Hope vs. Optimism

In these challenging times, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the differences between hope and optimism. In the face of adversity or trouble, many of us have an inherent need to look toward the future with a sense of optimism or hope. It’s also important not to overlook the underlying issues that created the adversity in the first place. Somehow, we need to find a middle way that acknowledges the adversity and shines a light on a path forward through whatever darkness we may be facing at the time.

Reviewing multiple online dictionaries and AI models, I found some common themes on the two concepts of hope and optimism. Optimism can be seen as a general attitude or outlook that things will be better — without providing much in the way of specifics. Hope, on the other hand, is more of a feeling or belief grounded in aspects of a specific goal or outcome.

While I consider myself a generally optimistic person, I can more precisely say I have warranted hope — based on multiple facts — that the difficult budget process we just endured at the college is a pivot point for us. I believe we are now on a course of programming for the future and no longer rightsizing from the past, and here’s why I feel hope is warranted:

Our recent organizational climate survey showed that 86% of respondents are proud to work at MVCC and 86% also look forward to coming to work every day — every day. When we contrast that with the Gallup research that shows record levels of employee disengagement at work, it’s evident that there’s something uniquely good that resides in MVCC’s culture. The proposed budget for next year leaves the college in its best fiscal shape (absent the years with COVID stimulus dollars) since 2018 and maintains capacity with the major changes in recent years to enhance and support the core student experience here.

Additionally, enrollment is up 7% this semester over spring of last year. What makes this increase different is that we have a sense of why: Enrollment used to be something that happened to us, but the hard work and increased collaboration throughout the college to manage enrollment more intentionally has created a new-found sense of agency for us compared to the past. From annual scheduling to scaling guided pathways reforms to new programs like Fast Track, we’re seeing intentional efforts drive enrollment increases that fuel our fiscal engine.

I don't want to leave the impression that, in my sense of warranted hope, I am overlooking the hard work and added burdens each of us will face as we pull together to design a brighter and more sustainable future. My hope is squarely centered on my admiration and belief in the people at MVCC. It is the people — each and every one of us — working together, finding solid footing on sometimes shaky ground, and the profound sense of resilience I have seen in our employees over the years and continue to see daily, that will ultimately see us through.

At the end of the day, we all want to feel a sense of safety for ourselves and our colleagues. That is understandable, but in this ever-uncertain environment, we are managing a multi-variate problem — we have most of them solved but will be forever managing the others as they arise. MVCC has been studying and preparing for disruption for a decade, and it is squarely upon us. Fortunately, we have built organizational muscle and the capacity to anticipate and respond to change and disruption in productive ways. In addition to the reasons offered above, what gives me hope is that we have spent the last year not just minimizing the impact of very difficult financial circumstances or a pervasive sense of abundance in always finding a way forward, but we’ve become ever-more resilient and have evolved our collective thinking, strategy, and operations to be more intentional about shaping our future together.

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

Collaboration and Creativity are Necessary for Adapting to Rapid Change

Last fall I read The Great Upheaval: Higher education’s past, present, and uncertain future. It was an incredible read that synthesized many patterns, signals, and trends that have been surfacing in higher education in recent years. It’s just the latest in a series of books and articles with titles like Higher education at the crossroads of disruption and College disrupted: The great unbundling of higher education. These titles don’t even include the growing body of literature with titles like Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education or The Looming Higher Ed Cliff that feed newspaper articles like SUNY enrollment shrinks again and opinion pieces like For SUNY system, bigger isn’t always better.

Indeed, it doesn’t take much effort to sense that, in the lyrics of Buffalo Springfield, “…there’s something happening here…” but what it is, is actually clear — colleges and universities across the country, and particularly in the Northeast, will undergo significant disruption to the point that those institutions that remain 10 years from now, including MVCC, will look very different than they do today.

Did you notice that I failed to mention the advancement of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) platforms like Google’s Bard? Similar to musicians and comedians who honed their craft in small clubs before hitting the bigtime, AI technology has been toiling in various laboratories for the past decade and has now burst into the public eye as instant disruptions and are developing at lightning speed. Additionally, the most interesting series of articles and research studies explores the decline in the interest high school graduates have in pursuing a traditional four-year college path and questioning the value of a four-year degree. The Demographic Drought our country is experiencing has created a labor shortage in nearly every industry that has helped increase wages and is making shorter educational pathways into good-paying jobs more attractive.

