MVCC President's Blog

Learning to Learn AI

2024-11-27T12:15:00.001-05:00

My ongoing work with various forms of artificial intelligence (AI) has me thinking a lot about the learning process. In my personal experience, I believe sports greatly enhanced my ability and grit to learn, while my time as a student at Mott Community College gave me the confidence and curiosity to keep learning.

I leaned into my capacity to learn while interviewing for my first professional role as a graduate intern at Oakland Community College. When the Director of Institutional Research asked about my qualifications for a research assistant position, I knew I had to sell it. I was a 23-year-old with a Communications degree, and my experience consisted mostly of high school jobs at a golf course and various non-research positions on campus as an undergrad (including the mail room and intramural coordinator). When he asked if I knew spreadsheets, I confidently said, “SURE!” His follow-up question, “What software?” was met with an equally confident “LOTUS 1-2-3” (yes, I’m so old that I was using computers before Microsoft Excel was invented.) While my responses had a confident tone, there was little substance behind them — the only spreadsheet I had ever created was to track my scores as a varsity golfer. He quickly responded, “If you know LOTUS, you’ll know Quattro Pro.”

I spent the next several months poring over the Quattro Pro manual like a page-turning mystery novel to learn what I needed for the job. Three years later, I had completed my master’s degree and landed a job as Director of Institutional Research and Planning at Red Rocks Community College. By that point, spreadsheets had become second nature for me.

I recognize that diving headfirst into the deep end of learning comes naturally to me. It fills my bucket — “Learner” is one of my top five Gallup Strengths. Whether it’s learning a new sport — from baseball to golf, racquetball to pickleball, bowling to cornhole, cross-country and downhill skiing to water skiing — learning stretches my brain to think differently and grow in new ways. These experiences have also helped me confront my inherent paranoia and skepticism with AI and become, as I said in my last post, “productively paranoid.” The more I use AI, the more I find myself using it on my terms.

For example:

Rather than asking ChatGPT to write an entire speech, welcome remarks, or a PowerPoint presentation — tasks that still feel a bit uncomfortable for me — I ask it to provide five choices to help focus my remarks. I often iterate on one or two of its suggestions and ask for an outline, which I then adapt and refine before writing my own final version.
I find myself using the ChatGPT app more than Google to search and answer both complex and trivial questions. I sometimes use Perplexity AI to explore more sources, but I can also ask ChatGPT follow-up questions to name its sources when needed.
I once assigned ChatGPT the role of a Termite and Wood Structure Specialist and asked it to analyze a picture I took of some wood on a fallen tree, and it taught me about powderpost beetles.
Perhaps my favorite experience thus far has been reproducing special memories. Using the MidJourney AI image generator, I created an image for which no photo exists but is forever etched in my mind. Recently, I delivered a keynote at Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, Nebraska. I opened my presentation by sharing a story about how, 30 years ago, my wife and I drove past Exit 179 on I-80 during our honeymoon trip to Denver, Colorado, in her 1992 red Saturn coupe. After about 15 to 20 prompts and iterations, it produced the image I envisioned.

While the potential negative impact on humanity — and the sci-fi apocalyptic scenarios coming to life — has secured more real estate in my mind than I’d like, setting those fears aside to create space for learning has allowed me to imagine how to use AI in creative ways that have made me more efficient, effective, and productive. The more I experiment with it, the more useful I find it to be.

I fully acknowledge that my “Learner” strength looks different than it does for others with the same strength, and that there are many combinations and themes within strengths that will manifest differently in each of us. However, given the rapid pace at which AI technology is evolving and the myriad ways it can impact us, I hope that everyone — both professionally and personally — takes the time to reflect on the roles AI is playing in their life and considers how to take agency and ownership of its impact.

Right now, I feel like I’m in my second week on the job, devouring that Quattro Pro manual. My brain is on fire, my heart is racing, and the possibilities and challenges all simultaneously seem endless. I’m running as fast as I can — skinning my knees and picking myself back up again — as I race toward some level of competency with this technology before it outpaces me. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to venture on your own learning journey and develop your AI skills at your own pace. AI is here, and it's moving quickly.

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

More Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence

2024-10-31T10:11:00.000-04:00

The pace of AI is accelerating, and it’s a bit exhausting.

Last spring I wrote a blog post titled, I Am a Prompt Engineer. I was so proud to have completed an 18-module online course to build my prompting skills for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Just three months later, OpenAI launched ChatGPT-4 Omni with conversational prompting. Now I start many of my ChatGPT sessions with, “Please refine the following prompt to maximize your response to…” and my original single-sentence prompt comes back to me as a fully flushed-out three- to four-sentence beauty that is far beyond anything I could have crafted on my own. It writes my prompts for me! Just like that, I’m obsolete and my career as a prompt engineer has ended. Additionally, the conversational power of GPT-4o is pretty incredible. I’ve had multiple 10- to 20-minute conversations with it to gain insight or explore issues and situations in ways that expand my thought processes beyond what I could do if I were to continue talking to myself while thinking things through.

I don’t consider myself “Pro-AI.” Rather, I consider myself “productively paranoid.” AI is happening, and it’s happening so fast that it sometimes makes my head spin. I have fun creating images for presentations, but the pace of development coupled with the scale and variety of uses can be overwhelming. This complexity and pace are why I wanted Todd McLees to join us at the College’s Fall Opening. I think his message — embracing AI to advance human flourishing — is important in these early stages, as it encourages us to create more positive-use cases that will hopefully outnumber the inevitable negative ones. I’ve seen multiple articles about the Manhattan Project costing $23B in current dollars and its creators forming an advisory board to create guardrails minimizing the technology’s potential dangers. In contrast, companies are currently spending $230B (10 times that amount!) on AI, with no advisory board or guardrails whatsoever.

We may not be able to influence what the “Big Tech” companies are doing with AI — they are unleashing it into the wild, and its impact is inevitable, whether we want it or not. If we simply ignore AI or fail to develop good habits with it, we run the risk of succumbing to its downsides, much like how social media’s downsides have negatively influenced society. I suppose that can be an individual choice; however, if we collectively ignore AI, MVCC might struggle to remain relevant. Relevancy is what is driving the paranoia I feel, and I’m trying to use that feeling productively by personally engaging with AI.

Recently, the College Senate and Cabinet collaborated to create and launch an AI task force to develop recommendations for a Board Policy on AI at the request of the MVCC Board of Trustees. We’ll also have a small group participate in a 30-Day Challenge led by Todd McLees to develop useful AI habits through daily engagements over 30 days. These actions are all in an effort to stay connected to the blinding pace of inevitable change that now includes SUNY adding artificial intelligence as a requirement under the information literacy core competency of the general education degree requirements.

I appreciate the innovators and early adopters who are engaging with AI and working to guide and support their peers with what they’re learning. I also value the perspectives of the cautious and concerned among us. I share many of their sentiments and believe it is important to include these voices as we look to find our way through this wave of intense change. However, avoiding AI now would be like avoiding the internet in the 1990s. In my opinion, one of the things that makes MVCC special is the constructive sharing of perspectives on complex and disruptive issues. Rather than avoid the hard stuff, I believe MVCC does an amazing job of engaging in meaningful conversations to understand the forces of change and find ways to adapt and evolve our programs, services, and operations to remain relevant. AI may be our greatest challenge yet, but I’m confident we can figure it out together.

*Note: Not a single word of this post was generated by AI. I claim every word in this post as my own.

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

Prompt Engineering – It’s a real thing

2024-04-10T16:04:00.000-04:00

I’m a Prompt Engineer! Well, that’s an overstatement, but I did successfully complete the course, “Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT.” It served a two-fold purpose for me. First, it provided a valuable opportunity to deepen my knowledge and understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) as I’m curious about how it will continue to disrupt learning and other aspects of our daily lives. Secondly, I found the class on Coursera, the largest Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider that offers more than 7,000 courses to more than 100 million students globally (19 million in the U.S. alone) in a variety of languages.

