Community Colleges - Our Time is Now

A recent series of articles in USA Today that focused on community colleges captured the essence of what I've seen emerging over the past few years. Global forces are underway and changing the nature of how we live and work. These changes amplify the importance of our mission and position community colleges to make a significant difference in meeting the needs of our communities, states and country.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-07-22-comcol-main_N.htm

The article in the link above was the first in the series and was very well done – highlighting the nimble nature of community colleges in providing transitional/college-prep courses, career education and transfer education and how our efforts to reach out to under served populations are critical to supplying a competitive and trained workforce. Our ability to provide English as Second Language for the refugee and immigrant populations here and G.E.D. equivalent experiences for others helps us to move people through employment services versus social services. MVCC began as a technical institute and our career programs are as strong as they've ever been with our connections with local businesses growing stronger by the day. Over the past two decades the transfer programs at MVCC have increased significantly and with the economics of college tuition, we continue to see students even more readily choose to get their start at MVCC before transferring to a four-year institution. The small class sizes and supportive environment provide opportunities for thousands who seek a place to learn and develop skills while they clarify and advance their career paths.

I once worked with a talented administrator who would often counter the statement, "we can't be all things to all people" with a semantic twist - "we can be different things to different people." As an open access institution, our work in offering credit and non-credit programs has never been more important or significant when placed in the context of the challenges faced by our local community. Our country probably has a few more years of negative references made to community colleges made out of ignorance and attempts at cheap humor. However, as millions continue to flock to community colleges nationwide and more information is shared through national media, I am very confident that the miracles that happen every day on community college campuses will become more and more evident throughout our country. What do you think? Let me know at presblog@mvcc.edu.

In the Moment

One of the many great things about living in the Mohawk Valley is the geographic convenience to so many attractions. As our daughters' first year of school in our new home came to an end, we brainstormed multiple weekend getaways to celebrate. Since our youngest recently hit the 48 inch height milestone, we chose Canada's Wonderland in Toronto to get our summer off to a great start. The amusement park has the third highest number of thrill-ride roller coasters in North America and since Jennifer and I grew up a few hours away from Cedar Point (roller coaster heaven), we thought we would rekindle some wonderful childhood memories.

We arrived at the park early, excited, prepared and focused. After quickly making our way to the root of our inspiration - the Behemoth roller coaster, we had to separate as our youngest daughter didn't make the 54 inch height requirement. While they went off to ride the wooden Minebuster (or more aptly named "mind" buster) coaster, our oldest daughter and I stood in the long line (even though the park had just opened) to await our fate on Canada's tallest and fastest roller coaster.

I showed our daughter the video simulation of the Behemoth that's available on the Internet but that really pales in comparison to the full experience. The first hill is 230 feet high and drops at a 75 degree angle and reaches speed of almost 80 miles per hour (125 kilometers per hour sounds faster). By the time we reached the second hill, pretty much all of my childhood reverie was long gone - it was now about survival. Three minutes later when the ride ended, I tried to put myself back together in contrast to my daughter who was a bundle of energy and couldn't wait to do it again. We regrouped as a family and were able to ride nearly all of the rides together for the rest of the day - with each one draining slightly more life out of the adults and adding more life to the children.

After riding the Flying Dragon with its double loops three times and the wild beast with its classic jolts that can only come with a wooden coaster, I had to find a survival mechanism to get me through the day. I knew that I wasn't leaving the park without a return trip to the Behemoth. After all, I was the one who was playing up the roller coaster experience these past few weeks and here I was walking slowly with increasingly less animation and motivation to speak to anyone in an attempt to suppress my correspondingly increasing nausea. I overcame all of this by committing to being in the moment - being there for our daughters. After all, this was about them and not about me. When we returned to the Behemoth for the final ride of the day, I was able to focus on our daughter's face, listen closely to her words, listen to her screams instead of mine and enjoy the ride.

I share all of this as a reminder of how important it is to being there for someone else. Our professional lives can feel like a roller coaster, particularly during times of significant change and reorganization. Imagine where the college would be if we all focused only on our own fears and forgot entirely about the people we serve. While many thoughts flashed before my eyes at various points in the day, the most important theme for me was the importance of being in the moment to help enhance an experience - as in this case, making sure someone else had a great experience actually enhanced my experience as well. I believe the same is true in creating an effective workplace or providing great service. Whether it's a co-worker, a student - past, present, or future - or someone else, the extent to which we can all be in the moment and focused on the person in front of us is the extent to which we will create a positive and memorable MVCC experience for everyone.

