Monday, March 19, 2012
Ask the Administrator: If I Become a Dean, Will My Faculty Colleagues Shun Me?
A new correspondent writes:
On an institutional level, though, there is a need for smart and capable people who understand the larger context of what they’re doing. If people who understand the classroom don’t go into administration, people who don’t, will.
In my case, self-awareness played a role. I was a pretty good classroom instructor, but not a great one. But I felt like I’d be much more above the average in administration, since I felt like I had a better since of the big picture than many of the people already there. Over a decade later, that still feels right. It’s easy enough to find other professors as good as me, if not better, but I still feel like I do better at admin than most. In a way, it was the doctrine of comparative advantage, applied to occupational choice. Were I a rock star in the classroom, I probably would have stayed there. I was fine, but so are lots of other people. I’d rather be a real asset in an admin role than a fine-but-nothing-special instructor. That may say as much about me as it does about administration, but that’s what happened.
The first part of your question reflects something real, though it isn’t as bad as all that. Yes, if you move into a deanship (or something similar), your rapport with many faculty will change. Some of that is a function of stereotyping, some of different tasks, and some of different work calendars. When I made the shift at the college where I started as faculty, I noticed quickly that some relationships changed drastically, and others very little.
On the plus side, though, you’ll find quickly that you’ll have a certain camaraderie with other administrators, and for many of the same reasons. They’re up against the same things you’re up against, and often at the same times. They’re around when you’re around, and they get the same cold shoulder from some faculty that you do. Unlike many external critics, they understand that one ‘good’ often conflicts with another, and that choices are inevitably made among flawed options in imperfect conditions with limited information. You do the best you can, and you live with it.
The key is to remember where you came from, and why you’re there at all.
Different people have different ways of doing that. Getting out of the office on a regular basis is helpful. If you’re in a setting in which administrators are allowed to teach -- I’m not, frustratingly enough -- then teaching the occasional class can keep you grounded. To the extent you can, try to send the message -- and live by the message -- that you don’t shoot messengers; without that, you may fall prey to people telling you what they think you want to hear until something explodes. Better to find out while you can still do something about it.
Even just reading the academic blogosphere can help. If I ever forget how admins look to faculty, it’s easy enough to find reminders.
Finally, the farther up the food chain you go, the more isolated you can become. Having strong outside-of-work support networks is huge. I’ve seen people who let their work become their life; over time, they invest far too much emotional energy in trivia, just because it has to go somewhere. Having people close to you who don’t give two hoots what you do at work can keep you sane.
Good luck! If you’re honest with yourself, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision for you.
Wise and worldly readers, what say you? Is there an ethical obligation for capable people to step up? And is living in a bubble inevitable?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I do (or don't) want to move farther into academic administration. I've been chair of my department, as well as chair of my division of my institution, but I haven't (yet) taken on a full-time administrative position.I’ll take the second point first. No, there’s no individual personal obligation to move into administration. Some professors are absolutely wonderful in the classroom, but just don’t have the temperament for management. (I assume that they have the intelligence.) And that’s fine. Part of the satisfaction of administration is knowing that you’re creating the space in which creative and independent-minded people can do their best work. If you can enjoy, vicariously, knowing that you’re protecting the brilliant teacher, then administration might be for you. If you need to be the one in the classroom yourself, probably best to avoid the dean’s office.
I often see articles these days about how isolating and challenging academic leadership can be. And I can see how being a provost / dean of faculty would significantly limit one's ability to have casual conversations with faculty colleagues, which would feel like a loss. On the other hand, I could imagine that being in such a position would allow one to cross paths with a wider cross-section of interesting faculty colleagues, and to learn about and support their work. What have you found the balance of these costs and benefits to be in your position?
On a related note, in a recent post you mentioned (in a slightly different context) "the need for well-prepared people to step up to handle the increasingly difficult challenges" of academic leadership. I realize that you were paraphrasing someone else's message, but to what extent do you think there is an obligation for faculty members who might be effective administrators to at least consider taking on that role?
On an institutional level, though, there is a need for smart and capable people who understand the larger context of what they’re doing. If people who understand the classroom don’t go into administration, people who don’t, will.
In my case, self-awareness played a role. I was a pretty good classroom instructor, but not a great one. But I felt like I’d be much more above the average in administration, since I felt like I had a better since of the big picture than many of the people already there. Over a decade later, that still feels right. It’s easy enough to find other professors as good as me, if not better, but I still feel like I do better at admin than most. In a way, it was the doctrine of comparative advantage, applied to occupational choice. Were I a rock star in the classroom, I probably would have stayed there. I was fine, but so are lots of other people. I’d rather be a real asset in an admin role than a fine-but-nothing-special instructor. That may say as much about me as it does about administration, but that’s what happened.
The first part of your question reflects something real, though it isn’t as bad as all that. Yes, if you move into a deanship (or something similar), your rapport with many faculty will change. Some of that is a function of stereotyping, some of different tasks, and some of different work calendars. When I made the shift at the college where I started as faculty, I noticed quickly that some relationships changed drastically, and others very little.
On the plus side, though, you’ll find quickly that you’ll have a certain camaraderie with other administrators, and for many of the same reasons. They’re up against the same things you’re up against, and often at the same times. They’re around when you’re around, and they get the same cold shoulder from some faculty that you do. Unlike many external critics, they understand that one ‘good’ often conflicts with another, and that choices are inevitably made among flawed options in imperfect conditions with limited information. You do the best you can, and you live with it.
The key is to remember where you came from, and why you’re there at all.
Different people have different ways of doing that. Getting out of the office on a regular basis is helpful. If you’re in a setting in which administrators are allowed to teach -- I’m not, frustratingly enough -- then teaching the occasional class can keep you grounded. To the extent you can, try to send the message -- and live by the message -- that you don’t shoot messengers; without that, you may fall prey to people telling you what they think you want to hear until something explodes. Better to find out while you can still do something about it.
Even just reading the academic blogosphere can help. If I ever forget how admins look to faculty, it’s easy enough to find reminders.
Finally, the farther up the food chain you go, the more isolated you can become. Having strong outside-of-work support networks is huge. I’ve seen people who let their work become their life; over time, they invest far too much emotional energy in trivia, just because it has to go somewhere. Having people close to you who don’t give two hoots what you do at work can keep you sane.
Good luck! If you’re honest with yourself, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision for you.
Wise and worldly readers, what say you? Is there an ethical obligation for capable people to step up? And is living in a bubble inevitable?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Ask the Administrator: Chairing a Nest of Vipers
An occasional correspondent writes
Sometimes less is more.
In my experience, long-standing feuds are seldom about what they’re about. Whatever the initial cause may have been, they’ve long since snowballed and become things of their own. Even if you were somehow able to get at the initial cause, it wouldn’t be enough. And the simple act of prying would reopen old wounds and just make matters worse.
Modesty of ambition is your friend.
Rather than trying to resolve the disputes -- a fool’s errand -- I think you’ll have more luck with a strategy of making them irrelevant.
In some contexts, a department chair can set a tone for the way a department runs. I’d recommend setting a tone of “just the facts” and focusing simply on the work that needs to get done. Whatever happened in 1985 to set two professors against each other is really none of your concern at this point; your job is to ensure that the current and future work of the department gets done.
I’ve had some luck -- limited, but nonzero -- in stressing the difference between coworkers and friends. Nobody has to hang out socially with anyone against their will, and nobody has to be on anybody’s Christmas card list, but the book order needs to be done when it needs to be done.
If you want to get more ambitious, you could always try setting up some sort of common project. Having Professor Cobra and Professor Mongoose craft, say, an outcomes assessment protocol for the intro course might have the salutary side effect of uniting them against a common enemy. If you’re willing to be the common enemy, you might be able to move them forward. But be prepared to be ignored, or to get the “hollow yes” of upfront agreement followed by endless foot-dragging.