My prompt engineering course was taught by the Computer Science Department Chair at Vanderbilt University, and he was great. I was intrigued by the business model of charging just $49 per month until I completed the course. Initially, I had high hopes of completing the six-module course in one month; however, as is often the case for so many students, life got in the way, and the course took me two months to complete.

Given that most of my formal education occurred prior to the Internet (for real), I never considered myself an “online learner” and stayed away from pursuing any online offerings. However, I’ve been closely observing MOOCs for the past decade, witnessing their remarkable appeal to millions of people around the world. I was pleased with the convenience of blocking out an hour here and there on weekends to watch the video lectures, do the assigned readings, take notes, and complete the assessments.

It was interesting to assign prompt and audience “personas,” such as the role of a travel agent crafting a vacation itinerary, a 7-year-old requesting a bedtime story, a woodpecker learning to survive an Upstate New York winter, or an organization like MVCC reflecting on aspirations and apprehensions regarding its trajectory over the next five years. The practice of submitting prompts and asking ChatGPT to suggest improvements for those prompts also proved to be unexpectedly enlightening. It’s a strategy I hadn’t previously considered, but it sure makes sense and works quite well!

Some assignments were more interesting than others. I enjoyed the Few-Shot prompt pattern where I had to describe the input (such as a student needing to drop and add a class), instruct ChatGPT to “think” (for instance, securing the student identification number), and then direct it to take “action” (such as entering the student ID, securing the class schedule, and executing the drop/add process). With little effort, I essentially surfaced the basic programming behind an AI-enabled scheduling bot. This is why I love the slightly trick question — “What is the most important programming language for AI?” — the answer being “English.” It’s all about phrasing and leveraging the prompts to achieve the desired outcome.

The course went on to teach several different prompt patterns, including Game Play, Template, Recipe, Chain-of-Thought, Ask for Input, and Outline Expansion. My favorite, however, was the “Alternate Approaches” prompt pattern where I provided some context and asked for alternative perspectives or strategies. I thought of an AI career coach and described myself as a young college graduate interested in a 40-year career with distinct goals in a chosen field and asked for two to three job titles in four- to five-year increments throughout the 40 years. ChatGPT came back with four or five questions to clarify my interests, then provided an informative outline of three different career paths complete with relevant job titles to consider at each stage of my fictional career. Fascinating.

I still have a lot to learn about artificial intelligence — we all do. Its impact on our world is already palpable, and I believe it will only continue to accelerate disruption in ways that are hard to comprehend right now. Here’s an interesting opinion piece about AI (it may have the NYTimes firewall) and the importance of human skills in an uncertain future. While some people fear the potential negative possibilities of AI and others are excited about it (including investors in the stock market these days), I’m trying to stay tethered somewhere in the middle to see the pros and cons more clearly. Given all the unknowns with AI, one thing I do know is that I need to take responsibility for my own learning and continue finding ways to “muck around” in the messiness, building my understanding and honing my skills to successfully navigate an AI-enabled future. I hope you do the same.

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

The Fourth Turning is Here

2024-04-01T14:38:00.000-04:00

I apologize. I think this post might seem like a book report, but I can’t help it. I’ve been sitting on this since August, as my big summer read last year, “The Fourth Turning is Here” by Neil Howe, has stayed with me throughout these subsequent months. All 560 pages captivated me for weeks on rainy summer days and most every night before I closed my eyes. I’m sure my wife is exhausted listening to me weave it into any social conversation that lasts more than three minutes, but she's too kind to say so.

I first heard about the four turnings last June at our Strategic Horizon Network convening in Omaha that focused on the multi-generational workforce, and I made a pre-order for the July release. I opened the book expecting to gain additional understanding into the multiple generations in the workplace today — Silent (1928-45); Baby Boomer (1946-64); Gen X (1965-1980); Millennial (1981-1996); and Gen Z (1997-TBA) — but what I found was a completely new lens on how to examine U.S. history through generational archetypes.

The author opens with a clinical description of the highly divided and politicized current state of our nation and rationalizes it in a way that provides an odd feeling of comfort by normalizing current events as part of the “ancient Roman saeculum,” which says generally stable societies experience a repeating sequence of four turnings, each of which occurs on average every 20 to 25 years — or the general length of a long life. The four turnings repeat a continuous cycle of a High (generally good times defined by strong public institutions and high levels of conformity), followed by an Awakening (generally exciting, yet disruptive times defined by a weakening of public institutions and a shift from conformity to the individual), followed by an Unraveling (increasingly concerning times defined by an acceleration in the weakening of public institutions and an amplification of individualism), followed by a Crisis (stressful times of division where the public institutions are overwhelmed by the tribal fissures of individualism). The Crisis reaches a climax and is resolved by a restoration of strong public institutions and a shift to conformity that was required to successfully resolve the Crisis.

The four turnings are driven by four generational archetypes (4-minute video summary) that come of age in each turning. The “Artist” generation comes of age during the High (think of the Silent generation during the post-World War II 1950s). The “Prophet” generation comes of age during the Awakening (think of the Boomers in the 1960s). The “Nomad” generation comes of age during the Unraveling (think of the Gen Xers in the 1980s and ’90s). The “Hero” generation comes of age during the Crisis (think of the Greatest Generation during World War II and Millennials today). If you go back 80 years from today, you have World War II; 80s years prior, the Civil War; “Four score and seven years” prior, the American Revolution (or as the author describes it, our first Civil War when thinking about the Rebels and the Loyalists). Howe takes the pattern in the Anglo-American timeline back to the War of the Roses in England, circa 1455! He shows how the Gen Xers are the same Nomad archetype as Hemingway’s “Lost” generation at the turn of the last century and how the Boomers share the same “Prophet” characteristics of turning away from public institutions as the Pilgrims of 1620. He even spotlights how pop culture is reflected in these themes through movies, books, and music.

I consider myself a bit of a history buff, and if I liked reading in college as much as I do now, I probably would have declared it as my major. As much as I like to think I know about U.S. history, the four turnings opened an entirely new way to understand the dynamics and connectivity throughout history. The author draws some connection to the saeculum and the extent it does or doesn’t apply to European, African, and Latin American countries, as well as India, Russia, and China, but most of the book is centered on the United States. In 1991, Howe and William Strauss co-authored the book “Generations,” where they were the first define the term “Millennials.” In 1997, they collaborated again on “The Fourth Turning,” writing that based on historical patterns, the U.S. was likely going to transition from the Unraveling turning that began in 1984 to a new Crisis turning around 2008. At the time, they didn’t know what it would be, but forecasted (based on patterns) that it would be something big … and the Great Recession was pretty big.

Spoiler alert — based on historical patterns, Howe states that we are likely to see the current Crisis turning climax sometime around 2030. He mentions that unlike previous Crisis turnings, this is the first time we are moving toward a climax of the Crisis with the existential threat of global destruction. Indeed, that is true; however, I find it curious that in the last two cycles, the Crisis turning has strengthened public higher education. As the society transitioned from a Crisis turning of weak public institutions to a High turning of strong public institutions, the U.S. government passed the Morrill Act that created our land-grant colleges and universities in 1862 (in the midst of the Civil War) and the GI Bill in 1946 (immediately following WWII) that served as a tremendous catalyst for community colleges. Both historic legislative acts greatly increased access and changed the public higher education landscape over the following decade. While I’m certainly curious to see how this current Crisis turning reaches its climax and resolves itself into a new High turning, I’m even more curious and hopeful to see if a generational idea like the Morrill Act or GI Bill is realized to make the 2030s a transformational decade for public higher education.

