Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> Hello and welcome everyone. I'm so happy to have you here for the first
virtual State of the College that I'm able to deliver as the president of Montgomery
College. Thanks to each of you who are in the room
and thanks to each of you who are joining us from your various workstations, homes,
wherever the case may be. I'm delighted that we're here and having this
opportunity to talk about a few things as it relates to the state of this institution.
This format is certainly something different for me.
It's certainly different for the college in a lot of ways.
We're wanting this to be a flexible experience, something that's relevant to our employees,
to our students. It allows us to be able to be where everyone
is and meet where they are at the same time providing an interactive opportunity.
I like to think we're adapting meeting the needs and activities of the community.
This is something that Montgomery College does exceptionally well.
This is something that we're going to be using to catapult us to the next level as an organization.
If you think about our college's new vision statement, it clearly articulates this perspective.
It says that with a sense of urgency for the future, Montgomery College will be a national
model of educational excellence, opportunity and student success.
Our organization will be characterized by agility and relevance as it meets the dynamic
challenges facing our students and our community. Think about a few of those keywords in there.
"Sense of urgency". Dynamic.
National model. Agility.
Relevant. Challenges.
These are the things that are so important about who Montgomery College is and the context
in which we live and operate right now. So today, as we virtually convene as a college
community, both in face and online we come together to talk about the state of this institution.
And I'm very excited to talk about the ways in which we can actualize that vision statement
that you just saw, how we can make real the ways in which we choose to operate as an organization
to make this something real and valuable and relevant for our students and community.
I also want to name the initiative that you will hear much about, and you've been hearing
a little bit about it over the last several months, but the idea being the common student
experience. Ultimately, what is the common student experience?
It is a set of truths about the way in which the organization will respond to the needs
of each and every one of our students. It's the way in which we will define and articulate
the way in which we want to meet students where they are.
Regardless of campus or location, credit or noncredit status, regardless of any particular
professor, it's the idea that every student has an understanding about who we are as an
organization and the ways in which we will respond to them as an organization.
Our students attend Montgomery College. Not Rockville campus, not Germantown campus,
not Takoma park Silver Springs campus, not just WCDC.
They are students of Montgomery College. So any response we have about the student
experience has to be a collective one about how we as an institution will respond to the
needs of this population. Those of us who come, the students who come
to us every day, how we meet their expectations and maybe even exceed those if we can.
Today, I want to dig deeper into this idea of the common student experience.
What it means and how it's defined by a group of over 60 members of the college community.
Faculty, staff. Administrators.
Students. They all came together, were part of the common
student experience task group. A group of folks who came together intentionally
to ask some very powerful questions about the experiences we expect our students to
have here. I think it's a very representative group.
And I'm so proud of the fact that they came together and worked together for several months
to create a set of truths that you'll be hearing more about.
But because it's the thing that I like to do most, perhaps you can join me in telling
them thank you. Many of them in the room today, Can we do a round of applause for them?
[Applause] . So if we use our country as a model for the
groups in which we used to create this, I think that we have to be very diligent ensuring
that every member and every voice in the college community has an opportunity to shape the
future of our organization. And in fact, I think this is the embodiment
of a democratic process. But sometimes, as we know, democracy can be
very challenging. True?
For instance, our country's Constitution deliberately creates a built-in set of what we call natural
tensions between the state and the federal government.
And I think these tensions are evident every day if you only read the newspapers and watch
the news. You'll hear the ongoing debates about healthcare
reform, budget deficit, the role of education mandates and how are we supposed to respond
to all of those things. I would offer to you that these are some of
the same tensions, this idea of the role between the federal government and the state, that
we often see perpetrated in the college community. And values that will help guide the way in
which you operate. So even though there are 50 states with their
own important issues, there are times when we have to approach issues collectively.
And come together as an institution. For our college, I would offer to you that
these are one of these times. In fact, this is a movement that we need to
be thinking about. This is our moment as an institution.
I believe deeply that we have to be intrusive in the lives of our students in ways that
we had not even imagined being before. Even if it means making our students at times
uncomfortable, perhaps even making ourselves uncomfortable in that process.
I would offer to you that we need to be in their faces.
It's a phrase I often use when I was growing up, they would get in your face.
I say get in your face and help those students understand the realities that they need.
But also how to connect them to services that are essential to their success.
Whenever they need us to the extent we can be there, we should do that.
And we have to go to them because oftentimes they won't find their way to us.
So before we talk about this movement and this forward trajection that I hope we'll
be spending time as a college community I'd like to revisit perhaps where we've been over
the last 21 months. Before I do that, let me talk a bit about
community colleges in general. If we think about the history of community
colleges, it's an important point I'd like to make about that.
When World War II came to a close, our government came together and had very serious conversations
about the education of our country. How will we begin to think about the ways
in which education can be used to respond to any number of national issues.
And the resulting Truman Commission that came together to study these issues offered a report
that has been compelling in the history of higher education.
And what the report found, I think it's a very powerful point, that if education is
not available to everyone, it may in fact exacerbate rather than ameliorate race and
class distinctions. You all with me on that one?
So I quote. It's obvious that free and universal access
to education in terms of interest, ability and the need of the student must be a major
goal in American education. So I don't know about you, but that sounds
like a movement to me. It sounds like a powerful movement.
In fact, there's this wonderful quote that I heard at a conference not too long and they
said higher education was a movement before it was a series of organizations to be managed.
A movement. The idea that each and every person should
have access to higher education. So I would contend and offer to you that we
need to go back to that model, the idea that each and every person should have access to
education and be successful in that. And for me it's the definition of a movement.
It's a movement that Montgomery College is more than ably able to respond to.
One faculty member recently wrote me. I thought it was interesting.
She said we need to slow down. We're doing a lot DeRionne Pollard, too much
change going on, too much going on. Gotta slow down some.
So I went into my reflecktive place on that. I can do that.
I got into that moment. And I realized it's natural to challenge change
I understand that it's a human reaction to it.
I also know that many movements have resistance as a part of how it gets started.
So my response is maybe a little bit different. Because I did go to my deep space and I thought
about it. But my deep space said maybe we've been taking
too little steps for too long. Perhaps as an organization, as a movement,
higher education has to be thinking about how many students we may have failed in this
process. Perhaps we have to think about how many more
will we lose if we don't adapt our organizations in very real ways.
How uncomfortable are we willing to become as we think about the future of our organization?
So that's why I think about the work. The work that we've been engaged in over the
last 21 months, launching initiatives that are necessary to build a foundation and reaffirm
the base of this organization. So no matter what role you've played, no matter
if you have been formally a part of a task group or a task force or a committee or whatever
we've called them, I value you. And I thank you so much for that.
Many of you in the room have been actively engaged in this process.
And it's my hope that every member of the college community continues to be that engaged.
And I want to thank you, because we've done a lot over the last several, the last 21 months.
A few of you I know are weary but I'm going to go ahead and talk about that.
We started to anticipate and articulate our plans for the future.
I think this is a very compelling idea. We have embarked on a major strategic planning
initiative which is an organization we are creating Montgomery College 2020.
And we're creating three, five and seven-year benchmarks to articulate where we will be
as an organization, what our preferred future is.
But here's the key to it y'all, we're also looking at resources to ensure that we can
actualize the future that we say we want to be a part of.
In addition to that, we're looking at succession planning in very real ways and thinking about
how we align our administrative and fiscal services to speak to that.
We started to restructure our student services. I think that's amazing to me that we're doing
that. But here's the part that's amazing even more,
that we haven't done this in a vacuum. We've had many people within the college community
actively engaged. We've been very deliberate in that.