New York has the highest concentration of private four-year colleges and universities in addition to the largest single public system of higher education in SUNY, which has 64 institutions — 34 four-year colleges and 30 community colleges — serving students outside the CUNY system in New York City with its 25 colleges and universities. All this higher education infrastructure is in a state that has lost enough residents through out-migration in the last decade to exceed the current population of North and South Dakota combined. Couple that population decline with declining birthrates, and it spells C-H-A-N-G-E. Graduation season next month will be the last for our neighbors at Cazenovia College, and it’s hard to absorb the reality that its closure is simply a signal of a much larger pattern that we’ll all have to digest as it continues over the next decade.

Fortunately, MVCC has been monitoring these trends and disruptions for years now and has honed its financial operations to become the most efficient college in the SUNY system (measured by budget/credit enrollment=cost per/FTE); reimagined its outreach strategy to now serve the third poorest student population (as measured by Federal Pell Grant eligibility); and transformed the student experience to have the third-highest three-year graduation rate with 76% of all students graduating, transferring, or dropping to part-time status and are still enrolled within six years of originally enrolling.

So, what can any of us do in light of these unprecedented circumstances? Do individual actions even matter when the problems exist within macro-level systems? Yes, individual actions and attitudes will be the cornerstone of our sustained success. Each of us needs to be willing to adopt new ideas, and to do so founded in the cultural values that we have come to embrace. We need to collaborate — not just within our departments and divisions, but across all lines. We need to work to be partners with K-12 and industry in ways we have not previously seen. This can be frightening. Processes change, work changes, our roles adjust, but in the end, it will be our collective efforts at adaptability that will strengthen the organizational position. We must reach across internal lines and collaborate cross-divisionally. We must seek to understand and find a way to “yes.” That is how we will survive as an institution, and how we will continue to serve our students and our community in the future.

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

Living in the Upside Down: Reflecting on a Year of COVID

We all have those moments when we remember exactly where we were when something significant happened.

I added Wednesday, March 11, 2020, to my personal list when I was sitting in the back row at the County Board of Legislators and County Executive Picente pointed to me and said, “The Governor just closed you.”

I remember wondering what that even meant. I know we close for snowstorms or power outages, but a virus? I called the office and the College’s Crisis Response Team (CRT) was already assembling. The next week was filled with all-day CRT meetings trying to make sense of it all, each day culminating with an email update for our students, faculty, and staff. It was mentally draining to slog through so much unknown territory only to count the day’s primary accomplishment as a single email to the College community.

By Monday, March 23, the entire College was operating remotely with a few exceptions of essential staff. The CRT met all day every day for several weeks then had daily check-ins through mid-July in an effort to develop the details for creating a COVID-friendly operation filled with density reduction, 80% remote instruction, residence life protocols, centralized health-screening check-in stations, bracelets, door monitoring, testing, and other details that did not exist prior to the disruption.

Everything was new. Setting up home offices, spending all day in front of Zoom squares, and having the normal rhythm of daily life turned upside down was unsettling to say the least. 

One of my most vivid memories of the early COVID lockdown was driving to the Newark, N.J., airport with my wife to pick up our oldest daughter as she caught the last flight out of Togo, West Africa, when her Peace Corps experience came to a sudden end. We drove on a dark and desolate five-lane highway at 10 p.m. with the NYC skyline on the horizon and not a single car in sight — a post-apocalyptic feel that I’ll never forget. Watching the nightly news and reading headlines trying to understand what was going on was mentally exhausting. Playing trivia games with friends via Zoom on the weekends helped ease the discomfort, but simply wasn’t the same.

The College’s Workplace by Facebook platform helped maintain some connection with the “Social Distancing Together” thread filled with random artifacts of working remotely — new coworkers and “officemates” of cute kids and funny animals and precious “throwback” pictures that we likely wouldn’t have seen otherwise. “Virtual happy hours” and different departmental strategies to stay connected despite the remoteness helped keep folks together. A virtual graduation ceremony was an emotional moment for me to consider the impact of what our students were going through and just how powerful our work is here at the College.

Summer was like living in parentheses — it was normal in a sense because of outdoor activities, but it wasn’t because there were no gatherings of any kind. At home, the relaxed pace provided an opportunity to inventory the upsides, like having both of our girls home with us and spending bonus time together, having our health, and having our jobs as we watched the devastating impact of the pandemic around the country. 

