Coming to Back to Life

I put socks on twice this week … er, I mean I worked two days in my office this week. Monday, July 20, was our first day back as part of a three-phase return for the Fall semester. I have to say it felt good and was a refreshing change for me in contrast to my “Zoom cocoon” of the past four months.

The Utica Campus was spotless. Our Facilities crew has been working on campus all this time and we all should be grateful for their commitment and hard work — the place is beautiful. The buildings and grounds stood out more than usual because there were so few of us on campus. It was a different feeling for sure. However, this was the plan all along: to keep our population density low to minimize risk and begin testing our approach to safety while the numbers are small.

After arriving on campus, I went to the checkpoint at Payne Hall and got my bracelet for the day. My first day it took less than five minutes to check in with a few people in line, and three days later it took less than one minute. The people staffing the doors to check for bracelets as people entered the building provided me an extra level of assurance that the people on campus have minimal risk of COVID-19, having answered the mandatory questions and not having a high temperature.

We have a couple of police academies in operation, in addition to several classes in the Science and Technology Building finishing classes that were suspended in the Spring. Walking around campus with my mask on felt as normal as going to the grocery store and was a small change to reap the benefit of running into colleagues and having unscheduled, informal conversations.

Walking around campus gave me a chance to reflect on just what a massive disruption this pandemic has created. We can “get things done” and check off our daily task lists while working remotely. But as I’ve learned over the years, “how” we get things done is often just as important as “what” gets done. Zoom and email certainly provide the technological means for our work, but the human element — even when six feet apart with a mask — is a powerful thing, particularly when it comes to the student experience.

Our challenge is to hold on to enough of that human element and provide what we can to the extent possible with safety measures in place. I often say that change never happens at the right pace — it’s too fast for some and too slow for others; too much for some and too little for others. Our phased return is intended to provide a slow and measured change to allow the College to implement safety protocols in ways that allow for evaluation and adjustment and provide all of us with a steady and supportive experience in emerging — if only a little bit — from our Zoom cocoons…and revisiting parts of our closets we haven’t seen in months.

If you have any questions or comments, 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.  

Ceremonies as a Tether Amid Change

Next week, we will welcome students to MVCC at our New Student Convocation. Although I imagine this may have been done in the early days of the College, a ceremony like this has not been held at MVCC in recent memory. It’s an important ceremony to anchor the college experience for new students and frame their time at MVCC to get them off to a great start. New Student Convocation also provides a perfect pairing with graduation — the most visible and significant ceremony of a college experience. 

As another start to an academic year begins for us, I am reminded of the importance that ceremonies, events, and celebrations have for our organizational culture. We live in an age of change, and MVCC, by our very nature as a community college, is constantly engaged, staying ever nimble and responsive to the changes in our community.

This summer, we’ve experienced a number of major changes — a $30 million redevelopment of the Rome Campus; a renovated bookstore and food service area at the Utica Campus; a transformation of the Utica Campus Learning Center into the new Learning Commons; a full replacement of the platform and support columns on Payne Hall; and a redesign of the Academic Affairs administrative structure that also resulted in nearly 70 full-time employees changing offices.

We’ve also recently added new academic programs like small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) Associate in Applied Science degree and Mechatronics Certificate to respond to the region’s emerging UAS and nanotechnology industries, and we’ve relocated our thINCubator and Carpentry/Masonry programs to adjacent spaces on Broad Street in Utica’s Bagg’s Square. In addition, we’ve received major programmatic grants like Title III: Pathway to Graduation Project, College-Community-Connection (C3) program, and the Advanced Institute for Manufacturing that serves manufacturers in the six counties of the Mohawk Valley region — that’s a lot of change!

With so much change in motion, ceremonies, events, and celebrations tether us and provide a certain level of consistency and community that unites us and serves as a reminder of the importance of our mission and connects us to our vision of transforming lives through learning. This week we’ll all gather for our annual Fall Opening and August Institute, which signal the start to the new academic year. Student Welcome Week, Completion Day, Phi Theta Kappa honor society induction ceremony, and other student-focused events help create a rhythm to the fall semester that closes with graduation and our bi-annual Celebration of Success. Our annual Data Summit and January Institute for faculty and staff kick off the spring semester, which winds down with an annual scholarship ceremony, athletics banquet, student honors brunch, and other events that culminate in our large graduation ceremony, Summer Institute and recognition luncheon, and year-end Celebration of Success that all then give way to the altered rhythm of summer in Upstate New York.

The daily experience of working in a community college can be inspiring. Helping students and our community clearly presents a feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself; however, ceremonies, celebrations, and events add something special to the culture of an organization. The addition of New Student Convocation will add a distinctive element for the College and serve as yet another reminder of why change is important in the first place — to enhance the student experience and increase their chances for success.

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