Depending on the size of the department and the percentage of it dealing with feuds, you may be able simply to marginalize the cranky ones. To the extent that there are goodies to be shared, share them with the people engaged in positive, forward-looking activities. (I say that fully recognizing that goodies are often in short supply.) If the past is poisoned, which it apparently is, all the more reason to focus on the future.
Depending on your relationship with your dean, you might want to sit down with her and strategize a bit. What forward-looking project could you focus on to harness the positive energy within the department? Are any resources in the offing? To the extent that you can distract the rest of the department from any long-simmering conflicts, all the better. Richard Rorty wrote that progress occurs in philosophy not so much when great questions get answered as when someone changes the subject. Change the subject.
Good luck!
Wise and worldly readers, do you have any advice? Anything that has actually worked would obviously be welcome.
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
I'm the most junior tenured member of my department, in which some ofthe more senior tenured faculty are not on speaking terms with eachother. For complicated reasons, I'm also going to be the chair of thisdepartment next year. Any tips on how to handle this situation?
Sometimes less is more.
In my experience, long-standing feuds are seldom about what they’re about. Whatever the initial cause may have been, they’ve long since snowballed and become things of their own. Even if you were somehow able to get at the initial cause, it wouldn’t be enough. And the simple act of prying would reopen old wounds and just make matters worse.
Modesty of ambition is your friend.
Rather than trying to resolve the disputes -- a fool’s errand -- I think you’ll have more luck with a strategy of making them irrelevant.
In some contexts, a department chair can set a tone for the way a department runs. I’d recommend setting a tone of “just the facts” and focusing simply on the work that needs to get done. Whatever happened in 1985 to set two professors against each other is really none of your concern at this point; your job is to ensure that the current and future work of the department gets done.
I’ve had some luck -- limited, but nonzero -- in stressing the difference between coworkers and friends. Nobody has to hang out socially with anyone against their will, and nobody has to be on anybody’s Christmas card list, but the book order needs to be done when it needs to be done.
If you want to get more ambitious, you could always try setting up some sort of common project. Having Professor Cobra and Professor Mongoose craft, say, an outcomes assessment protocol for the intro course might have the salutary side effect of uniting them against a common enemy. If you’re willing to be the common enemy, you might be able to move them forward. But be prepared to be ignored, or to get the “hollow yes” of upfront agreement followed by endless foot-dragging.
Depending on the size of the department and the percentage of it dealing with feuds, you may be able simply to marginalize the cranky ones. To the extent that there are goodies to be shared, share them with the people engaged in positive, forward-looking activities. (I say that fully recognizing that goodies are often in short supply.) If the past is poisoned, which it apparently is, all the more reason to focus on the future.
Depending on your relationship with your dean, you might want to sit down with her and strategize a bit. What forward-looking project could you focus on to harness the positive energy within the department? Are any resources in the offing? To the extent that you can distract the rest of the department from any long-simmering conflicts, all the better. Richard Rorty wrote that progress occurs in philosophy not so much when great questions get answered as when someone changes the subject. Change the subject.
Good luck!
Wise and worldly readers, do you have any advice? Anything that has actually worked would obviously be welcome.
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
A Small Victory
As an administrator, some victories are so subtle that you’d miss them from the outside. This week we had one of those, and I just want to write it down before I forget it.
A student complained in a vitriolic email that she was first given contradictory information, and then treated condescendingly, when she tried to enroll in an online program. Her email listed all of the people to whom she spoke, her interpretations of what they had said to her, and some not-very-nice things about the college in general. Naturally, she cc’ed everybody she could.
Here’s where the victory happened.
The first person to whom the student spoke tracked down the second one and compared notes. Then, she tracked down the third and did the same. All three got together, and quickly realized that they had interpreted the student’s question differently. The first one thought the student was asking about a particular class -- call it basketweaving 101. The second thought the student was asking about an entire degree program -- every course in the basketweaving major. We offer the former online but not the latter, so the answers the student received were different. By the time she got to the third person, the student was flustered and confused enough that he couldn’t make sense of her question one way or the other.
Once the source of the error was clear, the first and second folks who talked to her reached out to her, explained and apologized for the mistake, and offered to help her in any way they could. Between each other, they decided that if a student came in quoting one to the other in a way that didn’t seem to make sense, they’d call each other to verify before addressing the claim.
Victory!
That may sound boring and pedantic from the outside, but it made my day. Here’s why.
In a less functional culture, one or more of the following would have happened.
- The second employee would have blamed the first employee for spreading misinformation. Attributed motives would have included incompetence, sabotage, and/or indifference.
- The first employee would have blamed the second in all the same ways.
- The third would have complained about both of the first two, and possibly tried a quick fix to make the complaining student go away. The quick fix would set a precedent that would come back to bite everyone later.
- At least one of the employees would have claimed amnesia. Alternately, at least one of them would have attributed the later questioning to discriminatory motives.
- At least one of the employees would have complained to the other one’s boss.
- Alternately, the student would have been entirely forgotten in the flurry of charges and countercharges.
Instead, the employees assumed mutual goodwill and competence, patiently tracked down the misunderstanding, worked together to help the student, observed all the relevant rules and policies, patched a hole in our systems, and got back to the student in a constructive and professional way.
It wasn’t glamorous. It won’t be celebrated in song and feasting. But it was professional, civil, respectful, and practical. It would not have happened if the culture still punished mistakes and rewarded blame-shifting. It was an unforced sign of positive culture change really taking root.
It was a small win, but it was a big one, too. I’ll take it.
A student complained in a vitriolic email that she was first given contradictory information, and then treated condescendingly, when she tried to enroll in an online program. Her email listed all of the people to whom she spoke, her interpretations of what they had said to her, and some not-very-nice things about the college in general. Naturally, she cc’ed everybody she could.
Here’s where the victory happened.
The first person to whom the student spoke tracked down the second one and compared notes. Then, she tracked down the third and did the same. All three got together, and quickly realized that they had interpreted the student’s question differently. The first one thought the student was asking about a particular class -- call it basketweaving 101. The second thought the student was asking about an entire degree program -- every course in the basketweaving major. We offer the former online but not the latter, so the answers the student received were different. By the time she got to the third person, the student was flustered and confused enough that he couldn’t make sense of her question one way or the other.
Once the source of the error was clear, the first and second folks who talked to her reached out to her, explained and apologized for the mistake, and offered to help her in any way they could. Between each other, they decided that if a student came in quoting one to the other in a way that didn’t seem to make sense, they’d call each other to verify before addressing the claim.
Victory!
That may sound boring and pedantic from the outside, but it made my day. Here’s why.
In a less functional culture, one or more of the following would have happened.
- The second employee would have blamed the first employee for spreading misinformation. Attributed motives would have included incompetence, sabotage, and/or indifference.
- The first employee would have blamed the second in all the same ways.
- The third would have complained about both of the first two, and possibly tried a quick fix to make the complaining student go away. The quick fix would set a precedent that would come back to bite everyone later.
- At least one of the employees would have claimed amnesia. Alternately, at least one of them would have attributed the later questioning to discriminatory motives.
- At least one of the employees would have complained to the other one’s boss.
- Alternately, the student would have been entirely forgotten in the flurry of charges and countercharges.
Instead, the employees assumed mutual goodwill and competence, patiently tracked down the misunderstanding, worked together to help the student, observed all the relevant rules and policies, patched a hole in our systems, and got back to the student in a constructive and professional way.
It wasn’t glamorous. It won’t be celebrated in song and feasting. But it was professional, civil, respectful, and practical. It would not have happened if the culture still punished mistakes and rewarded blame-shifting. It was an unforced sign of positive culture change really taking root.
