August 21, 2006
ICCD Hosts Conference on Community College Accountability
"A New Era of Accountability" was the topic of discussion among community college presidents, administrators, faculty, and trustees at a conference led by the Institute for Community College Development at Cornell University’s ILR Conference Center August 9-11. The event was part of ICCD’s annual Leadership Issues series held at Cornell each summer on topics of key interest to community colleges.
While the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education was voting to adopt a report that condemns the inadequacy of accountability in higher education, 51 community college leaders from 13 states and Canada gathered at ICCD’s program to discuss how best to demonstrate effective stewardship to the public. In a time of decreased funding but increasing pressure to prove their worth, community colleges must be proactive about being accountable to the public, rather than waiting to have ill-informed policies imposed upon them. Participants at “A New Era of Accountability” discussed how faculty can assume ownership of assessing student learning, how colleges can develop their own systems for measuring institutional effectiveness, and what skills leaders need in an environment of increasing regulation.
Scott Jaschik, editor of the Web-based Inside Higher Ed, presented the keynote, "Why the Press Doesn’t Understand You, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do About It," encouraging participants to improve the visibility of their community colleges in the media.
View the streaming video of Jaschik's presentation.
View the Chronicle Online article about his presentation.
Dr. Stephen Mittelstet, President of Richland College, the first community college to win the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award, reminded the audience in his presentation "Gently Down the Stream: Using Baldrige to Navigate Turbulent Waters Toward Organizational Wholeness," that accountability and passion can co-exist.
On a panel discussion of "The Uncertain Future of Accreditation," Dr. Judith Gay, VP for Academic Affairs at the Community College of Philadelphia and former chair of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education; Katharine Eneguess, President, New Hampshire Community Technical College, Berlin, and former public member of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Higher Education; and Dr. Tom E. Benberg, VP and Chief of Staff at the Commission of Colleges, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, agreed that regional accreditation is working, and is increasingly focused on outcomes.
Other speakers addressed assessment, faculty development, benchmarking, and cost effectiveness.
In one of the small group discussions, participants discussed how community college administrators can encourage faculty to support assessment of student learning as a part of institutional accountability—how to get faculty to "buy in." Participant Emmanuel Awuah, Director of Multicultural Affairs at Onondaga Community College, emphasized four principles which seemed to summarize the concerns of many participants and presenters: administrators must approach assessment and accountability, he said, with "honesty, trust, commitment, and support." Administrators must be honest by responding to faculty fears head-on--being clear, for example, that while assessment of student learning is not a form of faculty evaluation, it may sometimes be a means of gathering data with the purpose of closing down unsuccessful departments. They must also trust that faculty will do assessment when given the means to develop their own tools. Likewise, faculty must trust the administration. There needs to be commitment to assessment on the part of the college leadership: money for assessment should appear as a line item in the budget. And faculty should be provided with the resources they need--money, personnel, training, and technology—to do the kind of in-depth assessment of student learning integral to institutional accountability.
Other presenters at "A New Era of Accountability" included
- Dr. Joseph C. Burke, Director of the Higher Education Program, and Senior Fellow, the Rockefeller Institute
- Dr. Alicia Dowd, Assistant Professor, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, and principal investigator/author, Lumina Foundation report "Data Don’t Drive: Building a Practitioner-Driven Culture of Inquiry"
- Dr. Jeffrey Seybert, Director, Research, Evaluation, and Instructional Development, Johnson County Community College
- Dr. Ellen Weed, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Nashville State Community College
- Dr. Wendy Erisman, Senior Research Analyst, Institute for Higher Education Policy
- Susan Bello, Assistant Dean, Academic Affairs/Institutional Research, Nassau Community College
- Dr. Margaret McMenamin, Executive VP for Educational Services, Brookdale Community College
- Dr. Laura Goe, Associate Research Scientist, Learner and Teacher Research Center, ETS
- Johanna Halsey, Professor, Mathematics, Physical and Computer Sciences, Dutchess Community College, and
- Rob Jenkins, Director, The Writers Institute at Georgia Perimeter College.
The conference was partly sponsored by the Lumina Foundation, ETS, and JMZ Architects and Planners.
Press article:
"Editor Advises Community College Leaders to 'Charge In' and Demand More Press and Public Attention"” Chronicle Online August 17, 2006
"Future of Higher Education is Focus of Community College Conference at Cornell, Aug. 9-11" Chronicle Online August 1, 2006
More information about "A New Era of Accountability" (program, presenter bios)
The next ICCD program in their annual Leadership Issues series will be "The Sustainable Campus: Leadership, Curriculum, Facilities" August 6-8, 2007, at Cornell.
For more information, please contact Barbara Viniar, Executive Director, the Institute for Community College Development, 607-255-9259 or bv28@cornell.edu.