We've had people from every campus, every location.
We've had faculty, staff, students, everyone possible.
If you wanted to be a part of it, we tried to make sure you had access to that.
And participation and engagement is key to this.
I want to say I heard a quote that talked about being an American requires active and
heightened sense of engagement. I would argue that being a member of the Montgomery
College community should suggest the same thing to you.
This is a way we have to not only affirm what we do well but deconstruct and analyze the
things that we've been doing and think about different approaches to solving problems that
have grappled us as an institution and that our students grapple with for so long.
That's why we looked at inclusive participatory governance process.
To date we've had over 2,000 members of our college community actively vote in that process.
2,000. Can you all believe that?
Everyone is having an opportunity to be actively engaged.
Whether you choose it, that's your own. But the idea that everybody has the ability
to do that, it also has informed the way you've approached other processes because of the
feedback that I've received from members of the college community, we've renewed our classification
study. We have made phenomenal progress in looking
at how that process works, , identifying some key moments and we're well
in place to be able to have that done by the timeline we've talked about.
That's exciting work y'all. That says something about where we have been
in our journey, the work over the last 21 months.
We've also looked at ways to better align our institutional architecture.
We're looking at restructuring student services so that it has a college-wide focus, not just
a campus-based focus. We're looking at academic affairs and you
all should have seen a memo from Ms.Paula Matusky she laid out significant ideas that
we have to be looking at in academic affairs, moving toward this idea of academic renewal
within our organization. So that work is going to be continued by Dr.
Donald Pearl, who I'm happy to see here and I met with him yesterday and I talked to him
for about an hour. I said I don't normally talk this much and
now you're sitting here right now hearing me talk this much again.
But I'm delighted to have him here because we're going to be doing some very significant
things in academics. We'll be implementing a college-wide approach
to how we think about our disciplines and our programs including creating measures and
benchmarks so we're able to understand our growth and development and hold ourselves
accountable. And this is essential.
Because the future demands that. Dare I even say the present demands that level
of accountability. As you all know we're in the midst of our
work for our Middle States periodic review. Impressive work, but compelling work.
Because Middle States has challenged us as an organization that we have to take a hard
look at our organization and address potential compliance problems that are within us.
Speaking of compliance. We've created an Office of Compliance here
within the organization. That's looking to ensure that we're compliant
at every level on local, state and federal issues and other entities that affect the
well-being of our organization. That's very exciting work as well.
And compliance was also the main factor that moved us toward looking at our consolidated
college colors and our athletics program and the identification of a new mascot.
Go Raptors. And the colors that unite us.
I would offer to you that raptors are entities that are known for outstanding vision, intelligence.
Agility to respond to its immediate needs. And we looked that up, right?
I would offer to you that raptors, though, have the same qualities as community colleges,
even more so that of Montgomery College. And I would also tell you that these colors
and these mascots, this is a symbolic manifestation of where we're moving as an organization.
Our board chair often talks about this when he's talking about one college.
He's got the mantra, he talks about the college, he talks about the symbolism as being something
that engages the college community on an issue that's very real for where we are as a future.
One college united around the common student experience.
So I've tried to recap today where we've been and how we got there.
But I probably need to ask a couple other questions.
Where are we? And maybe even a better one is: Who are we
as a college community? Today we know this more than ever, our students
are so diverse, more diverse than any history that we've had in this organization.
So we think about the fact that 68 percent of our students identify as black, Asian,
Hispanic or mixed race or multi-race. And our diversity continues to grow.
According to the 2010 census, in Montgomery County more than 30 percent of Montgomery
County will speak more than one language in their home.
30 percent. It's compelling.
So if we also think about this diversity isn't just about our ethnic and racial background.
It's broadened. We have to think about academic diversity.
You all know this, our faculty and staff know more about this than anybody in the classroom
we look we serve both academically challenged and academically talented that come to us,
and we meet them where they are. Many of our students, in fact, 71 percent
of our students who entered this past fall needed some form of preparatory or developmental
work. 71 percent.
I would offer to you that number is not going to get smaller anytime soon.
So how do we as an organization respond to that?
At the same time, where we had this large preparatory number, we also have hundreds
of students who engage in honors level work. So we have to respond to these students in
ways that are very real and substantive. I'd also argue that we have an economic diversity
in Montgomery College in this county that we've never seen before.
If you think about this, this is a compelling point just like our students our county has
seen a significant shift in the economic diversity. A 2012 report found -- and I think this is
compelling -- in order to make ends meet in Montgomery county, a single parent with a
preschooler and one school-aged child must make an average of $77,933 annually to be
successful here. $78,000 a year.
That gives me pause. And it certainly helps us understand why in
the last five years we've seen an 80 percent increase in our financial aid applications.
Sign of the times, right? Nearly a quarter of our students receive Pell
Grants. Meaning that the average family income was
less than $23,000 a year. That number's not getting any smaller y'all,
it's only getting larger. So then we think about the other diversity
in our college, the age gap. I found this interesting that two-thirds of
our credit students are 24 and younger. These are these millenials, right, we know
about the millenials. They're on Facebook.
Friday night, I get on Facebook and they put a question out there they expect an answer
within the next three minutes, right? That's the millenial generation, instant gratification.
You contrast that one-third of our students are 24 and older.
They may be more in line with many of us in this room, right?
Some of them are baby boomers who think about contributing to society in ways that are very
significant. That's the call of the generation.
Or they may be gen Xers, a a little bit like me, who want to make an impact.
Our worlds collide in classrooms in very real ways and we have to figure out how to grapple
with them. I would offer to you that a one size approach
to addressing these students is not going to be sufficient.
As an organization, we're going to have to think deeper, think more richly about how
do we begin to create a student experience that responds to the diversity with both breadth
and depth, that allows us to meet the students where they are while at the same time helping
us as an organization grow with our own capacity to do that in a very clear, consistent and
concrete way. Again, you can see where I'm going, to the
common student experience. Now, I know a lot of you are probably saying
we can't respond to everything for everybody. We can't be everything for everybody.
And all of these external factors are so significant, we can't begin to do everything.
I hate to be the one to tell you, though, we're going to have to.
That's the reality that we're in right now. So our students, we know they all want to
be here. They want to learn and also they bring issues
into the classroom. But how are we as an organization responding?
I hear you. I get it.
I'm teaching a wonderful class this semester thanks to our folks in WCDE, called Converstions of consequence.
I phenomenal students in that room, as a matter of fact one of them, two of them are in the
room. What I need to tell you is I know about the
diversity they bring to the classroom. I know how I have to adapt and respond when
I'm trying to work with them and understand where they're trying to go.
But I have to tell you it leaves me weary sometimes.
But it is a great experience, because it allows me to be more flexible, more real, more relevant
in their lives. And it made me realize every day that we have
to adapt as an organization to fit the needs of these students.
So now I would offer to you that we have to rise up to meet them.
We have to figure out what their needs are and be intrusive and intentional and deliberate
in changing the trajectory of their lives. And we must be engaged with them to be relevant.
So I want to applaud and thank our faculty and staff who have already been engaged in
this work. You've done some heavy lifting.
You're looking at revamping courses and our developmental course sequencing.
You are having substantive conversations about the ways in which we operate as an organization.
For instance, faculty members from every campus -- I think this is important -- who represent
the distinct disciplines of the business degree program recently gathered together as a single
group, some of us trying to figure out was that the first time in the history of those
entities. In fact, they had some very substantive conversations
about the AA degree. And instructional dean Patty Bartlett who
is with us the members enthusiastically gathered together to discuss broad views about the
business program, examining current outcomes, looking at the needs of the future.