As August came and the College began a new academic year, all the anniversaries of our normally robust fall semester were hard to emotionally navigate. The absence of gathering at Fall Opening, new student orientation, sunny fall afternoons with vibrant campuses, soccer games and meaningful student activities made it that much harder to push through as the pandemic continued. The holiday-spike in positive cases and deaths were a sad development that quickly gave way to a return of 1% positivity rates and the optimism of the vaccines arriving.

I now find myself in a “COVID-normal” state of mind that provides a manageable routine without getting too anxious about things. I continue to be amazed at the dedication and commitment of faculty and staff that has been demonstrated over the past year. It’s as though the respect and trust I hoped we had developed in the culture here was amplified in ways that exceeded my expectations. That seems to be how we’ve made it through together — believing in each other and holding ourselves accountable to do what needed to be done.

And now it’s hard not to look to the future. What will it look like? If 2020 was the year of the upside down — full of shock and awe — 2021 is likely more a year of transition to something different, rather than a return to pre-COVID life. While we’ll likely have a “masked normal” for an extended period of time, I believe things will change dramatically when the social-distancing guidelines are fully lifted. Until that happens, we’ll continue managing within the parameters we have with an eye toward carrying out our mission in the best way possible — striving to do our best work while being patient with each other and ourselves … and the world as we know it.

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

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.

Week 1 of COVID-19 Remoteness Down …

Humans are generally social creatures. Even many who consider themselves introverts are hard pressed to say the social-isolating parameters under which we’re all living are not a challenge. This historic reality is and shall continue to test each of us in ways we’re only just starting to understand.

I spent my first full week of working remotely straining for some kind of routine to touch a sense of normalcy in this remarkably abnormal environment. I meet with my office team every morning for a Zoom meeting just to stay connected and pretend that we’re still doing our morning catch-up in the office before phones start ringing and meetings commence. It’s certainly not the same, but I cherish these virtual check-ins since they are as close as we can make it for now.

Things are definitely different, but Zoom meetings with colleagues still getting work done in spite of the circumstances motivate me. I’m inspired by stories of faculty and staff reaching out to students to encourage and support them through this major disruption, which for many was just one more thing they didn’t need to contend with in their already complex lives. Also inspiring are the innovative actions departments like the Business Office, Information Technology, Residence Life, and others have taken to adapt and stretch themselves and their processes in this new environment. 

When I need a boost of positive energy, I visit our internal MVCC Workplace social platform to see the great pictures and posts from employees sharing their experiences and staying connected despite being apart. I’m not going to lie, the email volume is a bit intense and the unprecedented screen time can feel like a burden somedays. The workday isn’t as tight as it used to be, and when work and home are all happening in the same place, the time can just bleed and feel like you’re always on despite never feeling completely on — if that makes any sense.

One thing that I believe needs to be reinforced is what I’ve come to learn about change — it moves too fast for some, too slow for others, and rarely right for anyone. This change came much too fast for everyone — the transition to working remotely all happened in about a week. We’ve quickly gone from talking about work/life balance vs. work/life integration to everything completely converging on us. When speaking about change I always encourage people to be patient with themselves and also with others. Never has that notion been more important.

I join many of you in wrestling with the feeling of wondering if I’m being productive “enough” without really knowing if that can be defined in this environment. I can block out time for a Zoom meeting here and there, but then something pops on the family front, or a distraction (like the snack cupboard or refrigerator!) presents itself to pull me away from being as productive as I think I should be. I think of those parents with young children at home and I can barely imagine what that must be like. I’ve been watching Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show: At Home Edition, and he asked Lin-Manuel Miranda if he was writing any new Broadway musicals like Hamilton, and he replied, “Writing? Working? I’m learning how to teach my kid math!” So even the most successful professionals are dealing with prioritizing each day, which brings a special blend of unprecedented freedom and opportunity with brutal isolation and monotony.

Here at the start of week number two, I’m going to try and “model the way” myself and encourage everyone to let go of any guilt — whether subtle or prominent — for feeling less productive than we think we should be. By recognizing the magnitude of this time in history that we’re living through as our present, we should all embrace each other in knowing that everyone is doing their best under the circumstances. Some days are going to be busier than a good day on campus and others will feel like we’re adrift in an open sea.

Our individual and collective resilience for ourselves, our students, and our family and friends will be something that truly will make us stronger when we get on the other side of this. We’ll be able to look back on last week when everything felt so foreign and clunky and face future challenges with a newfound strength and confidence that we wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t gone through this crisis together.

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