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

Principles of Improv as Reminders for Modern Life

2023-12-06T15:17:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a huge fan of Saturday Night Live since I was a teenager. I also love learning about parts of movies that were improvised, like most with Robin Williams, or the Anchorman comedies, or, as I more recently learned, classics like Casablanca and Jaws in which the actors were encouraged to create dialogue in the moment.

Improvisation is underappreciated for its value when applied to the modern workplace. During my 30+ years working in community colleges, I’ve interviewed more than 500 job candidates, including a few who were formally trained in the principles and techniques of improvisation. Some candidates were more direct than others in surfacing their improv training to my questions, but I often reflect on the principles I learned through these conversations to remind myself of good habits necessary to thrive in the VUCA environment we experience on a regular basis. A few candidates gave great responses when I asked about their experience on a team and how that made them a good team member. Each described their training in these five principles and perfectly outlined the attributes of a great team member!

If you’re not familiar with improvisation, it revolves around several core principles that guide all who are trained in the field:

“Yes, and ... :” Accepting what’s presented and building upon it (Embrace Community)
Active Listening: Staying attentive to your scene partner (Model the Way)
Commitment: Fully engaging in the moment without hesitation (Model the Way)
Embracing Mistakes: Seeing errors as opportunities (Inspire Confidence)
Support and Collaboration: Working together to create a cohesive scene or narrative (Encouraging Excellence)

I think about the extent to which these five principles apply to how people show up for work each day. I’d say they describe most of us on our best days — working with what we have and finding a way to “yes,” actively listening to our co-workers, staying fully engaged and committed, seeing mistakes as opportunities, and focusing on support and collaboration with others to find a way forward in any situation. Our challenge is to remember these principles when we’re having an “off” day, when life may temporarily divert us from being our best selves.

As I reflect further on these five principles of improv, I can see MVCC’s Core Values inherently reflected in interesting ways. I see our Core Value of Model the Way in both “Active Listening” and “Commitment.” Embracing mistakes is all about our Core Value and the ability to Inspire Confidence, and being “Supportive and collaborative” is at the heart of our Core Value of Encouraging Excellence.

Finally, I think my favorite improv principle is “Yes, and …” To me, accepting what is presented and building upon it is a wonderful way of capturing our Core Value of Embrace Community, whether it be accepting our students for who they are and where they are in their journey and building upon that, or embracing our colleagues in the same way — finding ways to say “Yes, and …” — what an interesting and useful principle to carry with us each day we show up for the work in front of us in these disruptive and complex times.

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

A Million Reasons Why Sports Can Change Lives

2023-10-18T16:14:00.003-04:00

Growing up near Flint, Michigan, sports were what got me out of bed every day. Gym was my favorite class in school; I would have loved to have it for all seven periods — learning math through statistics and writing stories about sports for English class.

When I got my first car, I turned the trunk into a locker filled with my golf clubs; a basketball; baseball glove, bat, ball, and cleats; tennis racket and balls; a good leather football and a nerf football to play in the lake or a friend’s pool; bowling ball; and a wiffle ball and bats — just in case. I never knew when friends might call to play something, but I was always ready. I played varsity golf and basketball in high school, and as graduation approached, I knew I wanted to play golf in college.

Neither of my parents attended college, but they were supportive of my dreams. I quietly wished I could go to the University of Michigan, but I certainly didn’t try hard enough to get the grades I needed. I heard about older kids from my school playing sports at four-year colleges, so I visited those campuses and was able to talk to the golf coaches. I learned that these small private colleges couldn’t give athletic scholarships because they were (what I later learned) NCAA Division III. I was good enough to make their teams, but the tuition was much more than my family could afford. I spoke with the coach at Michigan State who told me I was good enough to make the practice squad and get the “gear,” but I’d never play in a real Big 10 match. I thought my dream of extending my athletic career was dead, and I wasn’t as excited to go to college like most of my friends.

Toward the end of my senior year of high school, my golf coach encouraged me to talk to Stan Gooch, the golf coach at Mott Community College, a member of the National Junior Athletic Association (NJCAA). Coach Gooch said I could play in every match, get a full-tuition scholarship, and, if I worked on my game, I could probably walk-on at a four-year college. I grew up 11 miles away from Mott and had never heard of it. I didn’t know the difference between Mott and Michigan State. I spent that summer quietly avoiding conversations about where I was going to college because all my friends were going to universities.

From my very first class, I loved Mott. I loved every teacher and every class. The faculty knew my name and took an interest in my success by encouraging me to do well in my classes. I loved Coach Gooch and enjoyed playing on the golf team. In late December, I got a call from Mott’s basketball coach asking me to try out for the team based on a referral from Coach Gooch. The team had lost several players due to semester grades and other issues. We were down to six players, and I got to play almost every minute of every game for the second half of the season. It was an amazing experience.

Coach Gooch encouraged me to transfer to Oakland University, where I was able to walk-on the golf team and secure a scholarship for my junior and senior seasons. As a communications major at Oakland, I wasn’t sure about my career path. I told a mentor about the profound impact my experience at Mott Community College had on my life, and he encouraged me to pursue a career in community college education.

Motivated by this newfound purpose, I applied to the higher education program at the University of Michigan with an emphasis in community college administration. I started work as a research analyst at Washtenaw Community College when I was 23 years old, finished my Ph.D., and have spent the last 30-plus years working in community colleges and living life way beyond my wildest expectations.

I often tell people that many of the skills I use every day in my role as MVCC President were honed on the golf course and basketball courts in high school and college. My time at Mott Community College altered the trajectory of my life. The opportunity to be an NJCAA student-athlete was the driving force in my college choice, which set that trajectory in motion. For that, I am forever grateful.

I encourage you to donate $1 to the “Million Reasons Why” campaign — not just because of the ways that NJCAA athletics changed my life, but for the millions of student-athletes they’ve supported over the years and those they’ll continue to support in the future.

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

The Multi-Generational Workplace – This Year’s Core Workshop

2023-09-26T11:44:00.001-04:00

We often take for granted that we have four different generations working side by side in the modern workplace. It’s an element that, if overlooked, can contribute to friction, miscommunication, and issues that reduce the vibrancy and positive energy in a culture. To address these dynamics, the multi-generational workplace will be the focus of this year’s MVCC Core Workshop, an element of our Employee Enrichment Program.

The years sometimes vary by experts, but the generations are generally labeled as Baby Boomers (1946-1964); Generation X (1965-1980); Millennials (1981-1996); and Generation Z (1997-2012). While individuals certainly have their own unique characteristics, there are general attributes, preferences, and styles that can be applied to each generation based on shared experiences and the context in which they were raised. With the acceleration of technology, some preferences between generations have become more distinct; however, each generation has wonderful assets and perspectives that add to the diversity and productivity of the workplace.

Our summer Strategic Horizon Network colloquium was titled “Engaging the Multi-Generational Workplace.” MVCC joined teams from eight other colleges in Omaha, Nebraska, to hear from the Gallup Organization and Quantum Workplace about the three million workplace surveys they conduct annually. We then visited Mutual of Omaha, Union Pacific Railroad, Nebraska Medicine Health System, and the Omaha Public Power District to learn about their strategies and insights on the topic.

During the Omaha program, I learned about the four turnings of history and recently finished reading “The Fourth Turning is Here” by Neil Howe. The author provides an update on his previous research that identifies four generational archetypes (Hero, Prophet, Nomad, and Artist) that have appeared over the past 500 years in the Anglo-American historical pattern. These archetypes influence the ancient Roman belief in the saeculum — a natural cycle of civilization that occurs in four turnings (High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis) over the period of a long life, roughly 80 to 100 years.