They spend a lot of time trying to formulate new goals.
I've got to tell you all, they had to compromise in some cases, didn't they?
They had to have concessions. There might have been a few tense moments.
Maybe. Maybe just a few.
But I'm happy to report that they describe having a program that's stronger than it has
ever been. Because they came together and had conversations
of consequence. That to me is a significant thing about our
organization. So while I want every campus program, every
department to retain its own distinct flavor, the faculty and staff of our institution,
we have to come together to have substantive conversations about the entire institution.
And they know it. Those folks who participate in this work with
Dean Bartlett. They know it's hard work.
It got messy from time to time. But they stuck with it.
And that, I believe, was their moment. I would offer to you it's the same for us.
It is our moment as an organization. It's our movement.
At my inauguration I think you remember I said I don't believe in playing small.
Right now the outcomes are too critical, the expectations are too significant.
We're going to have to rise up and do some very significant work.
So I know y'all are saying you're getting weary saying how are we going to do this?
We have all this stuff going on, how will we have this conversation, the board chair
is probably thinking what is she going to come up next, the answer really is the common
student experience. I want us to be able to tell our students
we know you have expectations of us and these are how we will respond to those expectations.
Probably the biggest outcome of a common student experience task group was a realization that
the structures and services that we have in place in hopes of meeting our students' needs
are actually frustrating and in some cases creating confusion for some of our students.
That's a profound moment for this group of 60 folks to come together and realize.
And as a result of that, the fix is they propose the common student experience.
So let's get to the nitty-gritty and talk about these truths.
These are truths, they're commitments to our students.
They're not just assumptions, they're not just things that nice haves, these are ways
in which as a college we're going to respond to the needs of our students, what they can
expect from us and how they can hold us accountable in meeting those needs.
So let me stress right now, we know that many of these things that we've done, our faculty
and staff are extremely committed. But here we are in this history taking an
organizational step and definition to say this is our moment, this is what we're going
to do as a college, to respond to the needs of our students.
I want us to be phenomenal. We have to be for our students, don't we?
Yeah, we have to be. So truth one: Smart start.
Montgomery College will help students start smart with successful introduction to college
work. Part of our reality and our challenge is that
many of our potential students face dozens of challenges even before they get to our
doors. Their lives are so complex and so rich, that
oftentimes we have to figure out ways to help them come to us.
Figure out ways for us to help them help themselves, right?
So we have to figure out a way to ensure that college access is not yet another burden for
them. I'd like to introduce you to a student, Isaiah.
>> Walking out the door now. It should be a nice day.
Very good morning. I started Montgomery College in 2010.
My life took a few turns and twists, and my situation in Montgomery County was very difficult.
I had to leave where my residence at the time, I had to make a choice.
My mom, my brothers were residing in PG County, two and a half to three hour communte
every day. And so at that time it was either I still
continued to do that commute or I go to a homeless shelter.
So I decided to go to the homeless shelter. And it was very, very difficult.
The things that I seen there. I knew of Montgomery College I just didn't
know much about it. I didn't know what it had to offer.
I came out here after I had a son. And my life was going down.
I wasn't doing the best of things. And I looked into Montgomery College and wow
they had so much to offer and so much that I can get a hold of.
So fall of 2010 it was my first semester here. I like to see various, different various counselors
and advisors, but one particularly is Clifton McKnight.
>> You continue to set the stage, man, keep doing what you're doing, make a difference.
>> He's really been in my corner, supporting me, just keep pushing through.
>> Montgomery College has just been a blessing. I would love to be a great example to my son
and show him that no matter whatever you go through or whatever life brings you, that
to keep on trying, to keep on striving. You can always achieve it even in the hardest
and toughest of situations.
>> Got some good news that I'll be moving into my own place very soon.
So that's kind of the highlight of the week.
>> We're already planning the move-in party, I promised the baked beans for the barbecue.
For our students we have to provide maximum accessibility and minimum barriers to enrollment.
Their lives demand that. Their expectations as institution should demand
that. The common student experience task force suggests
some wonderful ways to do this by providing every student with single step-by-step enrollment
information. So that someone can follow from beginning
to end with knowledgeable points of contact within the organization to assist that student
from the moment they make contact until the moment they leave.
But that's not enough. The task group also suggested that we must
clearly articulate the processes before a student enrolls, right?
Not when they begin but when they enroll by focusing outreach efforts in ways that we are
connecting with our community, dare I say our communities, in ways that are significant
for those students so they can have access to us.
So that all students can attend Montgomery College regardless of the background or experiences
that they come from. The key word here is to understand the processes
and to understand the complexity of the lives that they bring with them.
A new beginning like starting college can be very daunting.
It can be very overwhelming for a lot of our students.
But we need to take steps to demystify the process, the one that we know so well, but
that many of our students do not know. And I experienced this myself.
You all know the most precious thing in my life is this little five-year-old boy I have.
And Myles starts kindergarten this fall. I don't know if -- that's funny you all get
to watch him grow up. But I'll have to tell you we got our kindergarten
packet registration from our local school district.
And I have to tell you, we had five degrees in our family, between the two of us, five degrees,
I was overwhelmed by that. I had to go out and make my own checklist
to figure it out. I had to call superintendent up and I told
him: I said, look here -- I'm investing in you profession ally but I'm also investing
in you personally now because I'm going to give you my most precious gift but I'm trying
to figure out how to get there. So I think about that for me in preparing
this little kid for kindergarten, can you imagine our students who are coming to us
and their families, think about the diversity I talked about earlier, how they can experience
and interact with our organization, how deliberate and intentional can we be in demystifying
that and making sure we don't stand in the way and become another burden.
That takes us to truth two. Once a student has enrolled here, there's
a whole new set of experiences. And it says that maintain a foundation of
support opportunities. Montgomery College will support success by
ensuring that college faculty and staff provide a foundation of the best possible support
opportunities for our students. My first month here at the institution I happen
to be walking around the campus, a student figured out who I was, and talked to me about
the fact that she didn't have access to a particular piece of writing software in her
campus as she had, that she knew existed on one of our other campuses in Montgomery College.
I compound that the following week when I'm having a group conversation with some of our
students at our Germantown campus, and they talked to me about the distinctions between
our tutoring services, what they could access at the Germantown campus versus the processor
and what they could access at Rockville and I didn't even dare to ask the question about
Takoma park Silver Spring. We'd have 3 different versions for our students
that was troubling for me. So the task group they talked about this idea
of assuring that our students understand our processes.
And we see this in our colleges Facebook again. Those who don't do it, go on Facebook sometime
and scan it. One student writes about Internet access.
The student says: It's been going on since the beginning of the semester and despite
leaving voice mails about it for many students, no one seems to be doing anything about it.
This is on the college's Facebook page,y'all. I'm fully aware that the students aren't always
blameless. Sometimes they can embellish, right?
But these statements speak to a truth that we have to think about.
There's a disconnect sometimes between what we believe we're delivering and then what
our students may be experiencing. So the common student task force, they talked
about this task group. They centered this truth on guaranteeing that
our students have access to technology, resources and facilities that foster student success.
They talked about updated and accessible technology so that we would have one hundred percent
Wi-Fi on every campus and location for our students.
I'm also putting Mannakee in that. Knowledgeable college personnel who are up
to date on college programs and services in such a way that they are proficient with the
use of hardware and software to assist our students.