A College Never Sleeps

It's always nice to have those constants in life to give us a sense of balance. As a college administrator, one thing I have come to expect with the start of summer is the periodic conversation where someone who works in a non-academic environment says, "so, you have the summer off, right?" The reality for all colleges today is that the learning business is a year-round enterprise. So for me, the summer is divided into two parts - finishing up things from the previous academic year and then getting ready for the start of the fall semester.

When I was preparing to come to New York a year ago, I asked a friend who worked at a community college in the northeast what the summers were like. My friend said the summers are the way they should be - it's cooler than most other places, so unbearable heat is unlikely; there is much to do, from day trips or longer vacations to just enjoying being outside so much; and that people cherish summer in an area where the winters can be a touch long. I've found this all to be true; however, while the pace of work might be a little different the tasks remain equally significant.

Facilities staff are focused on readying the campuses for the coming year after the comprehensive use of the buildings and grounds during the past year. Major projects are being completed, from the dramatic landscaping upgrades at the Utica Campus to reviewing classroom and soft space furniture around campus. Lest you think that our college isn’t as popular in the summer, rest assured that we are anything but asleep. We recently had hundreds of people at the Utica Campus for a wonderful Relay for Life event and hundreds more for a Cybersecurity conference. Soon, our youngest clientele will keep the campuses hopping with College for Kids programs and sports camps. People are often surprised when I respond to the "summer's off" question with the fact that we have 1,200 students enrolled in credit classes this summer in addition to all the other activity. Students are filing and processing for financial aid and registering for the fall semester; and quietly in the background, the administrative departments are executing that two-fold action plan of wrapping up last year and unwrapping the year to come.

Henry James once wrote, "Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." Sometimes we are so captivated by the beauty and energy of summer, we forget that a college never sleeps. And while the college isn’t sleeping, neither are our many constituents. Our students, no matter where they come from, aren’t sleeping during the summer. They are engaged in their own balancing act of work, family, rising gas prices, and a sluggish economy. They are weighing their options for their future, wondering whether starting or continuing their education is the right move right now. For them and only for them we cannot afford to sleep – so that they may afford their dreams.

If you have any reflections on summer at MVCC, let me know at rvanwagoner@mvcc.edu.

Faculty and Staff Development in a Complex and Dynamic Future

I have explored our changing world in previous blog postings. With these fundamental shifts in our society and economy, professional development for our faculty and staff seems to be of unprecedented importance. This changing world was part of the impetus for creating a special system design team charter for the existing College Senate staff development committee to conduct research and make recommendations to improve staff development opportunities at MVCC - http://www.mvcc.edu/fcltystaff/involvement/development.cfm. After examining our existing staff development offerings and researching best practices in community colleges around the country, their recommendations were as follows:

1. 12 contact hours of staff development be required annually of all full-time employees (including the President) during the course of their normal workday and academic schedule. We think that, in time, that amount may increase.
2. A minimum of 6 hours of staff development will be related to job and professional responsibilities, and the remainder may be used for professional or personal growth opportunities as desired.
3. These hours will encompass self-study, presentations, and improvement, and there should be a minimum of 3 hours per academic semester completed on-campus.
4. Attendance at workshops would count for 1 hour per hour of workshop and scale credit would be given for attending conferences and giving presentations.
5. The Staff Development Committee will work with CCED and other groups and committees within the College to coordinate and organize workshops.
6. Hours will be tracked through Banner (non-credit).
7. Faculty and Staff may participate in more training, if desired.
8. Approval of requests for funding for travel to conferences and professional workshops remain with the Staff Development Committee
9. The Committee have additional representation from departments such as security, facilities, and secretarial staff, for a maximum of 15 members. The Committee will serve as an advisory board to the Staff Development director(s).
10. The Staff Development Program itself should be run by a professional, and have an office and support staff.
11. The College should join the National Council of Staff, Program and Organizational Development Membership. This organization (NCSPOD) is an affiliate council of the American Association of Community Colleges, providing training, programs and publications about staff development for community colleges.

