This summer, I asked the members of my leadership team to share with you their views on how change is shaping their work. In particular, they were responding to a recent League for Innovation piece on the “crucible of change” by the unofficial “dean of the learning college movement” Terry O’Banion. As we start off fall term, Faculty Senate President Chris Abbott and I are meeting to see how we can work together to broaden the discussion to include the full diversity of voices at the college, and you’ll hear more on that soon.
In the meantime, though, I thought I’d close the loop on the summer discussions by turning to another O’Banion article; this one in the August/September issue of Community College Journal. It, too, deals with change at community colleges but at a very specific level—one which we have grappled with recently. The title is “Late Registration: May It Rest in Peace,” which should suggest the topic. O’Banion writes, “The practice of late registration has been studied for more than three decades, and results have overwhelmingly indicated that it is detrimental to student success.” However, he notes that the practice still has adherents in community colleges, some of whom see it as central to the access mission and others who see it as central to the budget. O’Banion understands but does not agree with either argument, believing our primary obligation to be to set our students on the right path from day one.
Last fall, MCC took the bold step of eliminating late registration and assuring that students were financially able to pay for their classes. Research presented by a cross-college committee supported the three decades of findings cited by O’Banion, and it was compelling. Our late registration practice did not set students up for success, and our practices around student payment did not encourage realistic financial planning (on their part or ours). At the end of the term, many of the students we had scooped up had slipped right through—gaining nothing for themselves and, in very real terms, costing the college resources. Many of us felt confident in our decision to make this change: we were doing the right thing for the right reasons.
But, this change caused waves across the college. Our new practice was fundamentally different from everything we had done before, so for many, it was also fundamentally wrong, a clear leadership misstep. When enrollment at MCC followed the same pattern seen at many community colleges across the state and the nation--downward, this trend offered proof that MCC had made a terrible mistake: we were sacrificing a focus on enrollment to a focus on success. Still, perhaps to no great surprise, with the kind of ill-informed pigheadedness, oops, cross that, I meant visionary leadership that is often expected of academic administrators, we stuck to the plan for a second year.
And, something happened. Actually, lots of things happened. Collectively, the college began to think differently about enrolling students and the ways in which we could get students to “start right.” After our initial year, we regrouped around the table and sifted through the data, looking for ways to improve upon our processes. We sought new ways to get our messages out to students, prospective students and returning students. In short, we embraced the opportunity to learn through change, to make ourselves and our processes better in service of our students.
O’Banion’s summary verdict on late registration casts it as “an ineffective architecture deeply embedded in the culture of the community college.” Over the past two years, MCC has torn down this architecture and built a new, effective one. This fall, our enrollment is strong (in fact, stronger than that at many of our neighbors) AND our students are starting at the beginning, not the middle, with the financial ability to complete their courses. We have gone through O’Banion’s “crucible of change” and come out a stronger college. As I wrote that, a line in a song from the omnipresent musical Wicked popped into my head, “Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better, … But I have been changed for good.” I firmly believe that—by working together, by learning together—we can all change both for the better and for the good of our students and our collective community. I look forward to our dialogues on change over this year!
Please share your comments on change, on late registration, or even on Wicked on the blog.
Anne Kress
President's Office
09/12/2012 |