Right? They talk about this idea of accessible and
informative and usely friendly website and student portal which has access to library resources
that allows students to have online forums, virtual computer labs and more.
And that's all in truth number two. But allowing students to easily interface
with the college is critical for truth number three.
And truth number three: Get connected. Montgomery College will encourage students
to get connected by engaging the college experience and utilizing a wealth of resources that
are available to them. And I wholeheartedly agree with this task
group when we they talk about the fact that we need to synergize student engagement opportunities
in such a way that a student is able to understand the power of the connection between what happens
in their classroom and what happens outside of the classroom experience, what happens
in our very support areas, that it all comes together for students in very real ways.
The best chance that we have in empowering our students to change their lives, very simple
one, is for us to engage with them on an emotional and visceral connection.
That we have to make sure that we understand and meet them where they are, understand what
motivates them to be successful. This is the idea of having a direct impact
in their success. You know the renowned New York Times columnist
David Brooks, I love reading his stuff. He wrote this issue in his book called The Social
Animal and through fiction he uses some recent research on cognitive theory when he talks
about the idea that what makes us tick as humans is that most of our thinking happens
below the level of awareness. Most of our thinking and what makes us tick
happens below the level of awareness. So we act oftentimes based on our heart and
not our head. Right?
So how do we make a connectional, emotional connection to our students?
That's what I'd like to figure out. Let's teach them to empower themselves in
the classroom and beyond. We have to be more for them than just a number
of credits to be accumulated. We have to be an experience for them that
empowers their life in very real ways. I would offer to you as part of our social
contract with our community to create engaged citizens who understand not only how to empower
themselves but how to give back and be vital in our community.
How do we do this? Perhaps we get their families engaged.
Get their parents engaged in what's happening with them.
That's why clients to restructure our adult services and our parent services and family
services is going to be so important on all of our campuses.
Not just one. Not just two.
All of our campuses. But they also -- we have the potential to
affect not only that student who comes to us but their family.
And if we think about that it goes beyond the family to the community.
And it goes beyond the community, it goes to our whole county.
And it goes beyond our county to our state. We can have -- talk about that pebble, the
ripple effect can be so profound. It can be something that touches the rest
of our lives forever. I think about our how our students come to
us with different backgrounds and different sets of expectations and how we meet them
to do that. Let's meet Tierra.
>> When I first got here, I didn't have money for books and I was like stressing out, pulling
my hair out. And I went to admissions.
And they sent me up to student life. And that's where I met Jim Walters and he
sent me up to Kim McGettigan and that's where my life changed forever.
She got me some money for books. And I asked her, I was like I also need a
job. I know this is a lot.
A few weeks later she called me. She's like, hey, are you still looking for
a job. I have a student position available.
After that I was in love.
My first intent was never to stay at MC. Come get 12 credits, 24, and escape.
After the first semester, I was like -- I was talking to an advisor, he said you should
stay and get your associate's degree. Because if you have your associate's no matter
what goes wrong later on after, you'll always have that degree to fall back on.
I graduated from Montgomery College Takoma Park campus, last May, May 2011.
In the fall I went straight to Frostburg State continuing my education, getting
my bachelor in mass communication with a minor in public relations. Over the break I like to
come back to MC and work. This is where I feel like my family is.
A lot of people want to see me succeed and that's built this, I don't know, this fire
inside of me that I want to see myself succeed so that I can show everybody else, hey, you
told me I can do it and I did it. And it's just really I just, I can't even
find the words to just describe MC. Like how they have built, made me who I am
today. [Applause] .
>> Thank you Kim for being in her life. I know that's your baby.
I go out to the campus and she's still here. And I love the fact that Montgomery College
was there for her. That one-on-one connection.
And this idea that we are not just her place that she goes to school, we are indeed her
family. We're her community and that takes us to the
next truth. Truth four.
Build community. Montgomery College will build community by
ensuring students' experiences that are equitable, respectful, inclusive and a caring environment
where everyone matters. Now, I don't know about you.
We talk about this and I love the fact that the task group talked about this, that we
are cultivating and growing seeds in our students. Hopefully, if we are lucky, they may come
back full circle and be a part of us or we may not -- we may not see that but we know
we've planted this seed. It's like I'm a huge NPR
junky. And what I love about it it literally feeds
my mind I would say it even feeds my soul. And I love their tag line, the mind is our
medium. So I love the fact that oftentimes when I
go to bed at night, I feel smarter than I did when I woke up that morning because I
was actively engaged. I was a part of that and they engaged me over
the day in different ways. I want our college to do the same thing for
our students. I want us to actively engage them.
Have them so connected, so deeply rooted in who we are and invested that they thrive.
Can you imagine what that would look like. Let's encourage that through student life.
Have them be engaged. I found myself in student life, and I think
about that for our students. I'd love for them to have it.
I think about the fact wouldn't it be nice if we built in blocks of time when nothing occurred
in the college community but opportunities for students to engage themselves in real
work. Wouldn't that be exciting?
Wouldn't it also be wonderful if we can encourage international study for every one of our students?
Wouldn't that be awesome. I remember the first time I went out of the
country. It changed my life.
Changed my life. Wouldn't it be great to have every student
have that experience. Can we build our curriculum around cultural
experiences and opportunities that allow students to make the connections about what's happening
in their world and classroom and how they may, dare I say, transform that world.
That would be very exciting for us. So I think we also have to build community
within communities. So the students can feel connected to understand
how their experiences shape who they are within the organization.
And I think the other thing that we have to do about this is to also acknowledge that
there's going to be special needs for certain parts of our population.
I think about our Boys to Men program and the work they've done in terms of alerting
students who may be at high risk and talking about intervening and intentionally getting
in their faces, right? That's what we're talking about.
This idea that as an organization -- and I find it rather unacceptable -- that we have
significant achievement gaps for our African-American Hispanic students yet and still we timeout
our diversity. To me that's hypocritical.
So we can timeout our diversity, but not talk about the fact that success of those student
populations not being at the same level as the majority of the students.
That's a problem for me. It's an unacceptable one.
As an organization how do we begin to look at, again, see how the speech is going, we
talked about the diversity of this county, we've got to be thinking about how we react
to that within this organization. And I think then if we can help students feel
a part of a community, then it begins to have them actualize the future they want to have.
Then truth five: Enhance the classroom experience. Montgomery College will enhance the classroom
whether in nontraditional setting to ensure that all students receive the best possible
education. Whether it's credit or noncredit or in person
or online, our instruction cannot be confined to the classroom boundaries that we have there.
We have Michelle Queen, one of our tech leap students who has described, I love how she
says this, WDCE means she had her own personal career counselor a head hunter who helps her
with her professional pursuits. Let's meet Michelle.
>> Good morning. My typical day starts with getting my family
off to school and work. Then I'd come to class and work here for about
three hours in the portfolio building class.
>> They're doing another static Web page today because the little list of things I've got
up here on the board....
>> My previous work experience was with information systems.
I enjoyed it very much. I started looking for how I could retrain
and still balance the fact that we had relatively young children.
My experiences with the tech lead program have been very positive.
I did have a strong sense of camaraderie in my class.
As adult learners, we all did lean on each other.
And many of us came to the program with similar experiences.
WDCE tech lead program served me very well and it's like anything that you do in life.
You're going to get out of it what you put into it.
Wonderful colleagues. It's a great place to start networking, if
you haven't been or to continue networking. It opens up lots of possibilities.
>> Thank you Michelle for sharing your story.