It was a small win, but it was a big one, too. I’ll take it.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Express Lanes Redux
Santa Monica College in California is proposing setting up new, premium sections of popular courses at higher cost for students who are shut out of subsidized sections. The cost difference is dramatic: rather than the $36 per credit they’d pay in subsidized classes, students would have to pay about $200 per credit. The idea is to allow the college to run the extra sections on a break-even basis.
This has been tried before. The IHE piece doesn’t mention it, but a couple of years ago Bristol Community College in Massachusetts tried something similar with its Nursing program. Student demand far exceeded available seats in the program, so the college briefly contracted with a for-profit provider, the Princeton Review, to offer extra sections at a tuition premium. The Princeton Review would set up the extra sections, the curriculum would be the same, and students who were shut out of the low-cost sections would have the option of either waiting their turn for the cheap seats or paying extra for immediate availability. It’s the academic equivalent of a next-day shipping option.
In both cases, it’s easy to raise objections from equity, fairness, incentives, and in the earlier case, motivation. It’s also not entirely clear whether California law will allow Santa Monica to pull it off. But in both cases the objections miss the underlying dilemma.
Public colleges, especially at the two-year level, offer services at far below cost. That’s by design; the idea is to encourage people to go to college. Some of the gap is filled by proceeds from for-profit community and corporate education programs, and a little from bookstore revenues, but most of it comes from state and/or local subsidies. The theory behind the subsidies is that the entire population benefits from having an educated workforce and citizenry, so it’s fair to have the entire population kick in some money. Even if nobody in my family attends the local community college, we all benefit from having police, nurses, and various local employees -- that is, taxpayers -- who did.
But when the subsidies don’t track enrollments -- which they absolutely have not for many years now -- growth is a problem for a college. In the Massachusetts case, student fees didn’t come close to paying for the cost of more Nursing seats. In the California case, incredibly enough, the low tuition that students pay goes entirely to the state; the college keeps none of it. In that system, new enrollments are pure cost.
For-profit colleges are the polar opposite. For them, new enrollments more than pay for themselves. For them, growth isn’t a problem; it’s a goal.
As long as the incentives line up this way, I expect to see variations on the “express shipping” option continue to arise. They already exist at the macro level; students from wealthy families can buy their way into undistinguished private colleges, whether for-profit or nonprofit, where they can take whatever they want. Public colleges are supposed to be the alternative to that, but the funding constraints on them are making that harder to sustain.
Of course, as public colleges start to behave more like their tuition-driven private competitors, they start to lose their reason to exist. That’s fine if you’re Grover Norquist, but for normal Americans, that’s catastrophic. The masses will never be able to afford the express option in large numbers. As bad as the student loan numbers are now, just imagine how much worse they’d be if every community college followed Santa Monica’s example and quintupled tuition.
Bristol and Santa Monica are open to all sorts of critique, but I’m glad that they’re at least showing us the logical consequences of continuing down the path we’ve been on for the last few decades. Let’s put “quintupled tuition” on the ballot and see what happens.
This has been tried before. The IHE piece doesn’t mention it, but a couple of years ago Bristol Community College in Massachusetts tried something similar with its Nursing program. Student demand far exceeded available seats in the program, so the college briefly contracted with a for-profit provider, the Princeton Review, to offer extra sections at a tuition premium. The Princeton Review would set up the extra sections, the curriculum would be the same, and students who were shut out of the low-cost sections would have the option of either waiting their turn for the cheap seats or paying extra for immediate availability. It’s the academic equivalent of a next-day shipping option.
In both cases, it’s easy to raise objections from equity, fairness, incentives, and in the earlier case, motivation. It’s also not entirely clear whether California law will allow Santa Monica to pull it off. But in both cases the objections miss the underlying dilemma.
Public colleges, especially at the two-year level, offer services at far below cost. That’s by design; the idea is to encourage people to go to college. Some of the gap is filled by proceeds from for-profit community and corporate education programs, and a little from bookstore revenues, but most of it comes from state and/or local subsidies. The theory behind the subsidies is that the entire population benefits from having an educated workforce and citizenry, so it’s fair to have the entire population kick in some money. Even if nobody in my family attends the local community college, we all benefit from having police, nurses, and various local employees -- that is, taxpayers -- who did.
But when the subsidies don’t track enrollments -- which they absolutely have not for many years now -- growth is a problem for a college. In the Massachusetts case, student fees didn’t come close to paying for the cost of more Nursing seats. In the California case, incredibly enough, the low tuition that students pay goes entirely to the state; the college keeps none of it. In that system, new enrollments are pure cost.
For-profit colleges are the polar opposite. For them, new enrollments more than pay for themselves. For them, growth isn’t a problem; it’s a goal.
As long as the incentives line up this way, I expect to see variations on the “express shipping” option continue to arise. They already exist at the macro level; students from wealthy families can buy their way into undistinguished private colleges, whether for-profit or nonprofit, where they can take whatever they want. Public colleges are supposed to be the alternative to that, but the funding constraints on them are making that harder to sustain.
Of course, as public colleges start to behave more like their tuition-driven private competitors, they start to lose their reason to exist. That’s fine if you’re Grover Norquist, but for normal Americans, that’s catastrophic. The masses will never be able to afford the express option in large numbers. As bad as the student loan numbers are now, just imagine how much worse they’d be if every community college followed Santa Monica’s example and quintupled tuition.
Bristol and Santa Monica are open to all sorts of critique, but I’m glad that they’re at least showing us the logical consequences of continuing down the path we’ve been on for the last few decades. Let’s put “quintupled tuition” on the ballot and see what happens.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Ask the Administrator: The Return of Happy Harry...
A returning correspondent writes:
A little over twenty years ago I saw a movie called Pump Up the Volume, with Christian Slater. Slater played an alienated high school student -- that was kind of his wheelhouse at the time -- who made life tolerable by operating his own underground radio station. The conceit of the movie was that he developed a growing cult following by bravely telling the truth about life in high school. He called himself Happy Harry Hardon, as a play on the name of his school, Hubert Horatio Humphrey High. His motto -- “the truth is a virus” -- suggested that you could bring down a corrupt system, gradually, simply by telling the truth. The truth is tenacious, contagious, and hard to un-hear once you’ve heard it.
I loved the movie. It featured a hero with an alliterative pseudonym who used alternative media, told the truth as he saw it, and got the girl. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.
I’m thinking something similar could work here, albeit without the romance angle.
If you’re willing to trust that your interpretation of their CAO’s initiative is correct, then you could adopt the strategy of introducing a virus into the system. Break your argument down into suggestive nuggets -- anecdotes are always good -- and just share those nuggets with the people you know there. Don’t hit them over the head with full-blown arguments, since they’ll probably tune out. An email here, a conversation there -- put the dots in circulation, and trust that over time, people will start to connect them. If you choose the right dots and the right people, they probably will.
The risk of this approach, obviously, is that it takes some time to work. But once it starts to work, it will take on a life of its own. (I read somewhere that viruses are “sort of” alive, so that’s only sort of a mixed metaphor.) A well-chosen aphorism can slip into the system almost undetected, and gradually but inexorably wreak great change. In this context, that could involve invocations of ominous parallels (“remember what happened at Southeast State?”), predictions of inevitable shortfalls (“grants expire, you know...”), or even just questions (“and after the grants expire, then what?”).
There’s no guarantee of success, of course, but I like this strategy’s chances better than a full frontal assault. Let the truth sneak up on them.
Good luck...
Wise and worldly readers, what do you think? Is there a better way? Or should he just look away and hope for the best?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
I am trying to figure out whether and how to give advice tocolleagues at another public institution in my state, in my field,where it's fairly clear the chief academic officer has set up insaneinternal incentives (insane here meaning not inherently unethical butfundamentally unsustainable, "White Queen thoughts-before-breakfastmonetary assumptions" insane). From conversations it's clear at leastthat both faculty and the unit's administrator feel they have to danceto the academic officer's tune. And I don't know how long thispie-in-skie chump is going to sit in that office.
