-making. In addition to employees wrestling with the variables in the modern workplace, colleges and universities have an additional challenge as these forces are influencing changes in student populations. More students are coming to campus with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues that have changed the classroom dynamic and added to the stress associated with the work of faculty and staff who work with students.

These changes in the modern workplace and general human condition provide the context to changes that need to happen at our colleges. To keep pace with changes in technology, teaching and learning, and other areas, robust professional development and personnel enrichment programs are essential to create a continuous feed of new ideas into the institution and provide opportunities for employees to learn and grow. Recognition programs are also essential to shine a light on the outstanding work of our colleagues. This is more than “this new generation today grew up where everyone gets a trophy.” It’s more about people giving their best to their employer and being seen and celebrated for going above and beyond on behalf of students and colleagues — to recharge the batteries and inspire them to keep going. Colleges of all sizes and shapes need to intentionally design “creative collisions” that allow employees time and space to interact informally. This can take the form of brown-bag lunches, mid-semester “thank you bagel gatherings,” college-sponsored coffee breaks, coordinated happy hours, and other informal convenings. Finally, college-sponsored wellness councils are more important than ever to consider ways to coordinate and nurture these social gatherings; prompt physical wellness programs; support mental health offerings; and promote financial well-being in ways that help employees shape a better future for themselves.

Social events and other wellness programs intended to promote wellness of all kinds can be useful, but if people are outright exhausted, simply more support may only add to the stress. This is why it’s important to disconnect at times. Whether it be taking vacation, a staycation, a mental health day of rest, setting more realistic expectations (under-promise and over-deliver), or not being bound by your smartphone and 24/7 email, “slowing down to speed up” is critical. People talk about work/life balance as a holy grail of sorts, but it’s more realistic to consider the concept of work/life harmony — it’s not about balance, but about congruence in all you do that feeds personal positivity. Increasingly, the value of managing your energy, not your time is gaining attention as the most productive concept to help with this “easier said than done” concept. 

As our mantra increasingly becomes “doing more AND BETTER with less,” the stress and pressures will only increase, making it harder to establish and nurture social connections and personal relationships, but making it even more important for us to see and support each other as colleagues and friends. As we spend so much of our days finding ways to love our students, we can’t forget to find ways and make a stronger effort to love each other and ourselves as well. Organizational cultures that make this a priority will go beyond surviving the uncertain future that is emerging across the higher education landscape — they will be the ones that thrive.

If you have any thoughts on this or ideas about what more can be done to foster connections and creative collisions with your colleagues here at MVCC, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Personalizing and Transcripting Learning for Workforce Development

With content and learning opportunities increasingly available in varied forms, it’s not surprising that business startups are appearing with regularity to offer platforms that create personalized transcripting options. Utilizing technology and data analytics, these firms are compiling individual resumès, employer job descriptions, college transcripts, and other means to align individual learning and help students capture their learning journey in new ways.

Today more than ever, colleges need to find their place in the ever widening landscape of credentialing. Where we once were the sole gatekeepers to the kingdom of credentials, we have become one option in an ever widening sea of options. The traditional classroom experience will always remain the primary option for some, but it is no longer the fit for all. This raises the question, “How can we add to our current practices in order to engage students in these new spaces without losing track of who we are as a learning institution?”

Peter Smith’s book Free Range Learning in the Digital Age: The Emerging Revolution in College, Career, and Education once again provided me with great information and examples to consider with these new services.

Credly

www.credly.com

Helps individuals capture and convey skills through portable credentials also connects employers and job applicants. The platform was developed for the Colorado Community College System to find a sustainable and comprehensive approach to digital badging and has taken off and expanded from there.  

Helio

www.heliocampus.com

Developed at the University of Maryland University College, Helio provides data science and visualization using data on the entire student lifecycle to personalize the student experience.

Degreed

www.degreed.com

Helps people track and measure their own learning in a very personalized fashion. Degreed developed machine-curated content that is highly personalized through customized learning pathways. They have a mobile app to transcript everything, including podcasts you listen to and make notes on what you learn. It was launched with students in mind, but employers are now looking to use it for their employees.

Innovate+Educate

www.innovate-educate.org

This is a non-profit with multiple career centers focused on a range of high-demand fields that work with local employers to clarify competencies required for workplace success in any given job. They work primarily with employers, but have already started linking students, employers, and colleges like the Cedar Valley Community College in Dallas for customized credit-bearing curriculum to meet workforce demands. 