While one can identify shortcomings and certainly challenge parts of the framework, I do find it fascinating — just think about 80 years ago (World War II), and 80 years prior (U.S. Civil War), and 80 years prior (rethink the American Revolution as more of a Civil War between those loyal to the King and those of the rebellion). Here’s an eight-minute video where the author describes the four turnings and the generational influence in shaping them.

More directly related to the modern workplace, research from employee engagement surveys conducted by the Gallup Organization and Quantum Workplace has found that despite the differences between generations, individuals want the same things regardless of their age or generational grouping:

Reasonable and fair compensation
Flexibility
Connection between their daily work and greater purpose
Recognition for a job well done
Opportunities to learn and grow

As a public community college committed to student success and community development, we strive to provide these five elements to the greatest extent possible. MVCC’s Core Workshop represents a unique opportunity for each of us to learn and grow. It’s a chance to have a shared experience with common information — usually just 60 to 90 minutes — with colleagues we may not interact with on a regular basis. I look forward to the conversations that come from this year’s workshop.

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

Reimagine | Redesign | Restore: A framework for an educated, skilled, and talented workforce in the Mohawk Valley

2023-09-13T12:10:00.000-04:00

The Mohawk Valley region is a wonderful combination of urban and rural: left, right, and in-between; pervasive agriculture and semiconductor manufacturing; state-of-the-art healthcare and cybersecurity; inspiring professional sports and arts; the bedrocks of finance and insurance; storied history and the promise of refugees and immigrants. Our history is as alive as it is varied, and it will serve as the foundation of our future. The momentum in the Mohawk Valley is palpable, and many would say the future is as bright as it’s ever been for the region. Delivering on the promise and potential, however, will require an educated, skilled, and talented workforce for the future.

Creating the workforce for the future involves an increasingly individualized experience through a new educational model that clarifies options throughout extended career pathways with multiple on- and off-ramps for people to integrate education, learning, upskilling, and work more easily. In light of the demographic drought that explains workforce shortage challenges in most every industry throughout the country, it’s critically important to find more intentionally designed and inclusive educational program solutions for everyone to more easily find their way into skilled jobs with career potential.

It is within this context that Mohawk Valley Community College has developed a three-level framework to provide our region with a comprehensive workforce solution, offering abundant pathways for individuals to enter into sustainable, well-paying careers. By embracing the “Big Blur” framework from Jobs For the Future, MVCC is partnering with the Oneida-Herkimer-Madison (OHM)-BOCES and their component school districts to “Reimagine” the transition from high school to college. With new agreements related to more intentionally shared professional development and educational programming, as well as an innovative partnership for alternative education students, students will benefit from the blurring of lines between high school, college, and work.

The second level of the framework involves redesigning the student experience — a journey of organizational transformation that MVCC has been pursuing since 2018. From remapping curriculum to rethinking developmental education and moving from traditional academic advising to case management advising with wrap-around holistic supports and other disruptive strategies, MVCC has intentionally and effectively redesigned our programs, systems, and processes for a more individualized, efficient, and meaningful student experience.

Finally, restoring the promise of education is the final component to this framework for the future. For the past 40 years, societal norms in this country have fostered a collective narrative that attending college was the singular path to prosperity. While annual income data may reflect this to a certain level, the messaging became narrowly myopic in selling a four-year degree as the primary form of college when multiple options and pathways can yield similar results. Restoring the promise of education requires disrupting our assumptions about who has access to postsecondary education; what they need to learn; how the programming is delivered and paid for; and the pace and rhythm by which education is accessed across varying durations.

The Reimagine | Redesign | Restore framework is intended to serve as a guide for Mohawk Valley Community College and our partners to push ourselves and continue to disrupt our approach to education, learning, and workforce development in the region. This conceptual white paper provides more details for you to consider as we evolve our thinking to bring these elements to life in the years to come.

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

Surf’s Up — Learning to Ride the Waves While Weathering the Storm

2023-08-23T15:56:00.000-04:00

Mindfulness leader Jon Kabat-Zinn is quoted as saying, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” I believe this captures our reality at MVCC — we are learning to surf, and surf well.

As I enter my 17th year as President of MVCC, I am continually inspired by the resilience, hard work, and caring manner of MVCC faculty and staff, and our collective ability to adapt. I feel like I’m just starting my third presidency — they all just happen to have been at MVCC.

The first period, from 2007 to 2014, was dominated by enrollment growth fueled by the Great Recession, strengthening systems, and building capacity. The second period, from 2015 to 2022, centered around increasing student success with our Guided Pathways reforms and, of course, navigating challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, it feels as though we are transitioning to a new era at the College — one likely filled with programs and services delivered at a speed and scale through partnerships we can hardly imagine today.

I find insight in Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s quote, “When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That is what this storm is all about.” Similarly, as an organization, we have undergone significant changes through numerous Guided Pathways initiatives to transform the student experience — all while enduring the COVID-19 pandemic, processing millions of dollars in stimulus funds to make up for lost revenue, and redesigning workflows and job responsibilities across departments to absorb a 9% reduction in our full-time staffing pattern by eliminating 35 full-time positions and laying off three existing staff members.

We’ve had to surf the waves as they came.

It’s not easy navigating our environment when the economy of Upstate New York has a 3.3% unemployment rate and a shrinking number of high school graduates. This is compounded with public and private four-year colleges lowering their admissions standards and accepting students they wouldn’t have considered five years ago — students who otherwise would have attended a community college. And the State of New York, which is supposed to provide roughly one-third of our operational revenue, gave us only $350,000 more this year than they did in 2008. Despite being part of a “historic” $163M investment for public higher education in the recent state budget, community colleges received the same level of funding as last year and were told to be grateful. Read more in my May 2 blog post, “Against the Odds.”

How do I know we’re learning to surf at MVCC? Well, at a time when the Gallup organization publishes research on employee engagement and says that workers are “burned out” and “disengaged,” last spring’s employee survey showed that 89% of full-time employees feel proud to be a part of MVCC, and 80% look forward to coming to work each day. This pride and enthusiasm show up in our collaborative efforts with school district partners to reimagine the high school-to-college transition, as well as our ongoing efforts to redesign core programs and services to meet individualized needs and restore the promise of education with our FastTrack Career Programs, specifically designed to serve adults who have fallen through the cracks of our educational system. I will share a more detailed white paper on this “reimagine, redesign, and restore” framework in a future blog post.

As we pursue the “re-work” strategies mentioned above, we know artificial intelligence (AI) is a game changer — much like the internet was 30 years ago. We recognize this moment and stand ready to meet it at MVCC. AI will be the primary focus of our organizational learning in the coming year with webinars, workshops, and crowdsourcing opportunities for faculty and staff to learn together and do what MVCC does best — scan our environment, analyze best and emerging practices, and adapt what works into our culture in ways that make us better and stronger.

As punctuated as the change of the last several years has been, I believe the coming year may be one of relative equilibrium — the calm before another storm if you will. It will be a time for us to navigate the intensity of the daily crunch, but also a time to take a collective breath to take stock of how far we’ve come and consider the next strategic arc for the College. It will also be a time for us to ask ourselves important questions that need to be asked in ways that will better position us with a sense of readiness for whatever comes next.

With all this in mind, as I think about MVCC and the future, I’m reminded of this quote of unknown source: “Fate whispered to the warrior, you cannot withstand the storm. The warrior whispers back, I am the storm.”

