Essential Conditions
- Professional development
PRACTITIONER, PRESIDENT, AND PARTNER PERSPECTIVES
Lori Suddick, Vice President for Learning, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
We have organizational requirements that we build into training for staff and faculty so that they understand how to infuse equity, diversity, inclusion into their work … how do they emulate the vast customer service possible. So there are trainings that we offer that aren’t optional. Just like we know that students don’t do optional, nor do we. So we try to design a structure that can really help people gain the knowledge and skills that they need to produce the student success outcomes necessary. So much of this is mindset, shifting from the students being college ready to us being a student-ready environment. That’s mindset shift more than anything. So engaging people in that dialogue so they can grow along that spectrum of thought is really a focus for us.
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Professional development
Stephanie Sutton, Associate Provost, Enrollment Management & Student Success, Lorain County Community College, Pathways Coach (posted 4/5/2018)
A big part about the work, I think, is giving our front-end team the tools that they need to do the work. So we’ve infused a lot of customer service training so that they can understand the power that they have in setting the tone for what students see as their purpose and their belonging to our institution. It also is about that one size doesn’t fit all. And so for the students who are really self-directed and know what they want to do, we want to make sure that we don’t get in their way. We’re there to support them. But so it is understanding the student from the student’s viewpoint and giving our front-end team, and particularly our advisors, the professional development tools to work with those students from where they come from.
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Professional development
Laurel Williamson, Deputy Chancellor & President, San Jacinto College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
We’ve got four modules for leadership. We evaluate our leaders on leadership competencies. As we get into professional development, we’re making sure it’s tied to our strategic goals and to that student success goal that has everything to do with pathways. We have leadership competencies that include things like learning agility, readiness for change, good decisionmaking, developing people who report to you.
And so each of the modules focuses on that. I do a part of the module on leading change because, of course, that’s what pathways is all about … is leading change throughout the institution. And so we want our leaders to know how to lead that change, how to develop people. There are some stages to change, and people have to know what that is.
We sort of use the analogy of the stages of grief. First, you’re very resistant. You’re sometimes angry. Then you go to some acceptance. Then you go to an understanding. We talk about all of those things with our leaders — and how to develop your direct reports, how to have difficult conversations, how to develop them and pull them up through the pipeline. And then at the end of the year when we do our evaluations for all of our leaders, we ask them to tell us in writing how you demonstrated those leadership competencies through the year with very specific examples.
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Professional development
COLLEGE EXAMPLES
San Jacinto College (TX): Pathways Education (posted 4/5/2018)
A professor at San Jacinto College developed this plan for a college-wide discussion about redesigning America’s community colleges and other associated pathways materials. All employees were asked to read the text and attend a series of guided discussions about the text. (William Wolfe)
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Professional development
San Jacinto College (TX): Discussion Questions (posted 4/5/2018)
San Jacinto College used these questions to guide college-wide discussions about Redesigning America’s Community Colleges. (San Jacinto College)
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Professional development
San Jacinto College (TX): Participant Feedback Form (posted 4/5/2018)
San Jacinto College used this form to gather feedback on its college-wide discussions. (San Jacinto College)
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Professional development