Because my last conversation included the unit administrator, I'malso not sure if the faculty was parroting the party line or are trulyunaware of the risky setup. I like them, I worry about theconsequences of what's happening, and I am not sure what my ethicalobligations are from being part of the same field with the sameessential mission in the state. We don't often meet, so this may havebeen a rare opportunity to provide an outside perspective. But can I?I have perspective, but I don't have local knowledge to fine-tune itor to make a persuasive case using facts they know intimately. On theother hand, I feel like it's unethical for me to sit on my handsseeing colleagues trapped in an academic version of the Dancers ofColbeck. Do I go on active-listening alert mode with my mouth shut fornow about my assessment, do I talk vaguely about the environment forpublic institutions and hope they get the sense their institution'sapproach is non-viable, do I anonymously send job postings I think myfriends and colleagues would be good candidates for?
A little over twenty years ago I saw a movie called Pump Up the Volume, with Christian Slater. Slater played an alienated high school student -- that was kind of his wheelhouse at the time -- who made life tolerable by operating his own underground radio station. The conceit of the movie was that he developed a growing cult following by bravely telling the truth about life in high school. He called himself Happy Harry Hardon, as a play on the name of his school, Hubert Horatio Humphrey High. His motto -- “the truth is a virus” -- suggested that you could bring down a corrupt system, gradually, simply by telling the truth. The truth is tenacious, contagious, and hard to un-hear once you’ve heard it.
I loved the movie. It featured a hero with an alliterative pseudonym who used alternative media, told the truth as he saw it, and got the girl. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.
I’m thinking something similar could work here, albeit without the romance angle.
If you’re willing to trust that your interpretation of their CAO’s initiative is correct, then you could adopt the strategy of introducing a virus into the system. Break your argument down into suggestive nuggets -- anecdotes are always good -- and just share those nuggets with the people you know there. Don’t hit them over the head with full-blown arguments, since they’ll probably tune out. An email here, a conversation there -- put the dots in circulation, and trust that over time, people will start to connect them. If you choose the right dots and the right people, they probably will.
The risk of this approach, obviously, is that it takes some time to work. But once it starts to work, it will take on a life of its own. (I read somewhere that viruses are “sort of” alive, so that’s only sort of a mixed metaphor.) A well-chosen aphorism can slip into the system almost undetected, and gradually but inexorably wreak great change. In this context, that could involve invocations of ominous parallels (“remember what happened at Southeast State?”), predictions of inevitable shortfalls (“grants expire, you know...”), or even just questions (“and after the grants expire, then what?”).
There’s no guarantee of success, of course, but I like this strategy’s chances better than a full frontal assault. Let the truth sneak up on them.
Good luck...
Wise and worldly readers, what do you think? Is there a better way? Or should he just look away and hope for the best?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Rewarding Teaching
What would it look like if, say, the Federal government were to decide to prioritize good college-level teaching at the same level that it supports university research?
This piece in IHE addressed the question, but it struck me as falling badly short of reality.
Briefly, the piece suggests that Congress establish a National Pedagogy Foundation as a sort of counterpart to the NEH or the NSF. By pooling a pile of money into a project to award grant funds to deserving projects that promise to advance quality teaching, it suggests, we’d be much more likely to see tenure committees take teaching as seriously as they take research. Until then, “internal mission creep” on the ground -- in which each stratum of higher education imitates those higher -- will defeat the best intentions.
The author works at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Encouraging good teaching in the context of a research university is important, and the remedy offered here may have some limited traction in that context. But outside that context, it misses the point.
Quick quiz: Among community colleges with tenure systems, which counts more: teaching or research?
Teaching. That has always been true. And that makes sense, given the mission of the institution. Grants are lovely, of course, but they aren’t required for tenure, and they wouldn’t make much difference on the ground. (If the good folks at Harvard would like to investigate what it means to value good teaching, I suggest a field trip to nearby Bunker Hill Community College.)
Followup quiz: which of the following has more students taking classes: research universities or community colleges?
Community colleges, by a substantial margin. So if you want to make a measurable difference in the quality of teaching for a broad population, you’d start here. Harvard can wait.
So let’s say, then, that we wanted the Federal government to help improve the caliber of teaching at community colleges, and even at four-year public state colleges. What would a National Pedagogy Foundation have to do?
My first thought is to define the mission. Is the goal to improve actually-existing teaching quickly, or to be transformative over time? If it’s the former, the only serious answer -- the ONLY serious answer -- is a massive, sustained infusion of operating funds into college budgets. Not conditional funding, or “seed” funding, or funding with strings: straight-up operational funding. And it would have to come with “matching” requirements, to keep the states and localities from cheaping out and just using the new money as an excuse to cut their own contributions.
I really can’t emphasize this enough. Grants require project managers, and come with expiration dates. Money with expiration dates doesn’t mesh with well with tenure; typically, any faculty hired would be on the cusp of tenure just when the money goes away. So too much of the money is lost to administrative costs, and that which remains can’t be used for faculty. But with committed, sustained operating funding, the existing administrative infrastructure will do, and we could actually hire faculty.
If it’s meant to be transformative, then it needs to be both competitive, substantial, and sustained. (The competition could be based on how plausibly innovative the proposals are, and how scalable they are. No more boutique programs.) It needs to be long-term enough that the institution can risk failure of the first version without necessarily losing the funding. Anything truly transformative will be high-risk; in this fiscal climate, colleges will be risk-averse because they have to be.
In either case, though, the key is that the grants aren’t directed to individual faculty. They’re directed to institutions, and are under institutional control. That’s the only way to reach enough faculty and students to actually matter. Giving Prof. Smith a year off from teaching to expound on what a wonderful teacher he is -- the usual M.O. -- just isn’t a serious answer. Directing grants to individual faculty recreates the star system. There may be an argument for a star system in research, but there simply isn’t in teaching. If you want to improve teaching for enough people to move the needle, you’ll need to move up the average. That means improving the stars, the average, and even the struggling. That means scale, and that means institutions.
I’m sure the Harvard Graduate School of Education means well, but honestly, if you’re serious about undergraduate education, you have to look where the undergraduates are. If anyone from the Feds would like to drop me a line, I’m reachable at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com. But don’t hold some sort of national teacher of the year contest, and don’t look to a few supergeniuses as salvation. Any serious answer has to work at large scale. That means working with, through, and on behalf of institutions. You just have to pick the right institutions.
This piece in IHE addressed the question, but it struck me as falling badly short of reality.
Briefly, the piece suggests that Congress establish a National Pedagogy Foundation as a sort of counterpart to the NEH or the NSF. By pooling a pile of money into a project to award grant funds to deserving projects that promise to advance quality teaching, it suggests, we’d be much more likely to see tenure committees take teaching as seriously as they take research. Until then, “internal mission creep” on the ground -- in which each stratum of higher education imitates those higher -- will defeat the best intentions.
The author works at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Encouraging good teaching in the context of a research university is important, and the remedy offered here may have some limited traction in that context. But outside that context, it misses the point.
Quick quiz: Among community colleges with tenure systems, which counts more: teaching or research?
Teaching. That has always been true. And that makes sense, given the mission of the institution. Grants are lovely, of course, but they aren’t required for tenure, and they wouldn’t make much difference on the ground. (If the good folks at Harvard would like to investigate what it means to value good teaching, I suggest a field trip to nearby Bunker Hill Community College.)
Followup quiz: which of the following has more students taking classes: research universities or community colleges?
Community colleges, by a substantial margin. So if you want to make a measurable difference in the quality of teaching for a broad population, you’d start here. Harvard can wait.
So let’s say, then, that we wanted the Federal government to help improve the caliber of teaching at community colleges, and even at four-year public state colleges. What would a National Pedagogy Foundation have to do?