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

Hope vs. Optimism

2023-05-09T09:50:00.003-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Against the Odds

2023-05-02T11:09:00.001-04:00

There are times when an organization needs to grieve. As we face unprecedented uncertainty in our budget, and in the Higher Education space in general, this is one of those times for MVCC. When any organization is forced to endure layoffs, everyone is left with a sense of loss, a fear for the future, and a very natural questioning of the decisions that have been made and why it is that we had to make them. This is true for all of us — including me. So, as we take a moment to pause, to grieve, and to reflect as an organization, I wanted to give some context for the situation. Of course, context will not alleviate the feelings of loss that we, as a community, must work through, but I hope to situate that grief in the larger context.

Thinking about this post, I asked ChatGPT “What does against the odds mean?” The AI model responded, “The phrase "against the odds" means to accomplish something or succeed despite facing difficult or unfavorable circumstances. It suggests that the chances of success were low or that the situation was challenging, but despite those odds, the person or thing was able to succeed. It is often used to describe a situation where someone overcomes significant obstacles or achieves something that others thought was unlikely or impossible.” I find it fascinating how I could not have chosen a collection of words to better describe MVCC’s financial circumstances.

Roughly 95% of annual revenue for community colleges comes from a combination of student tuition, county sponsorship, and state aid. The ideal is that the proportionate distribution would be one-third, one-third, one-third from these three funding streams — we are nowhere close to that ideal. What made me think about the notion of “against the odds” is the fact that MVCC continues to thrive and serve Oneida County despite the disinvestment from the State of New York.

Until recently, state aid for community colleges was allocated on an enrollment-based funding formula. When enrollment went up, state aid was supposed to increase and consequently, when enrollment decreased, so did state aid. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. When the Great Recession hit, enrollment increased, but the state cut our per student allocation with the rationale that we would make it up with the increase in student tuition and the promise that they’d restore the funding when the economy recovered. MVCC watched its state aid per student decline 12% from 2009-2011 and waited until 2016 to see the per student rate restored to 2008 levels. The Great Recession was an anomaly with historic increases in enrollment, so it was easily anticipated that community college enrollment would drop as people returned to work. Rather than stemming the tide, the state funding formula put community colleges in free fall despite our efforts to establish a “funding floor” otherwise phrased as, “Please don’t cut us.” As a result, the state reduced community college funding by 14% from 2015 to 2020.

The outcomes have been devastating. It wasn’t until 2021 that the state established a funding floor for community colleges — a funding structure that K-12 and SUNY state-operated four-year campuses have always enjoyed, and which both the counties and state are legislated to comply with. However, the state has not adhered to its legislated commitment, which means that MVCC currently receives roughly $353,000 more from the state than it did in 2008. Yet, we serve nearly as many individuals when considering the increase in part-time students and non-credit workforce training programs. In contrast, Oneida County has made good on its commitment and has increased its annual base support of MVCC by 18% during the same period. If the state would have simply matched the County’s commitment, MVCC would be receiving roughly $1.8 million more in our base budget, which is roughly close to the structural budgetary deficit we rally to resolve on an annual basis. Let me situate those numbers. We serve, if you take into account credit and non-credit programming, more than 15,000 students with a $50 million budget. When compared to the budgets of K-12 and public four-year colleges in New York, community college budgets are a fraction in total. It shouldn’t be this hard to serve the educational needs of our community.

The reality of the situation is that the odds are stacked against us, but as an organization we are more efficient, more resilient, and more creative than many of our counterparts. If anyone is positioned to triumph against the odds, it is MVCC. So, today we will grieve our loss and wrestle with the realities of the difficulties that we face. However, we also must look to the future, to know that as an organization we will heal, and as we always do at MVCC, in the long run, we will not only survive, but more importantly, we will thrive.

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

Collaboration and Creativity are Necessary for Adapting to Rapid Change

2023-04-27T10:28:00.002-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2021-03-22T11:30:00.003-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Staying Tethered in the Workplace – Personal Guideposts

2021-02-05T10:50:00.001-05:00

While the COVID-19 pandemic has upended most every aspect of life for all of us, I have been thinking a great deal about one situation in particular — college students getting ready to secure their first career-related full-time job.

Many may be interviewing and onboarding via videoconference, starting their work remotely, missing out on the informal cultural cues they would have gotten under the old normal circumstances. Thinking about the world of work in the current context has also made me reflect on the core principles I’ve embraced throughout my career that guide me to this day. I share them here with the hope that they might be helpful to new college graduates starting out, as well as individuals further along in their careers who can compare and contrast them with their own guiding principles for success.

You Can Never Get Lost on the High Road

Roughly 20 years ago a colleague of mine (who was 20 years my elder) and I found ourselves in a difficult situation with no clear solution. Our only options were choices that neither of us wanted to make. After much discussion, he said, “Well, Randy — I always say, you can’t get lost on the high road.” And with that, our choice became very clear. Since then, I repeat this phrase whenever I am faced with a difficult decision. People often speak of integrity as something you must constantly nurture and never want to lose. This phrase helps keep integrity intact.

Under-promise and Over-deliver

Building your personal brand is more important than ever these days and having dependability at the core of your reputation is a great asset. I learned early on that making a habit of under-promising and over-delivering goes a long way to building your personal brand. I started my career in institutional research, which had me constantly responding to requests for data. Managing expectations is critical, so I’d always ask for a deadline on the request. If they said Wednesday, I’d ask if Friday was okay. More often than not, they’d say “sure” or “whenever.” I’d tell them they’d have it by Friday. When I gave it to them on Wednesday, they were surprised and very thankful. Under-promising and over-delivering whenever possible infuses positive energy into the workplace and strengthens interpersonal relationships with others.

Add Value Wherever You Can

I played a lot of sports growing up, and my parents always reinforced the notion that it wasn’t about me and my individual performance, but rather about the overall team effort and my individual contribution to the larger outcome. I was just happy to be on the field or court, adding value wherever I could. The same applies to the workplace. We all have our assigned jobs, but no task should be beneath anyone. I still take notes in small group discussions and pick up wind-blown trash as I walk across campus — whatever it takes — because I’m part of a team and just happy to be in the game. It’s about having a “give first without expecting anything in return” mentality that somehow pays dividends beyond whatever you give. I’ve kept this notion top of mind throughout my career and have found it to be a differentiator.

Listen More Than You Speak

Politicians, philosophers, and celebrities have all been quoted referencing the fact that we have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we speak. A related sentiment from these often-quoted individuals is how no one can learn anything when they are the one talking. It sounds simple, but it’s not easy to do. However, if you can apply it — particularly early in your career — you will accelerate your learning and influence through the knowledge you gain by simply giving others space to talk. If you focus on the quality of your words rather than the quantity, people will come to value your opinion and contributions.

Avoid the Rumor Mill

One thing that isn’t talked about enough in career advice is the rumor mill. I had a mentor early in my career who quoted Eleanor Roosevelt: “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” Fortunately, she was the kind of supervisor who encouraged me to ask her questions and, rather than feed the rumor mill, would help me reframe and recognize that there are multiple sides to every story and that all organizations are complex. By encouraging me to focus on my own locus of control and what I could influence, I’ve always been able to stay centered on my own work and responsibilities without getting distracted by gossip and rumors. People know who feeds into the rumor mill and it usually works against the reputation of those whose names are always in the mix.

See Yourself as the Hero in Your Own Journey

And finally, embracing Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” and applying it to yourself — you are the hero in your own journey — is a concept that I rely on to this day. I liked this brief video so much that I watched the entire short film. While the film is a little quirky, the messages are useful and increased my understanding of how each of us has gifts and potential that, when nurtured through the lens of the hero’s journey, allow us to commit to the challenges before us, helped by mentors and guides that appear along the way to help us secure the success and treasure we all seek.

What are the principles that guide you for your own success?

