Bridging the Faculty-Staff Divide through an Epistemic Community

International relations theory defines an epistemic community as a transnational network of knowledge-based experts who help decision-makers to define and address the problems they face. These “scientists without borders” may be able to produce outcomes not easily realizable for national leaders operating in a state-specific political environment. Moreover, by redefining the boundaries of the social group, the network of thought partners gain a different psycho-social perspective that may open new opportunities for problem solving. For example, during the Cold War, American and Soviet scientists forged epistemic communities in the area of arms control in an effort to mitigate the adversarial relations between the governments of the two nations.

To extend a metaphor to higher education, the faculty community and the staff community at an institution can sometimes feel like two distinct nations. Traditionally, each community tends to have their own rules and their own leadership. Each community tends to draw a boundary circumscribed by the classroom, whether inside or out. The mission of the faculty tribe is student learning. The mission of the staff tribe is student persistence/completion. In the worst of times, the international relations between the faculty community and the staff community is perceived as a zero-sum game.

At my institution, I co-chair our Persistence and Completion Committee. From the outset, the committee included “transnational” actors from across the faculty and staff communities. Forming an epistemic community is not as easy as seating faculty and staff members at the same table, however. An epistemic community requires a common point of knowledge expertise. It requires framing an issue in such a way that diverse perspectives are focused on a shared goal. Through open and honest conversations over the period of our first 15 months as a committee, we came to construct a narrative of student success in which student learning, persistence and completion are interdependent. A student must persist to continue learning. A mastery of learning is completion. Student learning, persistence and completion happens inside and outside of the classroom. Though our tribal activities may specific, our global destiny is shared.  We became a trans-institutional network of knowledge-based experts who help decision-makers to define and address student success.

Like most human enterprises, interpersonal relationships were at the heart of our success in bridging the faculty-staff divide. We started with a small group of people from many different parts of the college and got to know each other. We each brought our perspective to challenging discussions. We built mutual trust and appreciation. We struggled together to create a wider and more inclusive frame of reference. And now the members of our epistemic community are well-positioned to return to their respective tribe and share our narrative of student success.

Cultural change at the institutional level is incremental. Not everyone will be swayed by our idealism of a common pool. But by bringing together a diversity of individuals to provide a trans-institutional reframing of our various roles in a shared endeavor, we move toward greater collaboration and more porous boundaries.

Observations from a First-Time Lobbyist

Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. is abuzz with activity, a frenetic and hectic movement of people. I was there speaking to U.S. Congresspersons about the importance of supporting educational access and success for low income and first generation students.

In Congressman Coffman’s high-walled office adorned with photos of veterans and diplomats, I told stories of student success. In a sunlit hall outside of Congresswoman DeGette’s bustling office, I invited her to attend a student roundtable. In the only space we could find available - a basement floor cafeteria - I told Senator Gardner’s legislative aid:  we need to invest in support programs in order to protect Pell.

It was surreal, almost an out of body experience. Governance is far from perfect, but I experienced nothing of the "gridlock" or stasis that you hear about in the media. Progress may or may not be happening as you see fit, but things are certainly happening. And the overwhelming message that I received from the numerous Congresspersons over six days in D.C. was plain and clear: the voice of constituents matters.

Public policy and appropriations play a huge role in impacting higher education and our students. There are a number of effective strategies for communicating your message:

•  Contact the District Office of your Congressperson and invite him or her to attend a roundtable discussion with your students at your campus. Pay attention to the particular interests of the Congressperson, which may be college affordability, student debt, specific student populations (first-generation, Veteran, minority), college completion, et cetera. 

• Identify the Congressperson's Legislative Aid responsible for Higher Education and form a relationship with this person. A phone call or e-mail is appropriate. State the value in supporting specific policies or appropriations for the Congressperson's constituents. 

•  Do not assume that a Congressperson is for or against your position based solely on his or her political affiliation. Again, pay attention to the particular interests of the Congressperson and use these to frame the value in supporting specific policies or appropriations.

• Do not get discouraged by a particular vote or decision by your Congressperson. Nothing happens in a vacuum on Capitol Hill and there are many - yes - political calculations. A Congressperson may support your position even if a particular action seems contrary to your position. 

• Connect with your professional organization or your institution's government relations office to visit Capitol Hill in person. When there, do not get discouraged if you find yourself advocating with a Legislative Aid (who may be half of your age). Legislative Aids meet directly with the Congressperson on a frequent basis. Your meeting with a Legislative Aid is the real deal; don't take your eye of the ball. 