>> The common student experience task group stressed that the classroom experience should be one
that fosters learning beyond the classroom, that it connects the student and makes real
the learning that is occurring there. So I think we have to continue to have and
take a very serious look at our courses to make sure that they're relevant, make sure
they're connecting classroom experience with what's happening outside of our classroom
even outside of our organization. How can we encourage our faculty and staff
to be actively engaged in that process of staying relevant?
But I think we can do that through encouraging our faculty to take advantage of our innovation
fund. I'm excited to see the numbers of folks who
are applying and looking at course redesign. Looking at supplemental materials and experiences
for students. Powerful work that is being done there.
I look at our new science facilities at Rockville and new science building that we'll be doing
at the Germantown campus. And we're looking at how that space can be
used intentionally to create student learning. So I love the fact when we look at one of
our engineering faculty members talk about these pods they started to create where students
can sit down as they might in a real work environment, right, and work together on a
project to figure out and talk it through. Isn't that great?
I love the fact that we're having these types of conversations about not just what happens
in the classroom, but the space outside of the classroom to make it real for our students.
We're doing this by looking at all of our lives and having the common approach to that.
And I think we also have to look at how we can formalize the learning that can come from
peer-to-peer interactions. I'm so struck by the fact that you can see
students in these pods teaching each other. Isn't that awesome?
How can we do that? Maybe can we pay them to do?
it? Can we create supplemental instruction programs
to help pay students to help each others out. Wouldn't that be huge because we know students
are staying on campus longer, working with each other hopefully getting toward completion.
A master plan y'all. So if we think about it I think it takes us
to truth six. Encourage student success every step of the
way. Montgomery College will encourage students
success at every step of the student's education al journey.
So let's be honest. Sometimes our students get lost.
Right? Sometimes they can't find their way.
Sometimes they don't come back to us when they get lost.
They end up without mentors. They end up without an educational experience.
So I believe we have to empower our students so they know the many educational options
and resources that are available to them. When Phu Cao moved to the United States from
Vietnam he had a Bachelor's degree in robotics and automatic technology.
He came to our college to learn English. But once here he found out that our college
had so much more to offer. Let me introduce you to Phu.
>> I started in fall 2008 with MC. And through the placement tests I put in the
last years of class and then I started from there.
MC has a lot to offer here. And after two semesters I decided that, okay,
I was going to sit for more classes, information, in business science, management.
And I've been receiving a lot of help from instructors.
They not only care about like what they're teaching in the class but they also help me
a lot in terms of the cultural adaptations and explain every little detail.
I feel like more personal care with MC, particularly Germantown campus.
The student ambassador, they actually came out and shake my hand and say how can we help,
do you have any questions? Or maybe they just tell me their experience.
Because to first come to MC or coming to the state in general I don't know what I don't
know. My second semester to be a person on the senate.
At that time I ran for election. I never thought that I could get it the position.
But then it just happened. Here you are going to receive the same quality
as anywhere else, and then also you're going to get more out of everything.
And as long as you really want to strive for that and then also want to explore and take
full advantage of what offer added Montgomery College.
If they feel that they're part of the college they're going to invest more in their experience
here.
>> Thank you, Phu. He was able to come here and chart a new path
at Montgomery College. He was able to tap into resources to help
him be successful. But not all students know how to do that.
And not all students have the experience of fulfilling those goals.
So how as an organization can we be, again, intentional and deliberate in shaping that
for our students? And I agree with the task group when they
said we must help students understand the direct impact of their assessment scores when
they come to the institution to take them. Those are high stakes tests.
And we often know our students come in underprepared and unassuming about what the impact of that
score is going to be. I think that we have to spend time as an organization
talking about how we prepare them. And our Facebook page our students want more
accurate information. One student writes about the financial aid
process. Said I've been told two different things.
How do I make sure and know which one is the right one?
Again, information the students receive can't be ad hoc.
And I go back to the point I know they may not have been told two different things, but
they heard two different things. So how do we ensure that to the extent we
can that as an organization we're doing something different there.
I think we also have to have serious and provocative conversations with ourselves.
If we know that first year experience is a powerful one for student success, why don't
we require it? [Applause] .
>> If we know that our first-year students have a hard time navigating our campuses,
why don't we require orientation for them? [Applause] I'm on a roll now, huh?
If we know that our facts and form are so complicated why don't we try to figure out
how to complement the phenomenal work that the financial office does in face to face
doing it on a virtual online world as well. Wouldn't that be powerful for our students
as well. The idea of how do we stretch ourselves to
do some things. I love the fact that student services is asking
these types of questions. They're sitting here talking about college
wide advising services talking about counseling services talking about first year experience,
orientation programs. They're talking about welcome centers.
I don't know about you all, have you come on the college campus lately.
Go to another one and figure out how you get in.
A welcome center. What a novel concept.
So the students know where they go. This is exciting.
This brings us to truth seven. Plan to cross the finish line.
Montgomery College will help students develop their own plans to cross the finish line and
complete college. In the words of the task group, quote, students
will engage in and receive guidance from a comprehensive advising program that includes
the development of an educational plan with advising from faculty counselors and faculty
advising cadre members that assists in the development of identifying career, transfer
and academic goals. That's powerful work there y'all.
Actualization of that is even more powerful. The language here is important that we will
guide our students. Let's not wait for them to ask we're going
to guide them. Kind of reminds me of a GPS.
I have a love hate relationship with my GPS right now I'll tell you.
But instead of the global positioning service that we have in our car system, I think we
need to provide a college guidance path system that can't be disabled.
That a student from the moment they start at this organization is a very clearly identified
-- and they can make changes, right, just like you do because you know how corrupting
you're on the GPS, correcting, correcting. So now how do you get the student right back
on that path from time to time? A student can alter it.
But we don't alter their destination to get done and be completed, right?
So the idea that the task group has that, they talked about momentum point recognitions.
Isn't that exciting? We recognize students at various
points in their experience and we recognize that that is a significant milestone toward
completion. They talked about automatically checking in
on students progress. That the students will, if they haven't met
with the counselor in a certain number of semesters they'll be required to do so.
Wow. That's some good stuff right there.
They talked about this idea that we would have an academic plan that a student has to
check in on a regular basis to ensure they're meeting that powerful stuff there.
Talked about the idea that many of these students have these slippery spots and we know this,
so how do we begin to intervene before they get to that slippery slope.
Right when they're on the edge and we bring them back in again.
We have to get involved with them from the first failed assignment.
Wouldn't it be wonderful that a faculty member is able to know exactly that they can connect
the student with someone who is going to help them from the moment they see you're at risk.
And we know this. I knew it when I taught I could tell the student
who was having problems. Now how intentional could I be when I had
125 of them each semester. How do we begin to do that and recarve our
organization in ways to do that? We do a great job with early alert system
for our students to exhibit emotional distress. I want to do the same thing for academic distress.
Wouldn't it be powerful for our students. I would suggest we look at our institutional
policies and practices, such as late registration. So I'm going to tell y'all.
I think we send a mixed message. We talk about every day of class is important
but the first two weeks are expendable if you come in late.
That's not a good institutional process. But we also have to figure out then what's
going to be the solution for those students. Having more late start classes that may have
extended amounts of time for students can go, you know what, this class has already
started but in a week we have something else that starts for you.
That requires the flexibility and agility in our scheduling that we have to have and
designing the schedule around student needs. So let's look at innovative ways to do that.
I'm constantly struck by the fact that we had lots of work that needs to be done.
And our students have to be thinking about the needs we have.