My first thought is to define the mission. Is the goal to improve actually-existing teaching quickly, or to be transformative over time? If it’s the former, the only serious answer -- the ONLY serious answer -- is a massive, sustained infusion of operating funds into college budgets. Not conditional funding, or “seed” funding, or funding with strings: straight-up operational funding. And it would have to come with “matching” requirements, to keep the states and localities from cheaping out and just using the new money as an excuse to cut their own contributions.
I really can’t emphasize this enough. Grants require project managers, and come with expiration dates. Money with expiration dates doesn’t mesh with well with tenure; typically, any faculty hired would be on the cusp of tenure just when the money goes away. So too much of the money is lost to administrative costs, and that which remains can’t be used for faculty. But with committed, sustained operating funding, the existing administrative infrastructure will do, and we could actually hire faculty.
If it’s meant to be transformative, then it needs to be both competitive, substantial, and sustained. (The competition could be based on how plausibly innovative the proposals are, and how scalable they are. No more boutique programs.) It needs to be long-term enough that the institution can risk failure of the first version without necessarily losing the funding. Anything truly transformative will be high-risk; in this fiscal climate, colleges will be risk-averse because they have to be.
In either case, though, the key is that the grants aren’t directed to individual faculty. They’re directed to institutions, and are under institutional control. That’s the only way to reach enough faculty and students to actually matter. Giving Prof. Smith a year off from teaching to expound on what a wonderful teacher he is -- the usual M.O. -- just isn’t a serious answer. Directing grants to individual faculty recreates the star system. There may be an argument for a star system in research, but there simply isn’t in teaching. If you want to improve teaching for enough people to move the needle, you’ll need to move up the average. That means improving the stars, the average, and even the struggling. That means scale, and that means institutions.
I’m sure the Harvard Graduate School of Education means well, but honestly, if you’re serious about undergraduate education, you have to look where the undergraduates are. If anyone from the Feds would like to drop me a line, I’m reachable at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com. But don’t hold some sort of national teacher of the year contest, and don’t look to a few supergeniuses as salvation. Any serious answer has to work at large scale. That means working with, through, and on behalf of institutions. You just have to pick the right institutions.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Ask the Administrator: Changing Silos
A new correspondent writes
It’s harder than it sounds, actually.
You’re certainly right that math is a key area for student retention, and you’re also right that you’d bring some new (and beneficial) perspectives to student services. But making the leap isn’t all that easy.
Typically, student services is a silo, and academic affairs is a silo. Moving between silos isn’t easily done. The credibility you’ve earned on one side may not carry over to the other. The folks in student services have their own sets of experiences and credentials unique to their area, and may look askance at someone trying to hop over, especially if they’re hopping over at a relatively high level.
My first thought would be to find an area within (or alongside) student services that builds organically off of what you’ve already done.
Two areas leap to mind immediately. One is working with a math center, and the other is directing a grant with a math/retention focus.
The classic critique of faculty-turned-administrators is that they may be subject matter experts, but they have no management experience. Managing employees is very different from teaching students, for a whole host of reasons. Both of these would give you a chance to show (and/or build) your skills as a manager, working in areas for which your academic background has prepared you well.
Best of all, given the salience of the subject matter you’re focusing on to colleges and universities generally, you should have no lack of opportunities if you play your cards right.
My suggestion would be to do some background research on the current thinking regarding math and student success. (Although it’s a different institutional context, the Community College Research Center website is a great place to start.) Then approach the math//tutoring center on your own campus, and see if they’re open to some sort of meaningful participation. If you could manage some sort of exploratory venture in a low-risk way -- I’m thinking getting a course release to work with the math center as a resource person for a year or so -- then you can get some useful exposure to the field without risking your current professional standing. If you decide, after a few months, that you’d really rather return to the classroom, you could. If you decide that you want more than ever to make the leap, you’ve gained some experience and exposure to make yourself a more viable candidate.
Grants are the other way to go. I can attest that anyone who knows how to bring money has a huge leg up. If you can figure out a way to pitch a grant involving math and student success -- again, a hot area -- to either your state or the Feds, you can build a position for yourself. The beauty of this approach is that it lets you start at a fairly high level and play to your strengths, since you’ll design the position yourself. It’s a little slow to start, and there are no guarantees, but if you’re thinking about the long term, this could be a very effective and satisfying way to go.
Good luck! Anyone who can help make a difference on student success in math will be a hot commodity.
Wise and worldly readers, can you think of other options? Are there other or better ways to make the leap?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
I am currently in a tenured faculty position at a teaching-heavy Regional U. I have always a lot of interest in student retention and student services, and would like to eventually transition to an administrative position in that area for a Flagship U - and lo and behold, nearby Flagship U has a position for someone just like that. I am in math, and this is usually the biggest area for student support. The usual path for academic folks is chair > dean > Provost etc, so I realize that this path may be a bit unusual. But I think I could bring new perspectives that are usually not found in administrators in that role. Since you've worked with many types of administrators, what do you think of such a move?
It’s harder than it sounds, actually.
You’re certainly right that math is a key area for student retention, and you’re also right that you’d bring some new (and beneficial) perspectives to student services. But making the leap isn’t all that easy.
Typically, student services is a silo, and academic affairs is a silo. Moving between silos isn’t easily done. The credibility you’ve earned on one side may not carry over to the other. The folks in student services have their own sets of experiences and credentials unique to their area, and may look askance at someone trying to hop over, especially if they’re hopping over at a relatively high level.
My first thought would be to find an area within (or alongside) student services that builds organically off of what you’ve already done.
Two areas leap to mind immediately. One is working with a math center, and the other is directing a grant with a math/retention focus.
The classic critique of faculty-turned-administrators is that they may be subject matter experts, but they have no management experience. Managing employees is very different from teaching students, for a whole host of reasons. Both of these would give you a chance to show (and/or build) your skills as a manager, working in areas for which your academic background has prepared you well.
Best of all, given the salience of the subject matter you’re focusing on to colleges and universities generally, you should have no lack of opportunities if you play your cards right.
My suggestion would be to do some background research on the current thinking regarding math and student success. (Although it’s a different institutional context, the Community College Research Center website is a great place to start.) Then approach the math//tutoring center on your own campus, and see if they’re open to some sort of meaningful participation. If you could manage some sort of exploratory venture in a low-risk way -- I’m thinking getting a course release to work with the math center as a resource person for a year or so -- then you can get some useful exposure to the field without risking your current professional standing. If you decide, after a few months, that you’d really rather return to the classroom, you could. If you decide that you want more than ever to make the leap, you’ve gained some experience and exposure to make yourself a more viable candidate.
Grants are the other way to go. I can attest that anyone who knows how to bring money has a huge leg up. If you can figure out a way to pitch a grant involving math and student success -- again, a hot area -- to either your state or the Feds, you can build a position for yourself. The beauty of this approach is that it lets you start at a fairly high level and play to your strengths, since you’ll design the position yourself. It’s a little slow to start, and there are no guarantees, but if you’re thinking about the long term, this could be a very effective and satisfying way to go.
Good luck! Anyone who can help make a difference on student success in math will be a hot commodity.
Wise and worldly readers, can you think of other options? Are there other or better ways to make the leap?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Friday Fragments
You’d think I would have learned to expect it by now, but I’m still surprised by the volume of email and delayed meetings that backs up while I’m traveling. Yesterday was a dig-out-from-the-avalanche day, and today features seven scheduled meetings. This is why I don’t travel much.
----------
I don’t get the Netflix thing. Why can’t they stream the same movies they send out on DVD? If I watch, say, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo on a DVD, and then watch it again via streaming, I notice two things. First, my will to live is shot. And second, it’s the same movie. I don’t know why it matters how the pixels get to my tv. They’re the same pixels. If they could stream all the movies they have on DVD, I’d happily sign back up. As it is, though, no.
