Leveraging Context to Build Strategy

In Miami Dade College, we assist our students through their education as part of the collective obligation to create a changemaking agency.

Higher education institutions working towards a changemaking education demands a deliberate approach, which includes integrating strategy into the context of community and the culture (especially when, like in our case, being mostly a two-year college in our efforts to get involved students face a more limited path as compared to four-year We strongly believe in our belief that the people whose lives are most affected by the a myriad of environmental and social problems we are trying to address are the most valuable to our efforts to develop solutions. Instead of focusing on our student demographics as well as shorter academic paths as obstacles to our changemaking mission Therefore, our approach is to use them as assets. Talent is universal, however the opportunity to be a part of it isn't, therefore our principles of design for integrating changes across the College are centered around accessibility inclusiveness, clarity, and inclusion. What is the best way to ensure that every student regardless of their academic path or subject, have the chance to understand and practice the power of change? How can we involve the majority of College members as active participants in the larger task? What can we do to simplify and narrow on the need to act to be focused on the specific qualities that make a difference that can be incorporated across a range of educational experiences?

Our college-wide strategy is designed to tackle the type of gap I observed that afternoon with Jacob - the gap between understanding what can be done and putting it into the action. This is a challenge for our students, just as it could be for us as teachers.

To every student, regardless of their background or their path to MDC Our strategy starts by acknowledging the ways in which elements that our learners' life experiences can hinder them from moving into the realm of change: negative narratives or experiences that suggest that you aren't important or you aren't able to make a difference and never recognizing the power of your personal voice as you tell your personal stories, or knowing the ways that any career path can be a source of positive environmental or social impact.

In order to develop our strategy to foster changemaking agency we started by engaging with all members of the stakeholder group in order to learn about their viewpoints. Through conversations with staff, students, faculty and administrators, we discovered what motivated them to embrace changes in education and also the factors that kept them from fully engaging in it. This helped not only create the same knowledge of what education that is changemaking means to MDC but also allowed us to determine what enticed different groups to be involved in it. The process helped us create an operational framework to communicate MDC's dedication to our students and their education as changemakers.

After we had completed the initial task to assess the different nature of motivation and meaning and motivation, we continued to harness the diverse roles that we have to ensure the sustainability of the project. We developed an open and diverse environment and which is a "team of teams" model that reflects our intention to provide accessibility. The eight campuses we have "change teams" composed of individuals from different campus departments , to ensure that there is a college-wide representation of all disciplines and department. This broad representation also brings us back to the various classes of students with whom we work together, while and keeps their their experience at the heart of the college.

With our strategy in place and our teams established The next step was to pinpoint the most concise calls to actions. A multidisciplinary team composed of program managers and faculty began the meticulous process to identify MDC's list of changeshaping attributes, the core abilities and the mindset that will be at the heart of the learning process at MDC and aid in ensuring the consistency and alignment when designing and providing learning opportunities for every student. After an 18-month period that involved a number of feedback loops, iterations and feedback loops, the team came up with the four characteristics of reflection, empathy, the ability to act, and resilience. This seemingly easy set was selected intentionally according to the fundamentals of our plan and intended to reinforce our dedication to bridging the gap between the power of our students through using the power of each of their personal stories.