All of these recommendations were reviewed jointly by the College Senate and Executive Team with support to implement them as possible. As I consider these recommendations, I think we'll need to focus on getting the fundamental pieces in place, as our current academic calendar is not structured to accommodate dedicated days for faculty and staff development outside of the existing Summer Institute. While no specific mention of the Teaching and Learning Collaborative (TLC) was provided in the recommendations, there are no plans to continue the TLC, but rather identifying ways to provide resources that will allow for a more comprehensive and integrated approach to professional development for all faculty and staff.

Priorities for the coming year as the result of these recommendations will be to:

1. identify personnel resources in some fashion to work closely with the Senate staff development committee to coordinate efforts in this area and implement as many of the design team recommendations as possible.
2. create a system for identifying professional development needs for faculty and staff; inventorying and providing resources to provide the offerings; and creating tracking systems for registration and transcripting.
3. consider identifying dedicated days in the development of the academic calendar for 2009-10.
4. enhance the new employee orientation that was established this year.
5. create a new faculty institute for the fall 2008 cohort of new full-time faculty.
6. create a core staff development workshop (similar to the accreditation/values workshops this past March) focused on the important connection all employees share in helping to support student success.

I thought the Committee did an outstanding job in carrying out their charter. I'm excited about the possibilities of the priorities I've listed here to make a significant difference in helping to create a vibrant culture at MVCC. The 2008-2013 strategic plan includes the evaluation and implementation of these recommendations and I'm confident that these efforts will go a long way in providing great opportunities for faculty and staff at MVCC. I'd be interested in what you think about what I've shared here - contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Celebrating Student Success

'Tis the season as they say - the season to celebrate student success that is. As we come to the end of the spring semester and the academic year, I find myself readily inspired by the accomplishments and celebration of student success at MVCC. For the past two weeks, I have been addressing the recommendations of the system design teams in my blog posts. I plan on continuing to do so, but I'm compelled to insert a post here to reflect on some recent and upcoming events celebrating student success.

Last week we inducted more than 50 students into the Lambda Beta Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the international student honor society of community colleges. The family, friends, and staff in attendance filled ACC 116 and helped make for a great event that celebrated our top academic students.

The Student Clubs and Organizations Awards Reception celebrated the student leaders of the more than 40 student clubs and organizations at MVCC. With opportunities for students to participate at both the Utica and Rome Campuses, these student leaders bring a special element to making MVCC an exciting and dynamic college experience for all students. It was great to see the faculty and staff advisors recognized for their guidance and mentoring of these student leaders as well.

One of my favorite things about MVCC is the way in which some of the academic departments provide personalized ceremonies of student success. Last fall we had the "completion ceremonies" for the first class of Airframe and Powerplant students and a similar ceremony for the CNC machinists who completed the innovative program in partnership with Bartell, Inc. in Rome. Here in the spring, the Social Sciences department put together a wonderful ceremony for students who received awards and scholarships (one scholarship completely funded by the faculty in the department) - you could feel the sense of pride and belonging among the many students in attendance. As we approach the College's graduation ceremony on Friday, May 16th, we'll also have similar celebrations like the Athletic Awards Banquet and the inspiring scholarship reception that links many of our generous scholarship donors with the well-deserving student recipients. In addition, we'll have our Psi Beta student honor society induction ceremony for psychology students and our nursing program ceremony for this year's nursing class, as well as many other smaller celebrations around the College.

I once heard a community college president say that one of her favorite responsibilities was getting to be a part of so many student celebrations - I have to agree. I like to say that our success as a college is only limited by the success of our students. To see all that our students are accomplishing is a wonderful affirmation of the incredible talent and determination found in MVCC students and the fantastic support that our faculty and staff provide to do what we can to help students reach their potential during their time here. If you have any other ideas of how we can celebrate student success in unique and meaningful ways, contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Supporting Student Success

Similar to the Student Intake Design Team, the Student Support Design Team took their charter very seriously - to "research and explore ideas to make thoughtful and daring recommendations to significantly improve the student support system." The group went above and beyond in their efforts to research best practices at other institutions. The notion of "student support" can encompass a broad range of services and attributes of the College in providing the overall student experience. The Team did a great job of further defining their task and clarifying their focus to provide a set of important and meaningful recommendations that included:

• Implement institution wide changes to Developmental Education.
• Establish an Office for the First Year Experience.
• In the Master Plan, include the construction of a multi use “Learning Commons”, centralizing all student supports.
• Develop a strategy to create a culture of service learning and volunteerism.
• Expand the services and staff of Institutional Assessment, Grants and Institutional Research, and Information Technology to collect information allowing data driven decision making.
• The college should implement systems to promote student and academic department interactions aimed at building community. Each academic department should implement specific ongoing activities to foster and encourage student and faculty engagement that will promote a sense of shared academic experience, commitment to academic excellence, and belonging.

Some of these recommendations are already being incorporated into the updated strategic plan (coordination of developmental education) or the review of the organizational structure (capacity in the assessment, grants, and IT functions). As the College pursues the update of the Campus Master Plan, conversations surrounding facility needs related to academic and student support will be central to that effort. Other recommendations like establishing an Office of the First-Year Experience, service learning, and academic department connections will require some deliberation to find the right window for implementation.

Improving our student support system requires a strategic look and includes few "quick fixes". While some things can be addressed in the short-term, the emphasis with these and other design team recommendations will be to make the initial changes that will create capacity for even greater changes in the future. Thank you to all of the members of the Student Support Design Team for their efforts in completing their charter and providing the College with useful and insightful recommendations. A complete list of the Team's recommendations can be found at http://www.mvcc.edu/fcltystaff/involvement/support.cfm. Please review them and share any reactions or reflections with me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Getting Students Off to a Great Start

Over the past few months more than sixty faculty and staff served on six different design teams to closely examine major administrative systems in need of review that were identified in the College Strategic Plan. Each team was provided a charter that set forth the purpose of researching best practices at other community colleges, examining our existing internal processes, comparing and contrasting the two and then making "thoughtful and daring recommendations". This is the first of six posts that will review the recommendations from each design team.

The recommendations for all groups have been posted on a website where people can review the charters, membership and recommendations for each group as well as a future placeholder where updates will be provided. The information regarding the Student Intake System Design Team can be found here - http://www.mvcc.edu/fcltystaff/involvement/intake.cfm (Click on the recommendations tab and scroll all the way to the bottom to see a summary of their recommendations.)

The task of improving our system for getting students into MVCC from the point of admission to registration can be a daunting and complex effort. However, looking at the recommendations as a whole allows one to take in the recommendations and see that much is possible - but that it will also likely take some time. One of the College's the Intake Design Team visited said they had been on a four-year journey of transforming the way they served students in these functions of admissions, placement testing, advising, financial aid, registration, and payment.

The Process Review Committee and the Executive Committee will be meeting next week to review these recommendations along with the recommendations from the Student Support Design Team. I fully recognize that the exciting recommendations from all six of these Design Teams have created a great deal of optimism for many at the College while simultaneously creating a certain level of anxiety - a natural byproduct of change.

This approach was the best way I could think of to take a comprehensive approach toward creating positive change at the College - to review our major systems all at once and create a context in which change can occur. As the budget revenue projections become more clear in the weeks ahead, the feasibility of many of these recommendations will also become more clear. What's exciting to me is that the recommendations don't offer a series of simple fixes but rather provide a roadmap for potentially transformative change. I appreciate the time and commitment of each member of the Student Intake Design Team for a job well done.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on the recommendations - share them with me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Staying Informed - What's Next?

The Accreditation self-study process is complete. The System Design Teams have submitted their recommendations. The Strategic Plan is almost finished. The budget is slowly coming together – very slowly with the delay of the state budget in Albany. We have a lot of ideas, a number of possibilities and a fair amount of energy and anticipation for positive changes yet to come.

With all of the expectations associated with the positive momentum one thing is clear – it’s not all going to get done in the month of June. The recommendations from the Design Teams and the initiatives outlined in the Strategic Plan set forth an important and compelling direction for us – direction that will take a lot of energy and time to fully pursue. It will be important that the College Senate be fully engaged to make assignments to various committees and work groups that will carry out whatever the next steps will be to keep things moving in a positive direction.