----------
The joys of disaggregating data: at my college, we used to get course completion rates broken out by race, and again by gender, but not by both. This year we’ve started getting each race broken out by gender, and the extra dimension is revealing. Last Fall, women in the “Latino” category (Latina?) outperformed the white guys in developmental math classes. Within each racial group, women outperformed men by about seven points. What used to look like a racial disparity is starting to look more like a race-and-gender issue.
If nothing else, the data may help fine-tune some interventions. And maybe dispel a few myths.
----------
Podcasts are what radio should have been. Discuss.
----------
Genes are stubborn. I don’t recall ever seeing my grandparents swim, or even hearing them mention it. My Mom wanted -- and still wants -- nothing to do with water. I never enjoyed actual swimming -- as opposed to just messing around in a pool on a hot day -- and dreaded lessons. Now The Girl is complaining about her swim lessons.
The “landlubber” gene is tenacious. That can’t be an entirely bad thing.
---------
If this whole focus on graduation rates continues, I foresee a major grade inflation scandal in the next five years. You heard it here first.
--------
Okay, I have to admit the ipad is getting pretty tempting. But the combination of “faster connectivity” and “sharper resolution” with “data caps” strikes me as a time bomb. I don’t want an episode of The Daily Show on Hulu to run me a couple hundred bucks in overage fees. And there’s still that “getting it back from the kids” problem...
----------
I don’t get the Netflix thing. Why can’t they stream the same movies they send out on DVD? If I watch, say, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo on a DVD, and then watch it again via streaming, I notice two things. First, my will to live is shot. And second, it’s the same movie. I don’t know why it matters how the pixels get to my tv. They’re the same pixels. If they could stream all the movies they have on DVD, I’d happily sign back up. As it is, though, no.
----------
The joys of disaggregating data: at my college, we used to get course completion rates broken out by race, and again by gender, but not by both. This year we’ve started getting each race broken out by gender, and the extra dimension is revealing. Last Fall, women in the “Latino” category (Latina?) outperformed the white guys in developmental math classes. Within each racial group, women outperformed men by about seven points. What used to look like a racial disparity is starting to look more like a race-and-gender issue.
If nothing else, the data may help fine-tune some interventions. And maybe dispel a few myths.
----------
Podcasts are what radio should have been. Discuss.
----------
Genes are stubborn. I don’t recall ever seeing my grandparents swim, or even hearing them mention it. My Mom wanted -- and still wants -- nothing to do with water. I never enjoyed actual swimming -- as opposed to just messing around in a pool on a hot day -- and dreaded lessons. Now The Girl is complaining about her swim lessons.
The “landlubber” gene is tenacious. That can’t be an entirely bad thing.
---------
If this whole focus on graduation rates continues, I foresee a major grade inflation scandal in the next five years. You heard it here first.
--------
Okay, I have to admit the ipad is getting pretty tempting. But the combination of “faster connectivity” and “sharper resolution” with “data caps” strikes me as a time bomb. I don’t want an episode of The Daily Show on Hulu to run me a couple hundred bucks in overage fees. And there’s still that “getting it back from the kids” problem...
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Ask the Administrator: Positioning For a CC Career
A new, young correspondent writes:
I’m a little struck at the idea of picking a discipline based on market demand. Usually, people pick a discipline they find fascinating, and then try to figure out market demand. But there’s no a priori reason you couldn’t do it this way.
Among the disciplines you listed, we typically have the hardest time hiring for economics. There isn’t a huge demand for economists at the cc level, but when openings occur, they’re remarkably hard to fill. Political scientists and historians are far more plentiful, so even though spots for historians are more common, they’re harder to get. In the business area, you probably wouldn’t get hired without years of real-world business experience on top of the MBA, so if you don’t want to do that, don’t. Like history, that’s a field with many more candidates than positions.
In grad school, the usual training is through a teaching assistantship. Being a t.a. usually covers your tuition and offers a modest – cough – stipend that will almost cover very basic living expenses. Ideally, it gives you a first experience in which you’re teaching with a net; the professor for whom you’re assisting is supposed to be there to mentor you. (Warning: graduate faculty are not uniform in the seriousness with which they approach this role. Prior to my first semester as a t.a., my entire training consisted of a single statement: “you’ll be fine.”)
If at all possible, I’d recommend finding the campus tutoring center and getting training and experience there as well. Seeing the ways that students struggle can be revealing. In my time at the campus writing center, I recall a student who came in complaining that she just couldn’t write, and her class paper suggested that she was right. But she could tell a hell of a story. So for lack of any better ideas, I asked her to write me a letter telling one of those stories. She did, and it read beautifully. I showed her the letter, showed her the paper, and asked if she could see the difference. She could. I suggested that she try writing her papers like she wrote her letters; freewrite first, and edit later. Once she turned off the editor in her head – the one that said “that’s stupid” at every new sentence – she attained the clarity that she had when she told stories.
That experience came in handy later as a professor. If you’re in economics, you may find yourself tutoring math rather than writing, but the same principle applies. If you can see the common ways and places that students make mistakes, you can inform your own subsequent teaching accordingly.
Administration is another matter entirely. First, get your land legs as a professor. After a few years of that, if administration still holds appeal, take baby steps and see what happens.
Good luck!
Wise and worldly readers, what would you advise?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
I seem to share your goal of teaching, and eventually filling an administration role, at the community college level since its seems more helpful and effective to the students, since I have little aspiration to achieve a doctorate degree and since I believe in equal opportunity for all having come from a low-income family. My plan for now is to achieve a Masters in Political Science or potentially one in various social sciences I'm interested in (I'll graduate with a dual major in economics and political science). To build experience, I plan on meeting with CC professors and hopefully serving as a free tutor for students during my Senior undergraduate year. Having said that, I was wondering if I could ask for you a few questions. 1) What departments/subjects, in your experience, do community colleges have the greatest demand for? Which, if any, departments do administrations have difficulty filling positions in? Simply put, which Masters degree would make me most valuable as a candidate: Political Science, Economics, History or an MBA? 2) What venues for gaining experience exist for an undergraduate student? Or a masters student? 3) Is there any advice you have to help me on my career path? Are there any career mistakes you see candidates frequently make that I should avoid?
I’m a little struck at the idea of picking a discipline based on market demand. Usually, people pick a discipline they find fascinating, and then try to figure out market demand. But there’s no a priori reason you couldn’t do it this way.
Among the disciplines you listed, we typically have the hardest time hiring for economics. There isn’t a huge demand for economists at the cc level, but when openings occur, they’re remarkably hard to fill. Political scientists and historians are far more plentiful, so even though spots for historians are more common, they’re harder to get. In the business area, you probably wouldn’t get hired without years of real-world business experience on top of the MBA, so if you don’t want to do that, don’t. Like history, that’s a field with many more candidates than positions.
In grad school, the usual training is through a teaching assistantship. Being a t.a. usually covers your tuition and offers a modest – cough – stipend that will almost cover very basic living expenses. Ideally, it gives you a first experience in which you’re teaching with a net; the professor for whom you’re assisting is supposed to be there to mentor you. (Warning: graduate faculty are not uniform in the seriousness with which they approach this role. Prior to my first semester as a t.a., my entire training consisted of a single statement: “you’ll be fine.”)
If at all possible, I’d recommend finding the campus tutoring center and getting training and experience there as well. Seeing the ways that students struggle can be revealing. In my time at the campus writing center, I recall a student who came in complaining that she just couldn’t write, and her class paper suggested that she was right. But she could tell a hell of a story. So for lack of any better ideas, I asked her to write me a letter telling one of those stories. She did, and it read beautifully. I showed her the letter, showed her the paper, and asked if she could see the difference. She could. I suggested that she try writing her papers like she wrote her letters; freewrite first, and edit later. Once she turned off the editor in her head – the one that said “that’s stupid” at every new sentence – she attained the clarity that she had when she told stories.