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

Small Bets – Innovating at the Edge

2021-01-20T16:32:00.002-05:00

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified many trends that were creating disruption even before 2020 and accelerated elements of our society that brought the future to the present overnight. With enrollment declines and dramatic decreases in state and local government budgets, funding models for public community colleges have become more fragile than ever. Since 2007, the convergence of technologies has fostered the development of new and disruptive educational platforms, and this has only been magnified by the pandemic. Augmented and virtual reality, as well as robotics and artificial intelligence, are developing at rapid rates with tremendous potential to disrupt learning even further. And the ever-widening gap between the “haves and have-nots” in this country has grown to the largest among any of the G7 nations, with the wealth gap between the richest families and the poorest in this country doubling between 1989 and 2016. This has been made even worse by the pandemic — burying our most vulnerable students behind layered and intersecting barriers to advancement.

It’s enough to make one curl up and just hope for survival. It’s overwhelming at times to consider how fast everything is moving amidst such complexity. However, if the idea of making small bets — innovating at the edges of an organization — is embraced, an organization can shrink the change, as Dan Heath suggests. MVCC has been nurturing our organizational culture to continually scan the environment to monitor these macro trends and take bold actions to make small bets that will keep the College well-positioned for the increasingly complex and ever accelerating future. With partners like Jobs For the Future (JFF), the Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties, and many others, we’re able to identify promising practices and rally the resources to launch minimal viable products (MVPs) and begin iterating our prototypes.

Securing the Financial Future of the Institution

State and local funding combined with student tuition have long been the primary revenue base of community college funding. Grant funding is mostly temporary and is not sustainable, so something more is needed. The MVCC Foundation created a separate Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), Tea Leaf Ventures, to support three social enterprises. If a social enterprise is a commercial venture that supports social good, why not make the College the social good? Tea Leaf Aircraft Exchange, Tea Leaf Manufacturing, and Tea Leaf Touring and Consulting are all in their infancy but hold great promise for new and sustainable revenue for MVCC.

Embracing Disruptive Platforms

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are disrupting the way in which people access content and learn. Coursera enrolls 73 million and edX enrolls 32 million individuals around the world. We are prototyping how to create non-credit to credit-bearing pathways for students to complete this content and apply it to their credit programs. Our computer science faculty created a pathway from the Coursera platform for the Google IT certification curriculum. In addition, we’ve also used the edX platform to deliver a non-credit leadership certification to students in our YouthBuild program at our Educational Outreach Center. As content delivery is changing, so is the transcripting of learning. MVCC recently launched the digital credentialing platform Credly to allow students to post their micro-credential certifications on their personal social media accounts like LinkedIn.

Anticipating Accelerating Technology

Technology is accelerating an incredible rate. Robotics, augmented and virtual reality, and behavioral “nudging” are all technologies of promise to increase student engagement and success. Robots have been the thing of science-fiction but they are increasingly becoming more prevalent in society. While some robots are available at substantial costs, MVCC faculty are working with the Cyberhawks student club to program Misty the Robot, which was purchased with a $2,500 donation. Misty will be available on the Rome Campus in the near future to interact with students.

Our YouthBuild program is implementing immersive learning technology through SkillMill Training through Interplay. We also implemented Persistence Plus this past Fall to connect with students through texting powered by intentional messages of engagement supported by artificial intelligence that is having a positive impact on student retention.

Muting the Impact of the Wealth Gap

Although College-Community-Connection (C3) is an important component in our current holistic student supports, it’s actually a “small bet” early prototype of what may very well scale to be a fundamental component in our future operations if the current national trends of a widening wealth gap between the “haves and have nots” and the growing complexity and stress of daily life continue. Ensuring that our students’ basic needs are met and that they can rely on the College to help make sense of all the learning options that will help them secure a good job or career will become more important over the next decade. C3 has all the makings of what will be needed if these trends continue.

COVID-19 has compromised our students’ ability to build the relationships they need to secure a great job and pursue the career of their choice. Our Career Services department is working with a cohort of about 125 students on a special LinkedIn project that will allow us to test a few things and gradually scale up the ways in which we get our students on the platform to expand their professional networks and build social capital for themselves.

Guided Pathways as Prelude

Guided Pathways is a comprehensive framework to increase equity and student success. Given the magnitude and scale of changes called for in the framework, it’s hard to imagine Guided Pathways would be a small bet. But if the trends of a growing wealth gap, decreasing support of public education requiring new business models, accelerating technology reshaping the student experience, and increased stress and complexity in society, the Guided Pathways framework is a prelude to the types of changes that will be needed 10 and 20 years into the future.

All of these small bets are in motion. Some are more developed than others, but all of them combined signal that MVCC is focused on how the present connects to the future. Making small bets like these positions us to learn with emerging and promising approaches to serving our students better and keeping the College strong and well-positioned in what will likely continue to be a very uncertain future.

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

Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

2020-10-15T12:37:00.005-04:00

I never thought my worldview could change from simply attending yet another Zoom meeting, but that is what recently happened. Our vibrant and inspiring Muslim Student Association (MSA) presented a program titled, “Hawk Talk: Meet the Muslims of MVCC.” I felt fortunate for the opportunity to hear from a panel of five MVCC faculty members who are Muslim, as they courageously shared their experiences that included comparing living in the United States with their experiences in other countries. The 90 minutes flew by thanks to their stories and the brilliant facilitation of a student leader from the MSA.

Prior to the program, I did a quick refresher to remind myself of the different types of Islam and the difference between Islam (the religion) and Muslim (the people who follow Islam). I clicked the Zoom link, hit my mute button, and got ready to learn.

With each panelist’s story, common themes quickly emerged. Like most religions, Islam is very personal. Despite the panelists sharing very different experiences and stories, they all found a sense of peace that comes from their faith and how Islam’s focus on kindness and doing good deeds makes it more a way of life that blurs the lines between a religion and simply how one lives.

A question was asked about their thoughts on stereotypes about the treatment of women in Islam. All five panelists and the facilitator happened to be women and commented how most stereotypes about oppression are more about gender than religion. They all had very interesting insights that highlighted the difference between religious oppression and cultural oppression. What we see in the U.S. media as oppression due to religious beliefs is often, in reality, a reflection of the culture in those countries or regions — oppression that is disconnected from the religion of Islam. For example, contrary to the perception of most Americans, in many countries Muslim women have the choice of whether or not to wear a head scarf, as the Quran does not prescribe specific garments like burqas, veils, etc., and most Muslim women do not view the hijab as an oppressive garment or something that is forced upon them.

Listening to their stories made me ask the question, “Is the subtle gender bias you experience here in the States more frustrating than the more overt religious bias you experience?” They all said “Yes.” Some went on to point out how the media presents such a myopic, stereotypical view of obedient and oppressed women in Islamic-majority countries and yet, those countries have a history of female leadership and women’s rights with some having elected female prime ministers.

Specifically, in the past several decades, a number of countries in which Muslims are a majority, including Turkey (Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, 1993), Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto (1988-1996), Bangladesh (prime ministers Begum Khaleda Zia (1991-1996, 2001-2009) and Sheikh Hasina (1996-2001, 2009-Present), Indonesia (President Megawati Sukarnoputri, 2001), Kosovo (President Atifete Jahjaga, 2011), and Kyrgyzstan (President Roza Otunbayeva, 2010) have been led by women; Mauritius, which has a significant Muslim minority, elected a female Muslim (Ameenah Gurib) as president in 2015. At one stage in the 1990s, over 300 million Muslims — at that time, between one-third and a quarter of the world's entire Islamic population — were simultaneously ruled by women when elected heads of state. In contrast, this country has yet to elect a female president and has yet to ratify an amendment to the U.S. constitution guaranteeing women equal rights under the law (not just leaving it to existing 1972 legislation that could theoretically be overturned by a congressional vote).

