Thursday, November 29, 2007

Sharing Our Governance

Frances Nguyen once wrote that if students are ever to be educated about the value of diversity, then the faculty must first learn that value and then must model unity in diversity. We teach, for example, that it is necessary for the socio-economic groups and nationalist states of the world to understand and accept one another. In this postmodernist society we would not dream of teaching that every society must conform to a specific model, or that cultural diversity must cease to exist. If we want our students to believe this, then the employees of a college must model it ourselves. We must learn to cooperate toward shared goals despite our distinct individual values.

We All Stand Together

A central aspect of this unity in diversity is the acceptance of one another as they are. It is easy to accept others who are like ourselves. It is easy to accept what we want others to become. It is much more difficult to let others be who they are right now. When we try to weed out employees who vocally disagree, we are not accepting. When we put pressure on others to resign because their methodology, or pedagogy, or philosophy differs from our own, we are not accepting. Again, it is easy to accept someone who is always nice to you, who does what you want them to do, and who is generally agreeable. The challenge before us is not merely to accept such people but to accept all who are part of our community. In doing so, we become a unit. We become a cohesive and united front, and we model what we teach.

Freedom of Speech

Our relationships with one another should be characterized by freedom of speech. First and foremost, we must encourage others to speak freely to us. It is crucial that we allow others to share their unvarnished opinions. A society in which the truth is rarely spoken will never model the principles that we hope to teach to others. Just as in the Greek assembly every citizen was expected to share his view openly, so also it must be in an institution of higher learning. Therefore, you and I must not seek to restrict others from doing so. We must never punish others for speaking openly and truthfully.

Then as we allow others to speak freely, we ourselves must gain the confidence to speak, knowing this: that a relationship in which honesty is the policy is a relationship that is capable of genuine cooperation. If you and I know that we are sharing our views with one another, then we can learn from one another. When we learn from one another, then we value one another more. Finally, as we value one another, our sense of belonging to a team is strengthened. We work together, but do we work together? If our relationships are characterized by acceptance and honesty, then indeed we are capable of such unity.

What It Means to Share

To some people, "Shared Governance" means that not only do I get to control my own affairs, but also I get to control yours. At some institutions, this sort of mutual meddling is passed off as colleagiality. Shared Governance means primarily trusting someone to do what he or she is supposed to do. The president should be trusted to have the best needs of the community as his top priority when negotiating with regents and legislators, or when speaking to Nevada's business leaders and citizens. The faculty should be trusted to operate autonomously in areas related to teaching. The staff should be trusted to make sure the business affairs of the college run smoothly.

We do not all teach the same way. We do not all administer the same way. Neither does everyone share the same philosophy of how a job or task ought to be done. In short, we are different; diversity exists. Sharing governance means encouraging this diversity, in word and in deed. As each of us works separately and differently, and as you and I accept one another in honesty, we become strongly bonded to one another. We should not become worthlessly conceited, thinking that our ways are the only ones that work, and provoking one another. Instead, we look ahead to what we can be if we both esteem and treat one another as equals.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Creating a Culture of Trust

Since this is Thanksgiving Day, it would be productive for us to examine one of the goals of the GBC mission: to create a campus culture built on trust. If any community is to survive the everyday trials and troubles that befall it, that community must be cohesive. It is a manifest necessity that the people who comprise the community must regard themselves as being a collective unit that is greater than the sum of its parts.

While some people may believe that creating such a culture is as simple as bringing in sports teams or extracurricular activities, I believe that the three steps that follow are central to our goal.

1. Be trustworthy

This is the most important of the three steps. There is no reason that we should trust someone who is not trustworthy, so how do we do this in a community setting?
  • Do what you say you are going to do. Even if other people disagree with what you say, if you follow through on your promises and commitments you will become more worthy of the trust of others. Your perceived competence affects the trust that others are able to give you.
  • Don't push off your work onto others. If you have been assigned a task, or if it is part of your job, or if you volunteered for it in some capacity, finish the job. A trustworthy person does not take on tasks -- only to assign them to unsuspecting coworkers. Acting in such an inappropriate fashion may also convey the message that you believe that you or your work are more important than other people and what they are doing.
  • Speak your mind openly and honestly. If you go around telling people what you think they want to hear, your associates will learn quickly that you can only be trusted to say things that serve your own interests. In order for a culture of trust to prevail, openness must be encouraged by everyone in the community.
  • "Do not look only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." Put aside the notion, so common in businesses, that your purpose at the institution is to make money, ease your own workload, and put away enough to retire. Since education is a service industry, we will be unable to survive as a collective if we are self-centered. Our mission is focused outwardly, not inwardly. Embrace that mission, and regard every co-worker as an equal.
2. Trust others to do their own jobs.