• Position yourself as a content expert in Higher Education. Ask how you can support the policy-making process of your Congressperson. For example, is there a specific type of data that would be useful? 

• Speaking of data, be prepared with both quantitative data that demonstrate program effectiveness as well as qualitative data (e.g. student stories) that provide the context for how the program impacts the lives of constituents. 

• At the end of the day, your Congressperson is just that - a person. Feel confident in your ability to communicate with this person. Accept that each of us have limitations and that the ideal does not always align with the possible. Let your Congressperson know that you value his or her hard work to improve the lives of constituents. 

Education Technology: The Dialectic of Utopia and Dystopia

With advances in education technology, the future of higher education looks great or terrible, depending on who you read.

In one camp you will find the zealots. This tribe sees education technology producing a grand disruption in which massive online competency-based learning - unbundled from calcified institutions and guided by sophisticated privatized data science - creates robust educational outcomes determined strictly by merit at a fraction of the cost. A true utopia.

In another camp you will find the luddites. This tribe views such a vision of education technology as truly dystopic, as a fanciful illusion so enamored in political expediency and its own zeitgeist that it ignores the social and interpersonal structures long-proven to effectively educate students, in particular those most vulnerable (low-income, first-generation, and non-white students).

In the middle ground stands many others, taking careful stock of the unfolding dialectic.

The technological determinism of the zealot tribe asserts that because we can do something with technology, it is a foregone conclusion that a) the outcome will be better when using technology and b) technology is unstoppable.

The interpersonal determinism of the luddite tribe asserts that because humans are social learners, it is a foregone conclusion that a) the outcome will be better when using personal interaction and b) technology makes us less human.

The dialectic of thesis and antithesis between these two tribes enlivens the potential for evolutionary movement within higher education. Higher education has the opportunity to draw on the strength of its humanistic roots while moving creatively into the future through emergent technologies.

For the dialectic to lead to such a synthesis, those in the middle ground must be careful and balanced arbiters of both evidence and values. What constellation of practices most effectively produces specific educational outcomes? What constellation of practices most effectively enlivens the human experience?

Technology is a human enterprise. There is more to the human enterprise than technology. Education needs neither disruption nor restoration, but - somewhere in the middle - evolution.

Reframe: Leadership

"If you consider yourself a leader, you may want to turn around and see if anyone is following you. If not, then you are just going for a walk."

I will acknowledge that there is a certain amount of truth to the logic and pragmatism in this framing of leadership. Problems arise, however, when leadership becomes merely a quest to acquire followers. Now you are simply a public relations specialist with an ego.

To me, leadership is inspiring others to act toward a shared goal. Leadership is not about acquiring followers but rather realizing partners. It is not about a personal vision but rather shared dreams. And sometimes there is nothing more important and inspiring than a leader going on a long lonely walk into terrain that others dare not go.

At the end of the day, I see leadership possessing a certain Taoist quality. The Way that can be known is not the true Way. Leadership cannot be found if you seek it, only if you do not.

The Relationship between Access and Success

The buzz around community colleges as of late is the shift from an access mission to a completion mission. A number of books and articles have put forth the thesis that accessing college without completing college may well leave the student and society (e.g. taxpayers) worse off than if the student never attended college in the first place. Common arguments in support of this completion over access thesis include the abysmal completion rates of students enrolled in remedial coursework and the ethical challenges of allowing students to access Federal Student Aid (including loans) when we know that their statistical likelihood of completion is extremely low.

I extend my kudos to any critical thinker that makes a legitimate and honest effort to challenge the long-standing conventions and norms of any institution. Whether the completion over access thesis is right or wrong, it certainly problematizes the status quo in community colleges. For that reason, I am all ears.

My primary concern with the completion over access thesis is that it expediently papers over the many socio-economic structures that deter the academic preparation of our most vulnerable student populations (low-income, first-generation, minority, immigrants, et cetera). It places the onus of success or failure squarely on the shoulders of the particular student in a particular place at a particular time as he or she prepares to enter college. But what have we as a community and society done to support the academic preparation of this student in the previous 18+ years? Probably not enough.

My institution seeks the tenuous balance that supports both access and success. We have placed certain restrictions on access to remedial coursework and student loans while attempting to strengthen pre-collegiate partnerships and summer bridge experiences. We have moved forward on using learning analytics to prioritize resources toward students in the "murky middle" that stand to benefit most from the additional support. We have worked diligently to provide the best possible institutional environment for the students that come to our doors while accepting that many student barriers are beyond our control. All in all, it is a game of priorities and compromises.