Portfolium

www.portfolium.com

Provides students with a comprehensive, state-of-the-art platform (including social media options) to reflect on their learning and spotlight meaning with the ability to share it in a variety of ways.

COOL

www.cool.navy.mil/all_about_cool.htm

Provides translation of military training and experience with civilian credentials. Helps fill the gaps and facilitates solutions for former military personnel with resources for Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force.

MVCC is exploring ways to maintain its relevance in these changing times. From re-examining our practices in Prior Learning Assessment, to creating meaningful and rigorous pathways between our non-credit training and credit experiences, to our efforts in microcredentials, MVCC continues to broaden its horizons while staying tethered to the traditional classroom experience. 

All of these organizations and platforms are artifacts of the new reality that continuous learning is the future and people need ways to manage all the ways they learn. Beyond these options, the cryptocurrency blockchain is gaining increasing interest as the most likely end-game in this space. An article from 2016 quoted a couple of authors that compared blockchain’s application in managing financial currency and financial capital to the potential of documenting and managing reputation as currency and social capital through a consolidated learning transcript. If colleges no longer have sole proprietorship over the transcript, but are just one of many, how might our own reputation as currency, social capital, and overall relevance change? 

Please send comments and questions to presblog@mvcc.edu.

The Future of Learning is Already Here: Wildly Accessible Content

I remember the anxiety I felt in 2012 when it seemed every other day for several months I would trip across a story about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and how they were going to disrupt and fundamentally change higher education. When some of the most prestigious colleges and universities began offering their curriculum online for free, it was hard to miss the fact that things were changing. Fortunately, the headlines subsided and most higher education professionals took a cleansing breath and rationalized that MOOCs lacked a sustainable financial model and would soon go away — we didn’t have to worry about them. 

However, MOOCs amplified the fundamental structural flaws of modern postsecondary education — rising costs, questionable outcomes, lack of personalization, lack of flexibility, too much variability based on delivery by individual faculty members, and misalignment between programs and employability. Since 2012, MOOCs have indeed persisted to the point that in 2016 the three largest MOOCs in the United States earned a combined $100 million net profit and beat most every college to market with the concept of scaled employer-driven credentials. Check them out and peruse their offerings to see just how accessible and affordable they are, as well as the name brands providing the instruction — Udacity, Coursera, and edX.

Similar to MOOCs, the Khan Academy has infiltrated K-12 systems across the nation and is widely used (albeit discreetly in most cases) in higher education. With several large funders like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Khan Academy is providing supplemental learning through short, clear, and extremely useful videos on content across a range of disciplines. In 2018, more than 100 million people accessed content on Khan Academy’s website with nearly 5 million paid subscribers.

Another platform influencing modern learning is Google Classroom. In 2012, Google accounted for about 1% of all media devices used in public K-12 classrooms. With the launch of Google Classroom and Chromebooks, their market share grew to 58% by 2016. Colleges today are finding recent high school graduates arrive wondering why they must purchase large expensive textbooks when they’ve been reading short, relevant, easily accessible content online for the past four years in high school.

The explosion of online content and platforms like Khan Academy and Google Chromebooks have spawned the development of Open Educational Resources (OERs). The modern textbook is undergoing a complete transformation and is being replaced by online content — sometimes through OERs and resources like Collective Commons, and other times through licensing other online resources.

With online content so readily accessible and the power of platforms accelerating change, new models of delivery are appearing beyond MOOCs and OERs. For example, Udemy provides curriculum from independent educators offering standard undergraduate curriculum at reasonable prices. Straighterline.com offers the 50 most common undergraduate general education courses for a nominal fee. The curriculum is approved by the American Council of Education and offered through more than 130 college and university partners. In 2017, they enrolled 22,000 new students in addition to the 75,000 already enrolled and had students report successfully transferring their courses to more than 2,000 colleges and universities. While some may question their quality at this point, the arguments remind me of those I heard 25 years ago when the University of Phoenix, Walden, Nova, and others burst on the scene with online programs — and most of us spent the subsequent 10 years playing catch up once their quality improved.

The reality of wildly accessible content and people increasingly comfortable learning in varied ways is now facilitating the largest employers bypassing traditional higher education delivery systems (read colleges and universities) to simply offer their own curriculum to accelerate the development of a qualified workforce. Consider employer-driven content like AT&T and Walmart partnering with Coursera; Salesforce offering free curriculum to train associates across the country to take their product to scale; Google offering their IT Certifications; and the intense demand for computer programmers has prompted the rise of coding boot camps like the Flatiron School that is now approved for federal financial aid, Apple and their Everyone Can Code curriculum and Amazon coding camps.