As different groups take up this important work, communication will be paramount. An idea that has been nurtured and further developed by the President’s Think Tank is a web resource that centralizes information with updates about various initiatives underway at the College. Thanks to Paul Graziadei, the College webmaster, for putting this together and for all of the team leaders and committee chairs for providing all of the information. Hopefully, the updates that will be provided on this site in the future will keep communication flowing and give everyone easy access to the latest information as the exciting developments come together on these various initiatives.

For now, the site is called the Employee Involvement System and it will likely evolve over time. The idea is that employees need to get involved to make all of these great ideas come to life. So this Employee Involvement System web resource is a way for everyone to keep track of what’s happening with everything. Take a look at the following link http://www.mvcc.edu/fcltystaff/involvement/index.cfm and let me know what you think at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Accreditation - an on-going process

Just as we expect our students to meet certain requirements to graduate, MVCC must meet certain requirements to remain accredited. We are accredited by the Middle States Association (http://www.msche.org/) - a status that allows our students to receive federal financial aid, transfer credits to other colleges, take their degrees to employers to get jobs, and benefit from federal grants that we would not otherwise be able to access. The process of accreditation is a tremendous opportunity for institutional self-reflection and growth.

This week is the culmination of two years of study, with more than 100 faculty and staff participating on various committees studying every aspect of the College's operation. Through the recent workshops, all full-time employees should be familiar with our self-study process but it's worth highlighting a bit here on my blog.

With an evaluation team of eight members from other community colleges on campus for three days this week, we are in the next to final phase of our self-study. We've gone through preparing for the self-study, organizing for the self-study, conducting the self-study, discussing the results, submitting our self-study, and then preparing for the visit taking place this week. Having been heavily involved in self-study accreditation processes at two other community colleges, I feel very fortunate to have joined MVCC at the tail-end of this extensive process. I also have great appreciation for the tremendous efforts on the part of so many who have done such a fantastic job in every phase of the self-study.

However, the final chapters of the best self-study efforts always remain unwritten until well after the evaluation team has come and gone. The final chapter is what do we do with the results of the self-study and the recommendations of the team. Keeping these recommendations in front of us to guide our priorities and future work not only makes the past two years of self study worthwhile, but sets us up for success five years from now when we have our periodic review and eight years from now when we launch a new cycle for self-study. It's a great feeling to think this cycle is done, but it's important to remember the cycle of continuous improvement never ends. For more information on our self-study process, visit the following link - http://www.mvcc.edu/selfstudy/.

If you have any comments about our self study, please let me know at presblog@mvcc.edu.

The Value of Coming Together

During the first two weeks in March more than twenty workshops were held to assist the College in preparing for the upcoming accreditation site visit. The opportunity was seized to use the workshops as a conversation about the values we all share and the mission and vision statements that should lead us through the door every day at Mohawk Valley Community College.

However, while values, mission, and accreditation were the identified content areas, a key objective was to capitalize on the value of faculty and staff coming together in mixed groups to interact in new and different ways. Overall, the workshop evaluations were positive. The most consistent feedback I've received from those that participated in the workshop was, "it was good - not as bad as I thought it was going to be." Some of the evaluation forms further stated, "a little too touchy-feely for me." For a pilot project experience, I'll take it. The workshops were a great example of small change - just getting people to interact in a new environment and have some new conversations prompted a similar reaction to most changes designed to create positive results - we as humans find ourselves not looking forward to it on the front end and generally thankful for the experience in retrospect. Besides, from everything I've gathered in talking to faculty and staff over the past few months, we could use a few "touchy-feely" experiences anyway.

The evaluations will be used if future similar workshops are developed. The input from the workshops on the creation of a values statement and the revision of the mission and vision statements is being forwarded to the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC). In combination with some additional research and review of statements from other community colleges, SPC members will go about the task of creating a values statement and updating the vision and mission statements. With MVCC poised to move from a successful community college to a significant community asset, the results from these workshops and the ultimate work of the SPC will provide a solid base and clear direction for us to enthusiastically approach an ever-increasingly complex and changing future.

If you have any thoughts on this or other matters, you can reach me at presblog@mvcc.edu.