But these are the seven truths, and I thank that task group for the work that they did.
It was unbelievable how you all came together over several months and really articulated
what the institution can do for our students and what our students should expect from us.
Doesn't mean that every student is going to look, every student experience is the same
and every campus is going to be exactly the same.
I don't want that. You often heard me talk about the fact that
I have one sister. And many of you saw her at my inauguration.
Beautiful, tall, thin. Accountant.
And very different. If any of you spent time with us, we're very
different in a lot of different ways. But at the core of who we are, we are the
Pollard girls. Waiting to become a woman at home.
But we're -- we go home to the neighborhood I go to the church where I was raised in the
community I was and they say Paul how are you girls doing, we're Paul Pollard's girls
always have been and always will be because there's a values and distinction about who
we are that connects us as that. That's the same thing I want us to have at
Montgomery College. We can have multiple campuses and locations.
But there's a core distinction about who we are and how we serve our students.
I'd like to say that these are things that guide us, that help us make informed decisions
about how we will function as an organization. So at the end of the day, whether you're at
the Rockville campus, the Germantown campus, the Takoma Park Silver Spring campus, WDCE,in Wheaton
we're all Montgomery College, we're one institution, therefore we must function as one institution.
So I need your help. This isn't going to be something I can do.
I can craft a vision and we can talk about it.
But at the end of the day all of us have to come together to actualize that.
The state of the college is just the beginning. I believe that we have the next big thing
is to actually implement and actualize that's the hard work that has to occur now.
In the coming days and weeks I'll be coming to college campuses to hear your reaction
to those truth ands hear your thoughts and how we actualize it as a college community.
Starting this fall a new governance system is going to take the opportunity to hear formal
feedback from the college community on these types of issues and also take information
back to ensure that every member of the college community is engaged and understands what
the issues are. And I hope that each of you will take the
opportunity to share your thoughts and perspectives and be actively engaged with this because
we all need that in order to survive. There's a mutuality about the work we do.
I think we all have an obligation to be involved. We have an obligation to stay connected to
make sure that our experiences for our students are the ones that they need at this particular
moment. Where one part of our college succeeds, all
parts of the college will succeed. It reminds me that also that when one fails,
we all fail. Right?
There's a mutuality to our existence. So if our destination and our destiny as a
higher educational institution, we have to understand that we are inextricably linked
to each other. Every campus, every employee group.
Every student experience, we're all connected to each other.
There's a mutuality to our narrative. We are dependent on each other.
There's perhaps no better orator than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
who wrote it in the Birmingham letter. He said we're caught in an inescapable network
of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
Never again can we afford to live with the narrow provincial outside agitator idea.
Anyone who lives inside of the United States can never be considered an outsider.
So let me just put it this way for you all. Anyone who lives inside of Montgomery College
can no longer be considered an outsider. We are mutually connected to each other.
We cannot put ourselves in silos and separate ourselves based on false constructs that do
nothing to support the needs of our students. Not by campus.
Not by department. Not by job title.
Not by employee group. Not by all the things that we choose to define
ourselves by on any given time. We cannot otherwise other people and other
experiences because it's different than our own.
Our world is changing so fast around us. How are we as a college rising up to respond
to that? We cannot allow our students to not be successful.
We can't otherwise them. And I would offer to you we can't wait.
We can't wait. We don't have the time or luxury to do that.
Dr. King and the civil rights movement, a few
of you studied this they were often told to be patient.
Right? Calm down.
Your time is acomin'. Don't stir the pot, wait, it's going to happen.
We knew the pot was overflowing as we study that right now.
It was their moment. I'm going to offer to you it's our moment
now as a college. We have the opportunity to define the future
we want to have and the experiences that our students deserve from us, what our community
needs from us. It was a movement then and this is our movement
now. And in higher education, I think we stand
at a crossroads. We owe it to ours students to push forward.
We have an obligation as part of our social contract, and over the last 21 months I think
we've revisited lots of our vulnerabilities. We've confronted some of our own biases, having
courage to have difficult conversations and I think we're becoming more steadfast as we
prepare for a few more. But I would argue that the state of our college
is stronger than ever. It is stronger than ever.
This is our movement. This is our moment as an organization.
And we get to define what we want our future to be.
Each and every one of us. So as Phu says I sat in his office when he
was meeting with one of our state senators, and to this day it makes me cry when I think
about it. So I'm not going to cry right now.
He said if you dare to knock on the door of opportunity, Montgomery College answers.
Gives me a chill every time I hear it. You dare to knock on the door of opportunity
Montgomery College answers. We have to embrace this moment.
Every day a Phu or Michelle or Isaiah knocks on the door, a Tierra knocks on the door that
we have the courage to answer the door. Not as a campus, but as an organization to
answer them. Thank you all so much for being here.
And we're going to take some questions. [Applause] .
>> I'll toss it to John, we have series of questions come in in multiple ways I'll let
you introduce that.
>> Thanks. I'm John Hamman faculty member here.
I'll moderate the discussion. We'll take questions from the live audience
and those who are viewing this remotely. If you're here you can certainly stand up
and I'm come find you. If you're viewing this remotely you can e-mail
a question to state of the college all one word at Montgomery College edu, and we'll
print those and read those off. To start the questions here I wrote up a quick
one here to make sure we had some questions for you Dr.
Pollard.
>> Thank you very much.
>> So it was can you factor the polynomial, these are my lecture notes.
[Laughter] .
>> A squared plus B squared. Go ahead.
>> As a classroom teacher, I want to get these ideas down at the classroom level.
Can you talk about academic diversity that our students have and encouraging innovation
in the classroom and balance that with this idea of the common experience for haul the
students. And so as an instructor when I struggle between
how much innovation I should have versus how much I should make my class like the other
classes, do you have any advice for that.
>> I think that's a great question, John. I would argue that there are a set of outcomes.
Now just so y'all know they're not paying questions I don't know the questions and I'll
speak to you the way I know to do. I believe there's outcomes that we articulated
for every -- for every course there's a set of outcomes.
We say these are the things that a student should be able to do and know as a result
of this learning experience. True.
Now, how we do that is going to be different. But the key is also going to be in how we
assess that. So I think there's some interesting conversations
we need to have about common assessment in some areas,
I would argue. I'm not saying you gotta go out and do it
but it's an interesting conversation to have. What you do in the class is the type of faculty
member and the types of modalities but at the end of the day we have to be understanding
the commonality is in what the students should know and be able to demonstrate and how we
assess that at the end because this is what middle Middle States is asking us.
Those who have been following our Middle States assessment they're asking us as an organization
it's great because what we've intended to do in higher education is emphasize this middle
part. We said we starting talking about the common
outcomes. We had some of that together.
It's the magic of the classroom, right? We talk about the magic that occurs all the
time. But what we haven't had a serious conversation
about and hard work comes in to ensure that the students learn what we said up here to
the magic of the classroom. So to me that's a conversation as a faculty
member. I know when I first started here they came
in did a briefing on the developmental math redesign.
I don't know if you remember this, they said it's okay if you fail.
It's the fact you tried. And that I think is a conversation we have
to have. It is very uncomfortable doing something different.
And it's very uncomfortable stepping out of and ask some -- but you all did it.
And we're seeing the results coming from that. I would suggest that at the classroom level
it becomes the connective tissue to your program and the individual class level.
It's at the beginning how do we articulate the outcomes and the assessment at the end.
Your individuality occurs in that space at that moment.
>> How do you plan to inspire students enrolled with various kind of opportunities.