At the end of the day, we all must answer the normative question for ourselves: what is gained and what is lost when completion outweighs access? What is student success?

The Promise and Peril of Analytics

Nuclear power. Cloning. Social media. Space mining. Unchartered waters of  social-scientific innovation often come heralded with great promise, just as the unknown depths often hide potential peril. It seems the evolutionary heart of our species is to learn, to grow, and to explore - to accept the risk of peril in order to gain the opportunity of promise. Some ships sink, others land on new shores. So it goes.

And so it goes with analytics in higher education (see Analytics 101). There is great promise and great peril in these waters. As captains of these high seas, we must hew true to our internal compass while balancing boldness with humility.

“My concern about using data in higher education has to do with the loss of intellectual curiosity. As we meet budgets and metrics for four-year graduation rates, I’m afraid we’ll optimize and track students and become training programs rather than fertile grounds of investigation and exploration," cautions Marc Hoit, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology at North Carolina State University.

If an analytics tool makes it very clear that a student has a very low probability of succeeding in higher level math courses yet it is that student's unwavering dream to become an Engineer, what is the responsible action of faculty and staff at an open access community college?

The promise of analytics: proactive data-based needs assessments that are timely and granular; a focus on data variables of greatest impact within complicated multivariable reality; expanding reach of faculty and staff through increased efficiencies in needs assessment; organizational decisions attuned to the needs of students; assessment of student deficits for intervention as well as student strengths for development; greater persistence and completion rates of students; and personalized learning experiences.

The peril of analytics: limiting access in the name of success; treating students as data points to optimize within organizational objectives; self-fulling prophesy of statistical prediction; losing touch with the art of teaching and advising students; compounding errors within complicated data sets/algorithms; and limiting the freedom and self-discovery of higher education.

The Persistence and Completion Committee at CCD will be facilitating conversations around the campus in order to draw out the values and principles to guide implementation of analytics tools at the college. One positive starting point to these conversations is The Asilomar Convention for Learning Research in Higher Education.

 How can we leverage the promise of analytics in higher education while remaining clear-eyed about the perils?

Guadalajara

We dream of travel; most people do, anyway.  Why?  Why is it that we want to take a step and voyage into a new world, culture, or dream?  Is it that we have a vision of another place being better?  Student’s that travel from other lands to live here in Colorado get to experience a new and different world.  Is it better?  Do they miss home?  Is this place what they thought it would be?

While I was in college I spent a semester in Guadalajara, Mexico.  Up until that point, I had not really spent much time out of United States, much less Colorado.  I spoke Spanish from text books, not real life. I definitely knew how to order a beer and say hello but I could not hold a clear conversation. Honestly, I struggled to acclimate to a new culture and daily life.  I missed some of the conveniences from the United States like drinking water out of the faucet or knowing that when using your tooth brush in the morning that the cockroaches did not feast on it while you slept.  However, there were new conveniences in Mexico that I began to appreciate, like dropping off laundry at the Lavanderia and picking it up in two days, cleaned and folded, for less than $3.00!!

My Senora traveled with us to a beach where locals frequented.  We got there by a very old school bus, baby blue and most likely missing struts and shocks. We stayed in a hotel that was not fancy and if there is an electrical code in Mexico, our lodging was definitely not up to code.  I imagined as I fell asleep in the twin bed I shared with my back to my dear friend, that my only hope was that we were not sharing the twin with the squirrel size cockroaches that we just jumped over on the uneven sidewalk outside.   It is not even fair to discuss the restrooms situation so I will not give detail to that aspect; however, as we sat on the beach and watched twenty kids playing and laughing hysterically as their parents watched and discussed life, you couldn’t help but admire the calmness, laughter and the moment of connection.    

Upon my return to the United States I had the unexpected struggle getting back into my old life.  The exposure to another world created a frustration in me when looking at, dare I say entitlements, from Americans’.   I wrestled with trying to understand why we do not have more gratitude for our blessings.  I did know now how grateful I was for the material gifts I experience as an American but was somewhat disillusioned by how whether the material rewards made us happy.  Every experience in my traveling was different, and therefore scary; yet when I reflect on my “globe-trotting” I feel so lucky to have been in another world for four months.  I learned the beauty of culture; another’s and my own, and gratitude for my experience and all of my blessings.  It is my intent to encourage students that I work with at the Community College of Denver if given the opportunity to travel, take it.