MVCC is uniquely positioned to address these disruptive innovations because of the work we have done over the last several years. With the creation of a the Code Academy, the incorporation of the Google IT Training Certificate into our non-credit offerings and soon our credit offerings, and our current work in examining and redesigning prior learning assessments, we are ready to do the work necessary to stay relevant while maintaining the highest of academic standards. MVCC is the first community college in the SUNY System to adopt a Board of Trustees Policy on Microcredentials, and it is this kind of forward thinking — and our unique ability to take innovations and make them our own — that will help us thrive in these uncertain times. 

The future is already here. We must find small spaces to safely prototype and utilize some of these emerging delivery systems to eventually integrate into our regular, core offerings that in five to 10 years will need to dramatically change in ways we’re only now beginning to see.

Please send comments and questions to presblog@mvcc.edu. 

Embracing Paradox: the Future of Community Colleges

Thomas Friedman’s latest book, Thank You for Being Late: The Optimist’s Guide to the Age of Acceleration, provides a thorough examination of all the forces driving and truly accelerating change, with an emphasis on the manner by which technology is disrupting every sector of our lives … and likewise, higher education itself is in the early stages of disruption. 

As community colleges, we pride ourselves on thinking about how our communities are changing and thinking about the future of work; however, we talk about the future of work as though it’s a detached, existential concept — someone else’s work and not our own. When we think about the future of work, we must make a special effort to also consider the future of OUR work and how it is fundamentally changing.

The general notion of college as we know it is not going away anytime soon. A smaller percentage of Americans will attend a traditional college setting as they clock in their 45 hours of seat time for each credit hour of sitting— er, I mean learning. We will, however, have fewer colleges, as smaller colleges are unable to weather the storm, and close their doors or merge with others. Most colleges will rather retain many of the familiar elements but will morph into adaptive enterprises with creative networks and unique partnerships to meet future student needs. Students are already learning differently. Many teenagers today are fearless. Why wouldn’t they be when they can search for YouTube videos on how to do, build, create, fix, and learn most anything? As I’ve heard my friend and Amarillo College President Russell Lowery-Hart say, “Let’s face it, things need to evolve — faculty have students fact-checking them on smartphones in real time during class!” Even many returning adults are learning in new ways, as they too can search YouTube videos to learn new things and are often more motivated to access content through podcasts and other means.  

To summarize Peter Smith’s focus in his recent book, Free-Range Learning in the Digital Age: The Emerging Revolution in College, Career, and Education, the new reality is that colleges and universities used to be an oasis of knowledge surrounded by a desert only a few could cross. With technology today, the desert has gone green. It’s not that disruption is coming for higher education, it’s already here in the form of wildly accessible content, private companies with transcripting platforms to document all that learning, and accelerating technology that will fundamentally change how people learn.

Although disruption to this point feels more like an uncomfortable itch than a broken limb, many colleges are already in the midst of managing a profound array of unprecedented paradox. With organizational cultures rooted in and shaped by more than 300 years of academic traditions, behaviors, and beliefs, community colleges must find ways to:

• productively honor the past while creating the future;  
• adapt to change by following the principle of preserve the core and stimulate progress that Jim Collins set forth in his book Good to Great;  
• balance access through enrollment (which drives 75 percent of MVCC’s operating budget through tuition and state aid) and student success and graduation (which requires processes that counter access at times); and
• respond to increasingly strained fiscal resources while adapting to change by managing simultaneous personnel layoffs and hiring for new positions in college budgets necessary to keep the institution evolving and vibrant.

And all of these paradoxical elements can be summarized in the new reality for community colleges — the need to do more AND better with less. MVCC is undergoing changes at a rapid pace, and the need for further and more innovative change is only going to accelerate our efforts with Guided Pathways. From new intake systems to redesigning developmental education, MVCC is anticipating the need, and every day is learning to do more and better with less. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, the wave of change is coming, and those colleges that recognize it sooner rather than later (#anticipate) will make it to shore safely. They may have a redesigned or reimagined surfboard or will have manufactured an even more efficient, relevant, and successful mechanism to ride the wave, but they will make it to shore nonetheless. Those colleges that fail to turn into the wave just enough to accelerate out of the tube will be overwhelmed and vanish — it’s just a matter of time.  

Please send comments and questions to presblog@mvcc.edu. 