How can we make them accessible?
>> Honors opportunities. Now, it's interesting there was a task group
that worked on this issue this past year. And we have paused it.
I think we have to have of a conversation as an institution about our honors programs
and to look at commonality. I think we have to have a serious conversation,
we move toward a more equitable way of doing honors.
Should we have our honors program in every campus that's for full and part time.
Should we also have conversations about what does it mean to be an honors institution.
There's a movement, Miami-Dade community college is the creating an honors college.
honors college. I don't know if I have the answer but I'm
willing to ask the question, as an organization should we be having a conversation about an
honors college and what does that really mean and how does that look there's diversity of
the human experience there. How do we ensure it's also supplementing what
occurs for everyone's class not just the honors class, so to me that's a great level of unpacking
and there's a lot of ownership also. A lot of our programs, when you build something
from the ground up, it's not always comfort able to step back and have the conversation.
I'm willing to ask the question. We're willing to have that conversation because
a lot of times we talk about population and developmental students.
We have to have the same conversation for our honor students and athletes and for the
students of color, the students who are less engaged in the dialogue.
>> Thanks. I'll take more online questions but there's
a question in the audience, if you would raise your hand I'll come get a question from you.
>> No questions. Quietest bunch of folks I've ever seen.
>> Let me follow up with another question here about how we as a college can make our
plans for both these truths that you laid out but yet provide the flexibility we need
to what our future students are going to be like five to 10 years from now, what our facilities
are going to be like, what the campus is going to be like once we make changes in place right
now.
>> Yeah, I love this, we actually took this out of the speech because it's something you
heard me say when we went around and talked about the student services reorg.
I'll talk about it now. A friend of mine is is an organizational development
consultant, his wife is a cardiac nurse. And he had this opportunity to try to help
-- she was explaining to him cardiac health, and she talked about the fact that cardiac
health is not actually measured in the way in which your heart responds when you go up
ten or five flights of stairs. You run up the stairs you get to the top your
recollection you're supposed to be winded. Catch your breath a little bit.
And the thing is you do you keep on going. She said a true sign of cardiac health is
in the recovery. So how long it takes your heart to recover
after you run up those five flights of stairs. You're supposed to be winded and uncomfortable
but it shouldn't take you half an hour to catch your breath or pouring sweat for the
next half of an hour. That's really the recovery.
So he in his brilliant stuff, he's translated this to organizational wellness and health.
So he says an organization as constantly at a point of experiencing stress.
And your body is experiencing stress. That's the whole thing.
If your body is experiencing stress you recover. It's the same thing in an organization.
We're in a constant state of stress and in higher ed the success has been -- we're in
the most distressful area in higher ed and it's going become the norm.
The key is not going wh pechld w and it takes you forever to recover.
It's like we don't know how to react as an organization.
We want to get to a point where we're able to manage stress and recover normally.
That's the big norm. Sometimes you have these big loops, and loops,
he said we should get to this whether recovery is quicker hadoop hadoop, and your heart and
your organization understands stress. You become more agile, you can anticipate
stress now too. Isn't that cool.
I think that's to me what we have to do. We're talking about performance-based funding
leading a state task force on this. Y'all know it's been here.
Fighting it for a day, hem hawing it's not going to go away.
Facility funding challenges and diversity. How do we become more entrepreneurial as an
organization. How do we begin to use our talent in such
a way that we're less dependent on public funds?
And that's the new organization. So when I talk about Montgomery College being
the most relevant community college in the country.
It's because we start to ask those questions and develop solutions to them as well.
>> Given the economy how do we do more with less?
>> I think that's a great question. I would question -- let me put it this way.
The first question is and the analysis of what we're doing.
Right? So what we tend to do in higher education,
Mr. Math Faculty Member we're good with the art
of addition, we're probably exceptional with the art of multiplication.
But we are awful at the art of subtraction, right?
So what we end up doing is we keep adding on and we keep adding on, but what we don't
do is assess what we've been doing to see if it's viable, sustainable, real, and if
it's something that should continue to be done.
And then some things just need to be stopped. I have one of my board members is frequently
saying that to me. What are we going to stop doing if we're going
to start doing this. One of the things as you all know we're having
conversations in the organization about when new, when we have people who leave the organization,
the assumption has always been we kind of refill them put them right back where they were,
right. There's not the conversation that needs to
be had now. The conversation is going to be where do we
need them? How do we align these things with our priorities,
how as an organization do we say this was a great program project service, at that particular
point in time and now it's time to redefine and look at something different.
Those are the ways in which we do that. The other part to be quite frank we look at
more entrepreneurial opportunities to fund the things we want to do.
We have a phenomenal WDCE area, phenomenal. They have the largest sector of this institution.
And you know what they do they help support this organization, millions of dollars.
Nobody would know it. But that's a real thing we have to do.
We have to have serious conversations about the ways in which we spend our money.
We have to be good stewards of the taxpayers resources.
It's not ours. It's theirs.
So those are some of the ways I think we start to do that.
So the question is will we do more with less? I might argue that we're going to do different
types of things with less. And ultimately it might be more.
Because it might be more efficient. It might be more relevant at the time.
There's a series of things that go into it. Here's the beautiful part, I don't have the
answers to this, it's you all. That's the strategic planning process, it's
part of our process, our college review process, all those processes we've been doing enwrote,
if Kathy was here she'd have a serious conversation about some of the outcomes for my college
review here. Let's have serious conversations about some
of our programs that may not be producing graduates.
graduates. They may not enrollment.
Do we need to have a program for everything, do we need to have a series of courses.
These are things we have to have deep conversations about, and they're hard ones.
Right, Don?
>> Dr. Pollard, you mentioned having a point of contact
for students regardless of where they are in the institution, where they come into the
institution to help them get to and through completion.
What's your idea, how do we ensure regardless which faculty or staff or administrator that
student comes in contact with, he or she gets to where he or she needs to be because sometimes
I get a lot of students in my office for instance and they don't know what the question is they
should ask and someone said in one of the students said I don't know what I don't know.
So I don't know what questions I need to ask to get the information that I need to help
me get to where I want to be. How do we help the faculty staff administration
to know the point of reference to get the students to that information.
>> That's interesting. I had a debate going on with one of my presidential
friends, and every once in a while we call each other up with a new idea.
His idea lately is I need to hire more generalists and less specialists, and I said what do you
mean by that where are you going to put them. We start deconstructing this idea.
The point that he was making, which I think is an interesting one, is that there's a common
knowledge base that every employee of the organization should have.
Now, the question is how do we ensure that people have that information, how do we build
that into performance assessment and then how do we build that into ultimately looking
at how we classify and compensate employees? That to me is the line there.
It's interesting. I like to study other organizations outside
of higher ed, and I can guarantee you certain ones you think about, you look at fast company,
Harvard business, talk about best companies to work for they have a very clear understanding
of their mission, clear understanding of the vision of the organization.
They understand their role but they also know there's a commonality that all employees have
to have. I would argue that's part of what we have
to think about. What is the common pieces of information that
every employee should have and if they don't have that information, they know where to
refer people to. So that there's an instructional process that
our jobs are going to become more and people talk about the presidency has changed in the
last 10 to 15 years. Presidents used to be the ones who really
focused inward within an organization. They spend a lot of time on issues that were
germane only to the internal functions of the organization.
That has changed significantly. Many know you look at my public calendar either
I'm at Annapolis and so the question evolved how do we think about the nature of work?
Has the nature of work for our employees evolved at the same way in which our students' expectations
have evolved and we have to have those types of conversations.