That experience came in handy later as a professor. If you’re in economics, you may find yourself tutoring math rather than writing, but the same principle applies. If you can see the common ways and places that students make mistakes, you can inform your own subsequent teaching accordingly.
Administration is another matter entirely. First, get your land legs as a professor. After a few years of that, if administration still holds appeal, take baby steps and see what happens.
Good luck!
Wise and worldly readers, what would you advise?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
League 3: Inclusion Day
“I realized that I
was more than I was showing.” - A young
man in a video about the Center for Male Engagement at the Community College of
Philadelphia
Every educator knows the wonderful feeling when a student
who hadn’t shown much suddenly catches fire.
Day 3 was devoted to students like that.
Even though I usually suffer pretty awful conference fatigue by the
third day, this was a wonderful way to wrap it up. In various ways, nearly everything was about
ways to include students who sometimes get excluded.
Inclusion is more complicated than it sounds. I had a women’s studies professor who used to
say that feminism can’t be reduced to “add women and stir;” larger changes had
to happen to make the environment truly inclusive. We can’t just add students and stir; the
trick is managing so many variables while staying both sustainable and sane.
Some of the variables were obvious. Wes Moore, the keynote speaker, gave an
especially effective rags-to-riches story, punctuated with lines like “community
colleges are not just in the process of training
the next generation of American workers.” I wish some politicians understood that. Pre-emptively deciding that the kinds of
students who attend community colleges will never be capable of anything more
than rote tasks is both classist and demonstrably false. If we’re going to continue to produce alums
like Wes Moore, we’ll need to be able to do the full range of liberal arts,
robustly and without apology.
Some folks from the Center for Male Engagement at the
Community College of Philadelphia explained their work, which is devoted to
improving success rates among young black men.
CCP’s student body is majority African-American and about two-thirds
female, and it has experienced many of the same stresses as community colleges
have nationally. The statistics they
offered suggested that they’ve been successful in improving the pass rates and
retention rates of African-American men, usually by double digits. (I admit perking up at that.) They received significant grant funding from
both the U.S. Department of Education and the Open Society Foundation (George
Soros’ group), and used the money to offer a panoply of services including
counseling, support coaching, early alert tracking, and even a four-day camping
retreat with stipends paid at the end for successful completion. (The idea there was to have students bond
with each other, so they wouldn’t feel isolated on campus.) The discussion was bracingly honest. During Q & A, someone asked about dress
codes, and the presenters freely admitted that part of their job involved
setting an example for how men dress in a professional context. Strikingly, in discussing the courses with
which the men struggled, one presenter mentioned that the students do markedly
well in CIS. If I had the panel to do
over again, I would have asked more about that.
I suspect there’s something there.
Other panels were more specialized. One discussed concurrent enrollment programs,
in which I quickly learned that there’s a difference between dual enrollment
and concurrent enrollment. Concurrent
enrollment refers to college classes taught by high school teachers in high
schools during the high school day to high school students. Dual enrollment refers to college classes taught
by college faculty, often on the college campus, in which high school students
are also enrolled. Who knew? The presentation quickly became a group
discussion in which it became clear that each state does dual and/or concurrent
enrollment very differently.
Arrangements that are becoming popular in one state would be illegal in
another one. There’s also a distinction
to be made between programs that reach the cream of the crop high school
students, and programs designed for dropout prevention. In both cases, the idea is to extend college
to students who otherwise might not have it.
Even the nerdier stuff in the afternoon was geared toward
inclusion. An instructional designer and
two faculty discussed course redesign, with the goal of helping adjuncts do a
better job in the classroom. And a
panel of state-level policy people presented on attempts to create sustainable
structures for continuous improvement of college performance in three states
(Massachusetts, Michigan, and Virginia).
I’m wiped, but happy to report that some very smart people
are asking some of the right questions, and relying on actual, empirical
evidence to answer them. That may lack
the sex appeal of “disruptive innovation,” but it’s the only way to go. Thanks, Philadelphia. And thanks to the supportive reader who
emailed me – I’m not kidding – to tell me where the coffeemaker was in the room. Some things are important.
Monday, March 05, 2012
The League Day 2: When Generations Clash
Go to enough panels, and you start to detect themes.
Quick quiz: Community colleges are
a. a. A movement
b. b. A daring and audacious bet on democracy
c. c. An established sector of higher education
d. d. Dying
As a Gen X’er, I think the answer is c. I don’t remember a world without community
colleges. Yes, they’ve grown over the
last decade, but the growth was from an already-existing base. Most of the growth that has happened has
happened at campuses that were built decades before.
The founding generation – the Terry O’Banions of the world –
prefers answer a, and sometimes b.
(Their evil twins give answer d.)
They believe that community colleges are insurgents, shaking up the
world of higher education with their open-door, democratic idealism. To be fair, that was true at one time. It just isn’t anymore.
I saw the clash bluntly at a presentation on “Community
Colleges as Disruptive Innovations.”
From the title and the hook, it sounded like the presentation would be a
discussion of community colleges as disruptive innovators, which would put it
into camps a and b. But the bulk of the
discussion was about the unsustainability of the community college model, which
put it somewhere between c and d. You could
tell that the presenter – Debbie Sydow, president of Onondaga Community College
-- really, really wanted to make the claim that they were the wave of the
future, but her evidence wouldn’t let her.
I actually felt bad for her, since I’ve been there; sometimes your
evidence just doesn’t prove what you want it to. The audience seemed perplexed, which seemed
about right.
In his keynote, Terry O’Banion tried the old-time religion,
referring repeatedly to “the community college movement.” But revealingly, he structured his keynote
like a valedictory. He opened with stories
of innovations he pioneered in 1962 – I’m not kidding – and referred a couple
of times to the focus on student success having “brought [him] back to where
[he] started.” The sense of closure,
while poignant, didn’t jibe well with the posture of insurgency. Yes, he enunciated several principles by
which we were all supposed to go forth and bring about change, but it’s hard to
sound insurgent when you have peer-reviewed studies and six-point plans, and it’s
hard to be simultaneously rousing and elegiac.
Moving from the swan song to the cattle call, two panels
addressed recruitment of future leaders, and the difference was striking. There, I didn’t hear a single mention of the
community college movement or disruptive innovation. I heard discussion of dilemmas,
best-available solutions, complexity, mentoring, and training programs; in
other words, the kinds of things that ‘mature’ organizations handle. The first was presented by the Community
College of Baltimore County, and I have to say I was impressed. A dean there has developed a management
training program to expose faculty to the realities of academic administration;
the dean and three alumni of the program discussed it. The theme the faculty kept coming back to was
the unexpected reality of shades of gray.
(I was especially taken with one presenter’s characterization of the
difference between a “right” decision and a “right now” decision, and the need
to make peace with the fact that with partial information, sometimes you have
to settle for the latter.)
The second panel was geared towards future presidents. It featured a self-assessment, which was
revealing in its own way, and some helpful hints about ways to fill in
experiential gaps. (Annoyingly, “experience
blogging” wasn’t on the list. My gaps
were fundraising, managing construction, fundraising, risk management, and
fundraising.) There, too, the tone was
not about insurgency or disruption or challenge; it was about the need for
well-prepared people to step up to handle the increasingly difficult challenges
facing a mature sector.
(As with yesterday, there was also one panel that could only
be called a clear miss. It happens.)
I’m happy to acknowledge a debt to the movement that the
founding generation started so many years ago.
Without the work they did, community colleges would not be the
established force that they are now. But
they are an established force now, and if anything, they’re facing harsher threats
than they have ever faced before.
Celebrate the achievements of the O’Banions, who have earned respect for
what they have wrought, but recruit people who know how to run, and reform,
institutions.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Live from the League, Day 1
The theme for this year’s League for Innovation conference
seems to be “where is everybody?”