My worldview was further expanded when the panelists were asked what they’d like to see changed about Islam. They’d like to see a more complex view of the Prophet Mohammed presented and celebrated. Too often he is associated with war, but he was a strong advocate for human rights of all people — women and slaves included. The panelists said they’d also like to see the media and society celebrate the peaceful focus of Islam along with the tremendous diversity that exists within the religion to break down the short-sighted and simplified stereotypes that are all too common in this country.

With COVID-19, I was anxious about the College being able to continue our legacy of providing such diverse and extensive programming opportunities available to our students, but I’m not as concerned anymore. The pandemic presents a fascinating opportunity for us to seize in this moment. Talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion and engaging in uncomfortable conversations takes effort, intention, and courage. Pre-COVID, I would have had to muster the energy and courage to physically go to a room and sit with my “white-maleness” as a visible minority and risk being exposed for all my ignorance about the topic in a room full of experts with real, lived experiences … that would’ve been pretty uncomfortable for me and most people like me. Thanks to the Zoom delivery format, it only required me to click on a link, hit my mute button, listen, take notes, and think. It was literally so exhilarating to expand my worldview that I couldn’t help but comment in the chat and quickly unmute myself when the opportunity came to ask questions. It was the most comfortable I’ve ever been with being uncomfortable.

I’m grateful for the leadership of our Muslim Student Association, the wonderful student facilitator and the brilliantly courageous panelists for providing our MVCC community with such a meaningful program. I look forward to the MSA’s upcoming programs and I encourage everyone to attend (look for more information to come.):

Open Mic Night with Imam Thomas Facchine: Oct. 26, 2020
The Humanity of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) from a Christian’s Perspective by Dr. Craig Considine of Rice University: Nov. 13, 2020

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

Mountains, Molehills, and Thriving in Chaos

2020-09-21T15:10:00.001-04:00

Monday, September 21, marks six full months since MVCC transitioned to remote operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those have been the longest, most complicated, draining, and unfamiliar 26 weeks, 182 days, and 4,368 hours of my life.

While we’ve been at this a while now, it still seems that at any given moment on any given day, something that normally would have been an isolated molehill can feel like an insurmountable mountain. However, since the start of the fall semester, I’ve noticed more and more people sharing what I would describe as normalizing chaos. I know we all are experiencing the pandemic differently, but there are some common elements that seem to apply to most of us at one point or another. It may be some armchair psychology, but here are a few helpful things I’ve learned from talking to others at the College.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve said, or heard someone else say, “Just taking it one day at a time!” The idea of staying in the moment has never seemed so important, and is a key strategy for working through the chaos surrounding us. Wishing for the pandemic to end and for things to go back to our old normal is an easy but incredibly unproductive endeavor. I know when I let my brain go there, it increases my stress and anxiety levels in an instant. Slowing down and focusing on the moment can increase appreciation and gratitude for the moments we do have. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve noticed an increase in people recognizing others at the College; colleagues are expressing appreciation for the efforts of their peers for providing some kind of help or for just doing a great job. While this is wonderful to see in any context, it is especially important now — research has shown that when we practice gratitude in various forms, it makes us healthier and more productive.

I’ve also heard people, in so many words, managing their locus of control — trying to worry only about the things within their control and putting the things they can’t into a more productive context. In other words, if I can’t influence or control it, I’m going to call it what it is, and instead deal with the things that I can control. I’ve seen this result in myself and others who seem to be “making the most” of our current circumstances, and have been surprised at how creative we were at solving a problem.

Another strategy for thriving in this environment has to do with how people are managing their time. Our regular daily schedules have been turned upside down. Whether it be the normal rhythm of our children going to school, after-school activities, or even getting together with friends, everything has become more complicated. Making time for yourself and your own well-being has never been more important or more challenging. I recently read an article that suggests identifying a ceremonial or cognitive “moment” that ends your work day so that your work doesn’t bleed over into your personal evening/family time. Rather than doubling your time streaming or watching television, consider trying something new that you wouldn’t have tried otherwise. If you’re feeling in a funk, use the pandemic as an excuse to do that thing you always wanted or stretch yourself in a new way. Perhaps now is the time.

At MVCC, we’re starting the fourth week of our fall semester, and are six months into our first year of learning what it's like to operate during a pandemic. Some days are harder than others, but I’ve been inspired by stories from throughout the College in which pandemic-forced changes to the way we work have prompted innovative solutions that make us even better — many we will keep when the restrictions are lifted. And I guess that’s just it: Drawing on what Jim Collins identifies as the Stockdale Paradox in uncertain times, it’s healthier and more productive to focus on the belief that the restrictions will be lifted rather than to worry about when they’ll be lifted. Until then, taking one day at a time, focusing on our locus of control, and caring for our own well-being will help those molehills remain molehills so we have what we need when the real mountains get in our way.

I’d welcome your thoughts on this, as well as any strategies you’ve found useful in normalizing the chaos that seems to be all around us. You can contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

How I Spent My “Summer Vacation”

2020-09-10T13:13:00.001-04:00

The Summer of 2020 was the summer that wasn’t for most all of us. The pandemic and related economic downturn sent many of us inside (except for front-line essential workers who still went to work every day) and removed most of the hurried rush from our daily lives. This allowed many Americans to slow down and see racial strife in our country in new ways.

It was unfortunate that media coverage of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests were overtaken by riots — much in the way the message of NFL players who knelt during the National Anthem to protest racial injustice was overtaken by those who amplified the alternative narrative to make the kneeling about the American flag. Nevertheless, I believe a good portion of Americans began to see, for the first time, that racism in this country is systemic, composed of several layered and troubling elements that society works hard to mask and downplay.

Maximizer is my top strength in the Clifton Strengthsfinder assessment, so I gave some thought toward how I might make the most of “the great slowdown.” I’m not a project person, so it wasn’t going to be about building something, although learning to play the guitar or taking up a new hobby were considered. After being greatly moved by the BLM movement, I committed to expanding my understanding of racial injustice in this country.

I was raised in a very homogenous community outside of Flint, Michigan, and my primary exposure to anyone different from me was playing basketball in the city. It wasn’t until I attended graduate school at the University of Michigan that I really spent any considerable time in conversation with people of different racial and religious backgrounds and sexual orientations. I found that many of my beliefs were rooted in a lack of exposure and understanding that led to stereotypes, prejudices, and bias. When I got to know people who were different from me, I began to see everyone as individuals. The more I got to know my fellow students, colleagues, and friends, it became evident just how much I had to learn about diversity and race.

Over the last 30 years, my career in community colleges has given me the opportunity to learn a great deal about race through reading, workshops, and many friendships, acquaintances, and interactions with others. As much as I thought I knew about race, nothing prepared me for what I learned this summer. My journey started with emailing a statement to the College on the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, then reflecting on how to go beyond those words and take action — if only for myself.

A friend recommended I visit the Justice in June website where I found a brilliantly curated inventory of videos, podcasts, and articles about race in America. I started with the 10 minutes a day routine and moved from there.

I invited MVCC employees of color to join me for two rounds of meetings where many shared their experiences at the College and recommendations on how to make MVCC more inclusive. Their stories have inspired and changed me more than they will ever know.

Netflix had a special section of shows about the Black experience in America, and “I Am Not Your Negro” caught my eye. It was a documentary that felt more like a film to me because it was done in a way that engaged me from start to finish. It focused on race relations in mid-20th-century America through the eyes of author James Baldwin. This led me to look up his “pindrop speech” at Harvard in 1965 on YouTube, which subsequently filled my “recommended videos” queue with fascinating resources about race that I would not have found otherwise.

I took several different implicit bias tests from the Harvard implicit bias project.