And I think the last one is that there was some work being done by Madison Area Technical
College I believe. This is probably 10 years ago.
They were looking at and doing an analysis of the nature of faculty work.
And I thought it was a powerful thing. I haven't seen how it turned out.
But I loved the idea of sitting down and saying are there different types of roles based on
whatever employee group you're in and how do we as an organization develop our infrastructure
to support that. So do we have at our welcome centers generalists
who are able to tell us this is basic information and once it moves beyond that point we move
to this different level here. Do we have faculty whose roles may be part
classroom instruction, part outreach? Do we have administrators who are also -- I
was thinking -- how do we -- where do we put people?
How do we physically orient a building? Wave finding is so important in an organization.
So a person spends a lot of time on college campuses I think those are the types of conversation
s we should be having in response to your question.
>> I think one of the challenges listening to this conversation is talent management
and understanding the resources that we have within the organization.
And I think we foster within our organization a culture of pigeonholing.
So if an individual is in one area, that's the only area that they're seen in and very
rarely do we take an organizational look at what talent exists within the institution
and how we can leverage that and use that. And so I'm wondering what the thoughts on
how we can begin to address that and how that ties into secession planning.
>> You and I probably had a couple of conversations about this, because this is, I think, the,
one of the defining things in community colleges and higher education.
Because we have had this model for the last 100 some years that we constantly, we just
keep doing employee management and talent management the same way.
That's not a sustainable model. We're going to have to have conversations
right now if I'm correct, it's 50 percent of our staff are eligible for retirement within
the next five years, I think it's 50 percent of our faculty.
If we know that to be true, how as an organization are we redefining the ways in which we build
within and at the same time think about the needed diversity we need to have within our
employee ranks. A couple of ideas I had.
I have a friend of mine who works for Kraft, used to, would for Kraft.
I was always struck by the fact every three months there is a manager they came together
and they, everybody who was on the team, they assess where they are with their goals.
Every three months. And what they did in is say okay you know
what this is an idea, Jose is in a good position to be able to transfer into this unit and
what we're going to do is give him these skill sets and experiences so that in six months
this position we know will be available. And it was a matrix.
They literally set down and planned that out in a way that I -- I said can you imagine
if we did that in higher education. If I know I have X number of positions, somebody's
going to be retiring or somebody is going to be making the move to a different position,
how have we at every level of the organization said, okay, let's play it here, and Jason
has a skill set, very strong in these areas I want to complement him with this and then
we're going to put him in these -- that to me is some powerful -- but we haven't been
designed to do that. Right?
Actually in a lot of ways it's very foreign to us to think about it in that way.
We're going to have to. I'm suggesting to you that we're going to
be doing it as a matter of fact. We already are having this conversation with
our Teleo system and classification and compensation structure, and then how do we begin to groom
our own talent within the organization. The competition is going to be fierce.
If we can figure out how to keep our own and we know -- to be very correct, everybody in
an organization isn't going to stay here forever. Our intent should be also from time to time
to bring in new talent based on the needs of the organization to keep us fresh so we
don't become so incestuous we never do anything new.
It's a delicate balance, a science and an art that we have to cultivate in higher education.
I would tell you Montgomery College is going to be in the forefront of doing that.
When we looked at our classification study that we're in the midst of right now, and
we're coupling that with our voluntary retirement program, then we're coupling that with these
positions and not going to be going right back to these areas, and we know all these
seven truths, you all know we're going to have to put some front line people in student
services to do that. But we're little going to have to create some
ladders in order for there a to do that. We'll have to have some serious conversations
about how we plan it and structure it as an organization.
Those are the types of conversations we have to have, but it's going to make some folks
uncomfortable, but I think it also makes other people excited because they can actually see
a future within the organization.
>> Let me take another question from the Web and then I'll come on over.
And so this is another economic question that I know I addressed before.
But speaking of mutuality and common experiences, how can we increase pay equity for adjuncts
at Montgomery College.
>> That's a big issue we have to tackle. Many of you know I've been following this
in the national discourse in the Chronicle so on and so forth talking about pay disparity
between adjuncts and full-time faculty. One thing we have to do is actually sit down
and define what the roles and responsibilities are of faculty.
Those who are full time and those who are adjunct, once we're able to sit down and do
it. I think we have some of it.
I think we have it in our own contractual agreements.
But have we as a board sat down and defined what these employee groups are and what they
do. And once we have that definition then we have
to sit down and have a conversation as an organization.
It is I would say the third rail in higher education right now.
And community colleges. Because we know that in a lot of ways our
system is designed in such a way that we had, desire 60/40 balance between part time and
full-time faculty, we haven't actualized that in some time here, why is that the desired
balance. Have a conversation about the value added
of both. There's a role that is very real about why
you want adjunct or part-time faculty. They bring a currency.
They actually allow the organization to be more flexible as it relates to the needs of
the community we serve, but as an organization we have to have a serious conversation about
compensation. And if that's a part of our master plan then
we have to figure out what we're going to not do in order to do what we think we need
to do. Great question.
>> Speaking for the board, first I want to say you go, you go.
We're very proud of you and the task force for number one having the courage to see this
trend and forcing change and to come up with these very important truths.
>> Thank you.
>> And I don't have a question. But I want you to know that the board is very
much behind all of this. And we realize how much has changed in just
a few months that you've been with us. And the one thing that we do want you to know,
and everyone else at the college, we will do everything we can to help find the resources
to help you do these things. And I think a couple of things that were just
said are very important. We did include the part time faculty and the
search committee, because we consider our adjuncts very important to the future of the
college. And one of the other things you just said,
which is very, very important, we may not be able to do more with less, but we will
certainly do the maximum we can with less and we may have to do other things with less.
But the college is definitely on a trajectory to be more independent, to be more entrepreneurial,
and we are very proud of the leadership that you're providing and that the cabinet that
you have drawn to yourself and to the college, and we look forward to many great years with
you.
>> Thank you.
>> All right. And I appreciate all the questions that we
have. I know there's more online and more here but
we have to wrap it up here so I'll take one last question here from online, which is how
do we actualize these goals you set out and how do we get started?
>> That's good stuff. So one of the ways we're doing that is through
our strategic plan. Those who have been actively engaged in that
process you will know that we had a year-long process to look at the indicators of our community
to figure out where we are as an organization, what are the things we should anticipate and
respond to. And I think we designed during the process
of designing a strategic plan that we've never had before in the organization.
Very real benchmarks and three and five-year goals connecting resources.
We have these ideas that folks say we're going to do these activities.
The first question is how are we going to pay for them?
So we're aligning resources. We're moving money from other places to do
the types of things we need to have done. Because it is for naught we have a beautiful
state of the college we have a task force working on these truths and at the end of
the day it becomes another piece of paper that sits in a cabinet somewhere or up on
the website. That ain't going to happen under my watch.
So we have to sit down as an organization and have very serious conversations of aligning
resources, both people and fiscal and energy to the things that are most important, because
ultimately with the what the whole truths are about is moving students towards completion.
So if we're able to do that, from the moment they connect with this organization and to
the moment they leave, that's the work that we have to do.
That's if heavy lifting, I think watch out we're going to start these chat and chews,
that's what we're going to call them. Where you'll be able to come out and have
conversations about them. It's already in the draft strategic plan.
B 7 truths to actualize and get ready as part of governance and other part of others doing
this during the academic year.
>> Thank you for joining us for the college address to learn about the common experience
and to watch this again, go to the president's page.
>> Watch it again. [Applause] .