Now that you have focused yourself on the collaborative task of education, it is crucial that you let others do their own jobs. If you are a supervisor, micromanagement might be the downfall of your ability to lead. If you are not anyone's supervisor, then meddling in the affairs of others would be both inexpedient and foolish for you.

Don't you have enough work to do? Why would you want to do someone else's job, too? If they do not do their jobs, they will have their reward. Therefore, do not concern yourself with whether others are doing what they are supposed to do, and do not seek to cause trouble for them if they are not. If anyone is lazy, his sloth will be revealed. Trust that the vast majority of us have embraced the same goals to which you now adhere, and allow each person the freedom to do her own work. In that way, your own freedom will be justified.

3. Do not seek to control.

When we esteem our own opinions too highly about "how something should be done," we run the risk of destroying academic freedom. If you believe that something should be done a certain way, then whenever you are doing that thing, you should do it that way. When others do the same thing, however, it is necessary for them to follow their own convictions. This may mean that others organize differently, grade differently, or teach differently than you do. This is both a blessing and a necessity for every college that believes in its mission.

Too frequently, the vote of the majority (for example, in Faculty Senate) may be used by well-intentioned individuals to bind everyone to a means, an instrument, or a method that works perfectly well for me but which might not work well for all. In these cases, I need to allow you the freedom to be yourself -- to do things your own way. Since I now trust that we share similar goals, I must realize that you are putting your own plans into action to advance toward those goals. I must realize that the path that I have chosen is not the only path leading to our destination.

When we realize these things, we will be better equipped to treat one another as equals and with respect. Then we will no longer look down upon one another's methods and actions, thinking that "everyone here is undisciplined," or "messed up," or "wrong." Instead, let us look up at one another as worthy examples. We should not expect them to do as we would do. It is enough to realize that our coworkers hold the same hope for the students that we ourselves hold.

Where there is conformity, unity dies. If we are to be united, then we must accept the diversity of thought that exists in such a great community. When we truly know that everyone is working together in different ways, then not only will we reach our present goals (by means of a culture of trust), but also we will reach far higher objectives than we can now imagine.

I am thankful to work together with the administration, faculty, staff, and students to make our community the best that a college can be. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Blog Creation Form 1044-6B

When a process first begins, someone decides that it might be easier to remember what to do or how to do it if there's a piece of paper explaining it. Then a smart-thinking bureaucrat determines that it would be useful if a form were generated, listing all of the information needed for the process. In later stages of the whirlpool of paperwork that is a government-run institution, the paperwork becomes more important than the task it is supposed to facilitate.

Consider this exchange, which is based on something that really happened to someone at GBC:

"Hello, professor?"
"Yes, student? How are you doing?"
"I'm fine. I'm over in Berg Hall. I need permission to get into your class."
"Oh yes, I know your work experience. You can add my class. Are you at Admissions & Records?"
"Yes, I'm standing right here."
"Please put them on.... Hello, A&R?"
"Yes."
"Hi, this is the professor. Please allow that student, Excellent Pupil, to enter my FAT 100 class."
"The student who is standing here?"
"Yes, that's her."
"You have to fill out the override form first."
"But the prerequisite is instructor approval, so it's not an override. I'm giving my approval."
"You still need to fill out the form."
"Do you doubt my identity -- that it's really me?"
"No, I recognize your voice."
"I thought the purpose of the form was to let you know that I approve."
"It is."
"Well, I approve."
"I still can't do it without the form."
"*Sigh.*"

Back in 1998, one fine blogger wrote, "Sometimes it starts to feel like the real purpose of the paperwork is to make it so complicated that the insurance companies in the end won't have to pay anything." (endsoftheearth.com) Isn't this how we often feel?

In "Techniques for Lightening the Load of Paperwork," from 1959, Ben S. Graham wrote:
"The purpose of paperwork should be properly understood. Too often the paperwork becomes the objective, the development of more and better paperwork for the glory of paperwork. Paperwork is only a tool to help accomplish the essential end results of the business organizations. Until we recognize that it should be considered only as a tool, we are going to build empires involved in paperwork which do not contribute to the end results."

That expresses the paperwork situation at Great Basin College rather well. In fact, an e-mail was recently forwarded to me that originated as an announcement from the people in Admissions & Records. This e-mail informed departments that they had run out of storage space for all of the paperwork they had been saving. Do you think they'd lighten the level of paperwork? No. The purpose of having the form is to have the form. Their solution? From now on, the departments must create forms on white paper only. That way, they would be able to more easily scan the paperwork into a computer. Couldn't we submit everything on the computer to begin with, avoiding the forms entirely? Of COURSE not!