Attendance seems visibly down from last year. Last year’s conference was in San Diego. This year’s is in Philly. I’m not saying
that’s the reason; I’m not saying that’s not the reason.
For reasons unknown, the Sunday panels started at 8:30 in
the morning. For folks from the West
Coast, that’s just cruel. I saw someone
I knew from California looking uncharacteristically ragged just after the first
panel, and couldn’t blame her a bit.
(Adding insult to injury, the rooms in the conference hotel don’t have
coffeemakers. Barbarians!) I’ve also seen fewer ipads this year than
last, which is probably another function of Philly as opposed to San
Diego.
Anyway, some highlights.
Jane Serbousek and Susan Wood offered a hopeful panel that
addressed the redesign of the developmental English and math sequences at the
community college system in Virginia.
(It was probably even more daunting in Virginia than it would be
elsewhere, given that Virginia has 23 community colleges but operates as a
single system.) They broke their
developmental math sequence into 9 1-credit modules, so a student who normally
would have coasted through the first half of the semester before crashing into
the second half doesn’t have to repeat the first half. In response to a question about financial aid
– I didn’t ask it, but I could have – they mentioned that some campuses use a 4-credit
“shell” course for registration purposes.
A student can complete anywhere from 1 to (theoretically) 9 credits’
worth of material, but registers for four.
It seems that the usual resistance to any sort of change was
somewhat muted; as Wood noted, “we couldn’t have worse results [than under the
current system].” Sometimes, innovation
is just another word for nothing left to lose.
As a courtesy, I’ll skip the second panel. Let’s just say it didn’t really work and
leave it at that.
A panel on first-time presidents looking back on their first
five years was by far the best attended I saw.
Two presidents spoke – Hal Higdon of Ozarks Technical Community College,
and Cheryl Thompson-Stacy of Lord Fairfax Community College -- and while there
wasn’t anything groundbreaking, they were both fun to watch. The takeaway: when your president starts to
refer to himself in the third person, it’s time to send out job applications.
For the first time in my memory, the conference actually had
a panel discussing ESL. It was
fascinating, since most of the few people there were ESL instructors
themselves. It quickly became clear that
there’s tension between their ESL department and their English department. I saw that at my last college, too, where it
led to all manner of indignation and blame-shifting but to nothing good. I was hoping to hear some discussion of ways
to improve student completion rates, but this seemed to be more about
addressing a lack of respect from other departments. That’s valid work, but it seems like a
second-order issue. Maybe next year.
In the interstices, I ran into my boss from my last
job. That’s the serendipity factor of
conferences that I’m not sure how virtual conferences could replace. I hadn’t seen him in years, so it was fun to
reconnect.
The keynote was by Cathy Casserly, addressing open
educational resources. Some speakers go
for analysis, some go for rhetoric; she went for concreteness. She argued that in an age in which “we are
all producers,” and the internet consists of “copies, copies everywhere,” the
print-era notion of copyright is unduly limiting. She championed Creative Commons licenses as
alternatives, and pointed us to such resources as openstax college, flatworld
knowledge, and Washington state’s Open Course Library. By her telling – and I haven’t investigated
them well enough to say – these and similar resources can help colleges and
their students get past the economic barriers characteristic of an age in which
information is held privately, rather than shared publicly.
It was a “hey, look at this!” speech, which isn’t typical
keynote fodder, but it worked.
Monday’s panels start even earlier. Suggestion to the Program Committee: keep time
zones in mind. And for heaven’s sake, do
something about the coffee…
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Friday Fragments
The glow from many things fades as one gets older. But snow days stay wonderful.
-----------
I have to admit enjoying Senator Santorum’s assertion that Satan controls higher education in America. To be fair, there is some evidence for his claim. If you’ve ever tried finding a student parking space around noon on a Tuesday in September at a major public university, you know that Satan has major influence in the world of parking deck architecture. And the proliferation of graduate programs in an era of decreasing full-time faculty jobs definitely carries the cloven hoofprints of Big Red.
That said, I always assumed Satan had serious money to throw around. After all, he’d have all those bankers, lawyers, and venture capitalists on his side. He may be the prince of darkness, but he’s supposed to at least be sporting some serious bling.
Instead, we public academics work in cinder-block brutalist buildings with water leaks, while the laywers and financiers have enough money to sponsor people like Senator Santorum.
Satan, we have to talk. You’re not upholding your end of the bargain. I’m very disappointed in you. Bad Satan! Bad!
----------
Meanwhile, Maryland just legalized same-sex marriage. 8 down, 42 to go. Well done, Maryland.
----------
Can you imagine Satan’s outcomes assessment metrics?
By the end of your sojourn into the underworld, you will be able to
- gnash teeth and rend garments simultaneously
- regrow flesh quickly from one flaying to the next
- sit through an entire episode of Real Housewives without making a single snarky aside
----------
Earlier this week The Boy reported that as part of an exercise in the library, they had to figure out who the Huguenots were. Somehow I remembered, and told him. His jaw actually fell open. The Wife laughed and started singing “nerd nerd nerd, you are a nerd...” to the tune of “Bird is the Word.”
The liberal arts begin at home, people.
-----------
Any tips for decent, Windows-based video editing software? The Boy wants to go from basic stop-motion Lego videos to full-on Lego movies, and I don’t want to have to buy a Mac just for that. Our laptop is a couple of years old and wasn’t top of the line even then, so we’re looking for the basics here.
-----------
I’m dusting off the trenchcoat and fedora to reprise my “roving correspondent” role at the League for Innovation conference next week. It’s in Senator Santorum’s home state, come to think of it, so if I see the Senator, Satan, or both, I’ll be sure to say hi.
-----------
I have to admit enjoying Senator Santorum’s assertion that Satan controls higher education in America. To be fair, there is some evidence for his claim. If you’ve ever tried finding a student parking space around noon on a Tuesday in September at a major public university, you know that Satan has major influence in the world of parking deck architecture. And the proliferation of graduate programs in an era of decreasing full-time faculty jobs definitely carries the cloven hoofprints of Big Red.
That said, I always assumed Satan had serious money to throw around. After all, he’d have all those bankers, lawyers, and venture capitalists on his side. He may be the prince of darkness, but he’s supposed to at least be sporting some serious bling.
Instead, we public academics work in cinder-block brutalist buildings with water leaks, while the laywers and financiers have enough money to sponsor people like Senator Santorum.
Satan, we have to talk. You’re not upholding your end of the bargain. I’m very disappointed in you. Bad Satan! Bad!
----------
Meanwhile, Maryland just legalized same-sex marriage. 8 down, 42 to go. Well done, Maryland.
----------
Can you imagine Satan’s outcomes assessment metrics?
By the end of your sojourn into the underworld, you will be able to
- gnash teeth and rend garments simultaneously
- regrow flesh quickly from one flaying to the next
- sit through an entire episode of Real Housewives without making a single snarky aside
----------
Earlier this week The Boy reported that as part of an exercise in the library, they had to figure out who the Huguenots were. Somehow I remembered, and told him. His jaw actually fell open. The Wife laughed and started singing “nerd nerd nerd, you are a nerd...” to the tune of “Bird is the Word.”
The liberal arts begin at home, people.
-----------
Any tips for decent, Windows-based video editing software? The Boy wants to go from basic stop-motion Lego videos to full-on Lego movies, and I don’t want to have to buy a Mac just for that. Our laptop is a couple of years old and wasn’t top of the line even then, so we’re looking for the basics here.
-----------
I’m dusting off the trenchcoat and fedora to reprise my “roving correspondent” role at the League for Innovation conference next week. It’s in Senator Santorum’s home state, come to think of it, so if I see the Senator, Satan, or both, I’ll be sure to say hi.
