Presentation at American Association of Community Colleges' Conference

By Lee Riddell
Institute for Community College Development
Spring 2008

In 2005, Montgomery County Community College (MCCC) initiated a two-year long Leadership Academy and Mentoring Program to prepare "in-house" talent for leadership roles and succession planning. MCCC, together with Ruth Hopkins, a mentoring consultant from the Institute for Community College Development (ICCD), designed and facilitated the mentoring portion of the program.

Leaders from the college in Blue Bell, Pa. and Hopkins presented an update on the success of the first two years of the mentoring program at the American Association for Community Colleges' (AACC) annual conference on April 8 in Philadelphia. Mentoring program strategies and participant training were highlighted together with the results of a full evaluation that followed the first year of the initiative. In addition, one of the mentoring pairs shared some of the successes of their mentoring relationship. 

Hopkins began the workshop by sharing research from the field of adult mentoring that indicates having a mentor is one of the most important factors to career success. Similarly, several studies of career success among community college presidents found that presidents believe their mentors were key to their advancement.

Using the findings from 25 years of mentoring research, MCCC and ICCD designed a program using best practices to meet the specific goals of the College. The program was structured for a combination of 15 faculty and administrators providing each with a mentor from the senior leadership team. During the first year of the Academy, mentees attended six intensive half-day workshops on topics such as continuous quality improvement, leadership skills, emerging technologies and strategic issues. For the second year, mentees developed projects focused on college initiatives, which were designed to enhance the mentees’ management and leadership skills.
 
The initial mentoring training workshop brought both mentee and mentor together to learn about the characteristics of good mentoring, the full range of mentoring functions, identification of skill and career development activities, potential barriers to mentoring relationships, ways to create a nurturing mentoring dialogue and initiation of the mentoring agreement.

Participants were matched based on succession planning needs. Care was taken to match mentees with mentors outside of their reporting lines and where possible, to form matches that provide cross college relationships. Kathrine Swanson, assistant to the president for institutional effectiveness and strategic initiatives, manages the leadership program. "Ideally a one-to-one pairing is the goal," Swamson said. "Mentors provide guidance to mentees as they implement their projects and expose them to other activities, based on their goals for leadership development."

Steady Moono, dean of student success at MCCC, reflected on his experience as a mentee. "The mentoring relationship with my mentor, Karen Stout (pictured at left), President of Montgomery, afforded me an opportunity in "real time" and in a practical and non-threatening manner to examine and deal with leadership issues that I was experiencing." Created to address a need to improve academic advising, this mentoring team established and implemented an advisor evaluation and promotion process.

Both national and local issues have been drivers in developing Montgomery's Leadership Academy. These issues include: concerns about building the leadership pipeline; the need to have a strong and deep cadre of internal leaders to guide new projects that advance the College's strategic plan; the need to address internal perceptions that outside hires were more valued than internal hires; and the need to address the board's request for succession planning that includes the pathways to president, vice president, deans and directors’ positions.

"Our goals were to link the academy with our strategic plan goals," Stout said. "One of those goals is to 'Build a Model and Modern Workplace' and an objective within that goal is to develop our employees as the continuous learners we want our graduates to become."

A pre- and post-mentor training workshop questionnaire and a post-program evaluation were used to improve and enhance the second year of the mentoring program. Participant feedback has been essential to making program improvements. In particular, participants reported that creating a document of shared understanding was helpful and they requested more practice on developing multiple types of questions as the basis for better dialogue. Mentors said the training gave them increased confidence in their mentoring abilities and optimism that formal program mentoring can be successful.

Through the evaluation survey, the team learned that: those who met more often were more satisfied; those who viewed their participation as voluntary were more satisfied; career development mentoring activities occurred less often than social activities; and Montgomery's mentoring pairs reported more career development mentoring than other community college mentoring programs.

Using the results of the program evaluation, changes were made to improve the second-year training workshop. Additional emphasis was given to the following areas: the importance of spending time together; the ways in which goals, skill needs, and activities can be linked to better support the mentee's individual development plan; the assurance of voluntary participation; and the clarification of the linkages between the mentoring program and the College's strategic goals.

The Leadership Academy, including the mentorship component, has been a success. Graduates have moved upward (dean to association vice president, director to controller) and are heading college-wide projects, such as reviews of the Pandemic Flu plan, college math initiatives, the influence technology has on faculty and participation in the Recyclemania competition.

This collaborative approach between MCCC and ICCD is an action-learning project that stands on best practices, in which feedback from both mentees and mentors drives change that improves future programs.

To learn more about the Leadership Academy or the mentoring component, contact ICCD at ICCD@cornell.edu.

Lee Riddell is the assistant director for the ICCD.