February, 17 2017 – Costal Bend College, Beeville TX

The Ride:

The initial goal for Texas was to just get past it.  But I enjoyed yesterday so much, and thanks to my CCSF Biology Texpatriot Matt, I had a contact at a Community College in Beeville.  Beeville is about an hour north of Corpus Christi and between me and that part of the state was some of the top rated motorcycling roads in the country (according to motorcycleroads.com).   So instead of getting right back on the interstate I decided to skip San Antonio and took the back roads.  I headed to a group of ranch roads known as the three sisters.  I think I rode two of the three twisted roads.  I could not tell for sure because I was having too much fun and not paying attention to where I was.  I am learning the beauty of GPS.  It’s like having a string tied to your bike.  As long as you have a signal you can get lost and always follow your way back out by actually paying attention to the little pink line on the screen...  The isolated roads are beautiful and had very little traffic on them.   I knew I was in the right place when I blew past a metal shed building with the sign “Texas Motorcycle Museum”.  The seasonal museum is only open on the weekends so I have no idea what was inside… 

It would appear the everything’s bigger in Texas motto is true while the landscape was lovely hills and valley dotted with large estates, on the flat parts of the ride the estates of land were so large you could not see any buildings … only gates.  And what gates they were, very ornate and expressive, but not expansive, most gates were only built to frame the entranceway road.  I expected barbed wire fences but most of the large ranches I passed had tall deer fencing all around them.  Given the size, I was under the impression this was not to keep the deer out but to keep them in providing an enclosed habitat for hunting.  These were large ranches…  

After a few hour of twisty ear to ear-grinning isolation, I told the GPS to get me to the next college a few hours away.

Costal Bend College

Costal Bend College is a small rural community college of some 5000 students.  And I would not have been here if it were not the former place of employment of Matt.  I got much enjoyment out of poking my head around the science classrooms thinking… Matt used to be here!

The highlight of the day, and perhaps the community college part of the trip, was a conversation with Matt’s former colleague who is now a Dean.  The conversation ranged from sharing personal career histories to community college organizations and the reasons why we face similar challenges at different levels of college management structures.  I’m sure when I try to distill what I have learned from this trip, this conversation will play a significant factor.  It was refreshing to share my personal situation with someone else who has also experienced the ups and downs of Community College Management structures.  

As the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt goes: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”. So rather than write about a person, or the event of a conversation, I would like to aspire to some contemplations on organizations:  At the highest level of a complex organization like a community college leadership needs to be decisive, confident and action oriented.  It is very hard to get a large organization to change in any direction so the captains of such large ships need to come with an agenda and a plan.  In my experience the best of them are people who are moving forward in a way that makes you not only admire them but also want to follow in the direction they are moving the organization in.  Finding people who fit this trait can work very well in business or military organizations where top down management is expected, and management boards can select a leader with a vision they agree with and away we go.

At the fundamental level, the job of a community college is to teach and finding agents who excel at this function selects for a different set a criterion.  A good instructor sets a priority on inclusion and communication.  They need to be sensitive to student’s needs, a critical thinker and an expert in their field of study.  A key skill surrounding this is innate curiosity, and engagement in new learning experiences both for themselves and their students, as this act of self-development keeps them connected to the learning experience of their students.

The challenge comes in the connection between the top levels and fundamental levels (middle management).  Because the values and skillsets are not aligned in Community College, it is very hard to use the cream rises to the top model that most organizations use in promoting those who do their jobs well, to higher levels into middle and upper management.  Instead, the difference in skill sets and focus leads to a difference in values, and there develops an, us versus them strategy.  Common terminology is “going over to the dark side” when one rises into administrative positions in Community Colleges.  

This creates a problem for connecting upper management positions with qualified applicants as because the applicant pool seeking entrance into the higher levels of management is often not selected for their existing skillsets or abilities They may have the idea that the goal is to make the college work better.  But in reality they have been selected for their “management” potential.  I.e. do they support the agenda of the highest level of management?  From the top down perspective it’s imperative for leaders to have some distance from the people they manage or it would be very close to impossible to enact the changes highest level leaders (presidents and chancellors) deem necessary.  So far in my brief tour, I have experienced multiple colleges, like my own, that have had great turnover in middle and upper management.  With every new leader comes a new agenda that must be accompanied by removing all the middle level management and replacing them with new personnel that are committed to the leader’s vision. 

This is all well and good if the point of the college structure is to be “managed”.  For many upper level administrations they were brought in to deal with financial problems, and that is a main concern for their administrative agenda.  Priority understandably, is on the balance sheet.  This perspective is not a problem for upper management, but a fundamental contradiction for those in middle management positions, who are charged with keeping the ship running while simultaneously reconstructing it, or firing all the crewmembers.  Often this seems to be done without concern for buy in from the fundamental instructors who are doing the teaching.  I know I have been trying to get CCSF to establish a budget committee and have more budget talks.  This is not because we need to control the budget it’s because a great deal of the instructors at CCSF are not cognizant of what our current budget status is and they do not share the admins priority agenda.  What suffers in these situations is the turnover is the instructional knowledge and excellence in teaching, when decisions are made without widespread instructor input and buy in.  Simply cutting positions or giving golden handshakes to remove expenses on the balance sheet does not protect the instructional priorities of the faculty.  They rightfully are concerned over the ability to offer quality instruction.   Yes, excellent teaching is given lip service, but I have yet to hear a new president or chancellor say: ”the agenda I have for this institution is to make you all better communicators”, or “I am here to support curiosity and inquiry at all levels of the institution”.  Likewise I have never heard faculty stand up and say “My greatest concern for the college is that we look good in our financials” We acknowledge these things as priorities of the other side and continue to snipe at each other.  

What I have heard now from multiple middle level managers at multiple colleges, who have lived through being squeezed between these two conflicting interests; the top down (administrative), and the bottom up (faculty) interests; is “Faculty don’t know how good they have it”…