NISOD 2012-Austin-The Last Day

I have been too busy stuffing my brain to write in some time, and that especially applies this past week. Attending the 2012 NISOD conference has been a rush in many ways and a great opportunity to learn from folks who have traveled from across North America to share their problems, solutions, ideas, and aspirations. Here are some significant take-aways (from my perspective) from this great event.

People are Concerned about Adjuncts

There were a number of sessions focusing on supporting adjuncts. From professional development to mentoring to online orientation (the one I just attended), community college professionals are trying to develop tools that help these important instructors succeed. While all instructors are important, adjunct instructors (referred to as "part-time instructors" in colleges such as mine) are unique in that they are expected to provide instruction commensurate with that offered by full-time instructors, but without the professional development support, colleague network, and compensation offered to the full-time folks. There's an equity issue here, but it gets more interesting. The presenter in the session I just enjoyed stated that the ration of adjunct to full-time instructors in her institution is 80:20. No, this isn't a typo. And this isn't unusual. It does make sense when you consider the increased costs associated with delivering instruction. Community colleges cannot generate enough revenue through various means to retain a full-time corps of teaching professionals. Therefore, adjuncts make sense from an economic standpoint, but this only pencils out if they are properly supported and equipped so that the quality of instructor, student support, and classroom management combine to provide a world-class experience in EVERY class for EVERY learner.

People are Concerned about Completion

There were a number of sessions on the completion agenda, and the importance of completion AND access was front and center. Sessions on student success and teaching/learning as it drives student success were numerous and well attended. The preconference seminar that I attended on Sunday highlighted the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) Completion Pledge and shared the work of Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) as a strong partner in driving work around completion from the perspective of the students. This is for good reason: many institutions may soon be supported financially based on their completions (measured by some obtuse algorithm, I'm sure) rather than by their enrollments. This is healthy and makes sense, because it rewards the right behavior. Still, this constitutes a major change in praxis. We have traditionally enrolled students and have hoped for the best. Now, we need to help students hone their skills and find their individual motivations to finish what they start.

AACC Completion Challenge: http://www.aacc.nche.edu/About/completionchallenge/Pages/default.aspx

PTK Completion Corps: www.cccompletioncorps.org

As one example of community college professionals supporting students and driving concepts that promote completion, Bunker Hill Community College is doing some amazing work around learning communities relative to student success. Check out their work at www.bhcc.edu/learning-communities.

People are Positive about the Future

There is a great deal to do, but attendees I met this week are optimistic about the ability to support persistence, retention, and success among colleagues and students. The "can-do" people are here in droves and are passionate about sharing their solutions with others. On balance, I would recommend this conference to all community college practitioners. It has been a hectic but wonderful week...and I'm already thinking about my next NISOD.

Presentation attendees-link to the full dissertation

For those of you who may be interested, here is the link to the full version of the dissertation:

http://hdl.handle.net/1957/22036

Please feel free to let me know if you have questions or comments. It is my intention to use the themes shared during the presentation as the basis for a survey or questionnaire to be distributed more widely. The intent here is to see how these themes resonate with a broader audience regarding the phenomenon of faculty-to-faculty mentoring.

If you need copies of the PowerPoint notes used during the concurrent session on Thursday, please email me at dfindley@pcc.edu.

UNM Mentoring Conference-Day 1

If one message were considered to be consistent across the presentations I saw at today's open sessions of the mentoring conference, that message would be "communication." Frameworks, deliverables, milestones, and good intentions mean nothing if program administrators do not clearly communicate their expectations about mentoring initiatives. There is also danger of confusion and failure if mentors and proteges fail to communicate openly, honestly, and in a timely manner.

Faculty-to-Faculty Mentoring in CTE: Why it matters

I often retell the story of why focusing on faculty-to-facutly mentoring in career and technical education (CTE) is of great personal importance. Here's the short version.

Upon assuming my first deanship, I was confronted with a situation in which a vacancy existing in one of the CTE programs in my division. The discipline and other particulars are not particularly relevant, but the reason for the vacancy is. In short, the highly-capable candidate, an individual who possessed much knowledge and who had enjoyed many years of success in the field as a practioner, felt a huge amoung of anxiety because he didn't understand how to teach, how to relate to students, or how to navigate the complex and foreign territory of the community college. For want of guidance and support, he was lost to us. He walked into the division office one bright and sunny fall morning, dropped his keys on the counter, and disappeared out the door. Not a good thing.

With the assistance of a member of the department's advisory committee, we were able to locate a seemingly-promising technician with extensive industry experience. Although this seemed eerily similar to the situation we'd just experienced, we needed an instructor, and such instructors tend to be in very short supply. He was capable enough concerning content area knowledge, but he didn't understand the college, failed to follow protocols and regulations, and ended up being fired because of behaviors that might have been okay in a shop environment but had absolutely no place in a community college environment where folks try extremely hard to avoid violating Federal civil rights laws. Beyond this I can't comment, but I can assure you it was not fun.

I started deaning literally the same month that I began work on my doctoral studies in community college leadership. My recent nightmare lingered in my mind as I made my way through Education and Work, the first course in the program. I suppose that it was at this point that I decided that there was something to the notion that faculty at the post-secondary level could benefit from some form of support, some sort of acculturation that would help them "learn the ropes" in the mysterious world of community college teaching. My personal journey had taken me from my early days in the K-12 business (10 years of middle school teaching) to seven years in small business and high-tech startups and on to adventures in the community college trade. I knew that folks needed to learn about how others think and learn, that not everyone approaches learning from the same perspective and with the same set of tools, and that learning how to teach would somehow enable instructors to more effectively facilitate learning for others. As I worked with six CTE programs and two transfer departments, watching people teach and learn and struggle and succeed, it became clear that there had to be an answer. And there was. Some departments informally linked experienced faculty with newbies in an effort to help them learn how things worked. These faculty seemed to adjust better and experienced fewer problems. I reflected on this in the context of my own long history of working with mentors, and the idea for my dissertation was born.

For those of you who are interested in my research, you can find the here at http://hdl.handle.net/1957/22036
. My future plans include additional qualitative work around the experiences of mentors and proteges, and a post-positivist approach to try and link the improvement in teaching with the achievement of student outcomes. It's fun and interesting work, and it matters. Please feel free to share your impressions, ideas, and questions.