Guided Pathways: Prelude to Disruption

CNN photo

I recently saw a video on Twitter showing a surfer setting the world record for riding the largest wave (82 feet tall) and I retweeted the first thing that came to my mind: "I don't know why, but I can't help but think that this is a metaphor for public higher education leaders in the next 5-10 years...#anticipate."

Upon further reflection, I think the metaphor came to mind because higher education is quietly being disrupted. The ripples are small right now, but the tide is definitely going out, and those who fail to see it will be overcome by a tsunami of change in the coming years. Fortunately, MVCC is one of more than 250 of America’s 1,100 community colleges engaged in Guided Pathways reform in some way. MVCC is one of the 13 community colleges in the American Association of Community Colleges Guided Pathways 2.0 cohort and is fortunate to simultaneously participate in the New York State Success Center Guided Pathways cohort funded by Jobs For the Future (JFF). With funding from our Oneida County sponsor, we are able to send teams of faculty and staff to institutes to receive technical assistance and coaching that expose us to national best practices and a framework for fundamentally reimagining the student experience. We are also fortunate to have financial support from our County to be members of the Achieving the Dream (ATD) National Reform Network since 2014. The culture shift that we’ve experienced through this network served as a critical pre-cursor to our Guided Pathways work.

My early experience at the Guided Pathways institutes gave me the impression that this reform was about two things — organizing academic program curricula into clear career pathways for students; and rethinking student onboarding and support systems. Simple and clear, I thought. The deeper our teams got into Guided Pathways, it became abundantly clear that there was more to this reform, and it was anything but simple. To truly apply the Guided Pathways framework and reimagine the student experience, we are in the process of:

1.    Remapping our entire curriculum across all programs.

2.    Rethinking our student onboarding process from admissions to the first day of class.

3.    Overhauling our student advising system to consider more intentional and personalized models at scale.

4.    Frontloading career services to support students in making better choices at the beginning of their academic experience — as a two-year college, our students don’t have time to drift around and “find themselves.”

5.    Transforming our approaches to developmental education by embracing national research and evidence-based practices that have demonstrated more effective models to address student learning needs.

6.    Disaggregating our data to understand the impact of our systems on low-income and minority students to put equity front and center in our collective work.

7.    Infusing data into our regular decision-making processes.

8.    Providing inescapable wrap-around supports to address students’ non-cognitive needs associated with everyday living, like housing and food insecurities, transportation, and other priorities that can compromise student success.

9.    Evaluating all of our technologies that have grown in number and complexity in an effort to leverage everything we have toward increasing student success.

10.  Finding new ways of working together as we do all of this simultaneously, when in the past any one of these efforts alone would have taken two years or more.

Guided Pathways is not a fad or a project, but rather a comprehensive, evidence-based framework that requires a long-term, ongoing institutional commitment that will continue to evolve as we fundamentally re-examine our approaches to student success. As dramatic and disruptive as the pending changes from this work will be, I believe it is only a precursor to even more disruptive changes that lie ahead for postsecondary education — changes that will likely unbundle, accelerate, and once again re-imagine learning and student success at our colleges. Organizational success in the future will require us to challenge our assumptions, question much of what we believe to be true, and accelerate our own learning to embrace changes and models of learning that were impossible to even conceive of let alone consider in the past.

During my time at MVCC, I have seen the College community face various challenges, and in each instance the College has shown a unique ability to synthesize the best of these ideas and national research, and at its own pace, make these ideas our own. We embrace the need for change, and we find a way to make it fit our unique culture. This tempered and considered approach to incorporating best practices has proven to be a hallmark of MVCC’s resilience. We are guided by our values, and we make change our own. 

For my first five years at MVCC, I wrote a blog post most every week during the fall and spring semester. It was a way for me to make sense of the College and the community that were so new to me, as well as share my thoughts on what I was learning. For the past seven years, I have written far fewer blog posts, as we’ve gotten into the thick of a great deal of organizational change — and I rechanneled my writing energies into a book titled Competing on Culture: Driving Change in Community Colleges. I am immensely fortunate to have a supportive and visionary Board of Trustees and amazingly talented staff who provide me with the opportunity and mental bandwidth to deeply consider what’s happening in the world around us and clarify a path forward through some great unknowns. 

I think I have the beginnings of that path and am once again compelled to post weekly. For the next several weeks, I intend to describe how this wave of disruption is coming together, why organizational culture is the way through and out of the wave for community colleges, and how the culture at MVCC provides insight on the building blocks to create a culture of connection and anticipation that I’m betting will see us through to shore, poised to ride even bigger waves in the future.

Please send comments and questions to presblog@mvcc.edu.