And on the recommendation of a colleague, I’m currently reading “Microaggressions in Everyday Life” by Derald Wing Sue and learning about the devastating cumulative effect of microaggressions that people of color experience every day. I have come to believe that microaggressions are a very uncomfortable valley through which white people need to walk and learn about the implicit bias that we all have — and yet, I’m embarrassed to say that I had never heard the term “microaggressions” until just a few short years ago.

You might say this blog post is the equivalent of the first day of third grade, standing in front of the class to present how I spent my summer vacation. At times it felt like anything but a vacation, with many uncomfortable moments and new revelations. As is the case with so much learning, it’s not as much about the answers you find as the questions you discover that make the difference in your growth. Looking back on this summer, which has been filled with so much stress and reasons to be sad, this work feels like the first few steps of a long, meaningful, and fascinating journey that will likely never end for me.

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

Coming to Back to Life

2020-07-24T12:55:00.005-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Phase of “New Normal”

2020-07-17T14:10:00.002-04:00

MVCC went fully remote on March 23, 2020. Over those 119 days, our world was turned upside down and rotated a few different ways, but we’re still on our feet. We all have masks now and the rhythm of our days is different yet the same. The Mohawk Valley region is doing fairly well with limiting the number of infections and maintaining capacity in our healthcare system. Higher education (and MVCC) was approved to reopen when the region achieved Phase Four status, so we’ll move from fully remote to partially remote on July 20, 2020. As we look toward our staggered return to campus, I can’t help but reflect on where we’ve been and where I see us going.

To maintain a reasonable density of people on campus, we’re bringing staff back in a staggered, phased approach. On Monday, July 20, we’ll begin a three-phased, staggered return of our workforce. Our Responsible Restart Plan that was approved by SUNY has an outer limit of the percentage of our full-time employees, but we’ll be well short in each phase, having the wiggle room to increase on-campus staffing if we need it as follows:

July 20 — No more than 33% (26% projected)
Aug. 3 — No more than 50% (34% projected)
Aug. 24 — No more than 66% (46% projected)

While many of our essential employees in Facilities, Public Safety, and IT have been coming to campus every day and “flex-essential” employees in the Business Office and many others have been coming to campus periodically over the past four months, it’s time for many of the rest of us to move toward the “masked normal” they’ve all been living. We’ll have roughly 25% of our courses on campus along with more than 150 students living in the residence halls. Additionally, we’ll have an as-of-yet unknown number of students coming to campus for access to the internet, useful study spaces, and likely a sense of a normal college experience with in-person human interaction under current social distancing guidelines.

The transition to remote operations over the past few months has brought new and unique experiences to us both individually and collectively. We’ve been able to grieve the sense of loss we’ve felt from our lifetimes of routine and also celebrate the building of new memories both personally and professionally. Our challenge going forward is to commit ourselves in the effort of keeping everyone safe while raising our own bar of personal accountability to make sure the work gets done for students and each other in the face of unsettling and unfamiliar circumstances. I’ve been so proud to see our culture evolve over the past few years to increasingly adapt, innovate, and rise to the challenges that came our way.

Just when we thought transitioning to remote operations was our greatest challenge, rising to what the coming Fall semester is likely to bring will most certainly challenge us to bring our best selves to work every day, so get ready to surprise yourself and each other with what we’re going to do.

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

Change, Grief, and Working Remotely

2020-04-14T08:51:00.004-04:00

When I am faced with a confusing phenomenon or experience, I challenge myself to make sense of it. Working remotely has been a confusing and uncomfortable shift for me, which has me thinking a lot about change lately. I have studied organizational change for almost thirty years, and generally enjoy change in both my personal and professional experiences. But the past three weeks have provided a palpable application of what I’ve come to learn. Two important elements of change worth noting are the pace of change and the emotions of change. It was clear that this change to remote operations was much too quick for everyone, but processing the emotions associated with what we all are experiencing feels far more complex.

It’s easy to say the pace of change moves too fast for some, too slow for others, and rarely just right for anyone. In this case, it seems safe to say that it moved at the same pace and was not right for any of us. But we did it, which is a statement of triumph in itself. I like to think of change moving at a pace best described by Tushman and Romanelli (1985) in their model of punctuated equilibrium. All living organisms (and organizations) evolve through periods of equilibrium (no change) and sudden periods of punctuations (change). The longer the periods of equilibrium, the punctuated periods of change will be more dramatic. Optimally, organizations will have more regular periods of change with muted punctuation levels and smaller periods of equilibrium for rest and recovery. Similar to a high-performance athlete who trains their muscles through periods of intense workouts (punctuations) and periods of rest and recovery (equilibrium), an organization can become stronger by learning how to manage change. Needless to say, the move to remote operations was a heavy deadlift that required all of us to “move on the count of three!” And we did it.

The emotions of change are directly tied to the pace of change. If change occurs suddenly with little time to comprehend the reasons, implications, and significance of what’s happening, emotions can be confusing, intense, and mixed in ways that are difficult to manage. Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church in California, gave a great TEDx talk on remaining relevant. He said understanding and managing change is critical to stay relevant in the modern world. Recognizing the link between change and grief is critical in that when we think someone (including ourselves!) is resisting change, they may just be grieving that change. As he said, “There is no growth without change; no change without loss; no loss without pain; and no pain without grief.” We may not be resisting change, we may very well be grieving, and it’s important to acknowledge that possibility. With that in mind, I found a seven-stage model on the phases of change in Google images and overlaid that with the Kubler-Ross model of the five stages of grief. Many of the stages have the exact same description in both models.

With regard to working remotely, I’m proud to say I think we’re all doing it pretty well, and things are going relatively smoothly under really stressful constraints. However, I share all of this because I’m seeing a subtle shift in many Zoom meetings and emails over the past three weeks, and in my own feelings, as well. It seems we’ve moved through the shock and denial phases and are moving at varied paces into feelings of frustration, anger, and bargaining with the toll and grind of our collective circumstance.

The stories of our faculty and staff contacting students and providing them with inspiring levels of support, understanding, and flexibility continue to multiply by the day. This unprecedented crisis is pushing all of us to embody the notion of “every student, every day” in ways we perhaps never thought possible. We are living our core values of modeling the way, inspiring confidence, encouraging excellence, and truly embracing our community. For example, one student couldn’t bring herself to log in to her five classes because she was so overwhelmed with the thought of learning online. Her Student Support Advisor convinced her to give it a try, and the student found each and every one of her faculty members willing to provide her the flexibility and support to feel confident that she could do it. As a result, the student reported it wasn’t as bad as she thought and she’s committed to finishing her semester.

We have come to expect an endless well of patience, goodwill, and empathy from ourselves and our colleagues to move students through their academic journey — a tall order under the best circumstances. Right now, many of us are experiencing the same recurring cycles of stress, isolation, anxiety, and being overwhelmed as our students. I mentioned early on the need to support each other in all of this, but as we transition through these stages of change, and even grief for our loss of normalcy, it’s more important than ever to reach out, check in, and stay connected so we can find support and strength in one another.

If we acknowledge the pace and emotions associated with this stressful change in our personal and professional lives, we increase our understanding of what’s happening. We’ll then be better equipped to develop coping mechanisms to successfully navigate these unchartered waters that are anything but smooth. If we keep everyone in the boat, we’ll all make it to shore on the other side.

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

Week 1 of COVID-19 Remoteness Down …

2020-03-30T15:10:00.003-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MVCC Hall of Fame — A celebration of values

2019-12-03T13:14:00.001-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Transformative Power of Holistic Supports in the Guided Pathways Framework

2019-10-23T12:48:00.001-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Organizational Healing

2019-05-13T12:57:00.001-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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