We also have a "CLASS" form, the purpose of which is to praise someone's performance, professionalism, and/or kindness on the job. There is a committee that considers the "best" CLASS nominations every month and awards a prize. Someone told me recently that if you don't fill out the form correctly, the committee won't consider your nominee for the prize. Clearly, the form is more important than the praise merited by a great employee.

Whenever there is paperwork, the paperwork seems to proliferate to the point that it sweeps the process away. We become so bogged down in paperwork that we no longer remember what the forms are for. This fact became so apparent to our own politicians that the federal government enacted a Paperwork Reduction Act in 1980...and again in 1995. I wonder how successful these attempts have been. In 2003, UC Berkeley conducted a study that showed conclusively that paperwork production in offices has risen 43% (on average) since 1999. According to that study, over 4 billion pages of paper documents are generated in offices every year in the United States. Most of that paperwork is regarded as unnecessary, but it multiplies exponentially nevertheless.

Bureaucrats who resist change repeatedly utter the phrase "paper trail" in response to statistics like these. This is a concept created by bureaucrats in order to justify their own existence. For the same reason we need to keep our tax records for seven years "just in case" we are audited -- even though very few people are audited, we also need to keep every form that the college concocts. In triplicate, we maintain copies of the Form for Ordering More Forms. That way, if someone asks how busy I am, I can produce a mountain of paperwork to justify my position. "Yes, I'm positively overwhelmed. See?"

Secretly, most employees regret that their days are so consumed with filling out forms that they cannot get anything worthwhile accomplished. If there's ever a fire at Berg Hall -- something that would be terrible and which I hope never happens, I certainly wish for no one to be hurt. But I suspect that more than a few people from all walks of life would secretly smile when told that "All of our paperwork for the last 40 years was destroyed in the fire." If that does happen, though, I suspect that the first responders will hand someone a Form for Response to Fire. We'll need copies for the legislators, the regents, and of course the president will need to keep a copy in his new office. On the wall next to his diploma.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

The Cost of Reading

Three years ago, the Washington Post (09/18/2004) quoted Congressman Buck McKeon as saying, "If a student signs up for a class, they're pretty much at the mercy of the publishers. It's not like they have any other place to go." Three years later, Nathassia Torchon (a student at Massachusetts Bay Community College) told the Boston Globe (10/03/2007), "They always tell you 20 hours is good enough to work and go to school full time. I have to work three jobs to pay for two books."

Anyone who has had to pay for textbooks knows this instinctively, but two reports called by the title "Ripoff 101" (2nd Edition, February, 2005) make several points:
1. "Textbook prices are increasing at more than four times the inflation rate for all finished goods, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index."
2. "New editions of the textbooks surveyed cost, on average, 45 percent more than used copies of the previous edition."
3. "Bundling [of textbooks with workbooks or software] drives up textbook costs."
4. "Textbook publishers charge American students more than students overseas for the same textbooks."

The students at Great Basin College are all too aware of these issues. eFollett, the contracted private business that operates a bookstore on (the Elko) campus, is often higher priced than the majority of its competitors. Want some examples?

The SFWriter, required for ENG 101, costs $64 new or $48 used from eFollett.
The suggested retail price for a new copy is $60, and you can buy it directly from the publisher for that price. Amazon.com has new copies for $56.84 and used copies for as low as $33.69. Since you'd have to pay postage through Amazon, it only pays to get a NEW copy through them if you live outside Elko, because students outside Elko have to pay to have their books shipped to them. However, used copies for under $48 are relatively plentiful. On half.com, new copies can be had for as little as $34.

In other subjects, particularly science and math, the cost differences are even more pronounced. The textbook for PHYS 100 costs $105.50 from eFollett -- and that's USED! You can get the same book package new for less than that on Amazon, and used copies are selling for as little as $76.48.

But this is the real shock:
The SF Writer is ring-bound and has 640 pages.
The ring-bound edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook has a comparable 576 pages. But the cookbook only costs $19.77 NEW from Amazon.
The brand-new book, Photopedia: the Ultimate Digital Photography Resource, also has 600 pages and costs $26.39.
And yes, the most recent Harry Potter book has 784 pages and costs $19.24 in HARDBACK.

Apparently, any book that has "textbook" in its description costs three times as much. Students are held up by bandits every time they step into a bookstore.

Possible solutions?
1. Increase the number of textbook-optional courses. Instructors can make the course content available through online lectures, free handouts, Internet links, and through PDF files or on cheap CD-R's. This won't work for every subject, but if half of our courses had no traditional textbooks, that would reduce the costs for students by roughly one-half.
2. More instructor-written books. If GBC instructors compiled their own material, they could avoid the big publishers and get the texts to students more cheaply.
3. More "low frills" books. Instead of books with coated paper stock, photos on every page, and hardback covers, how about ordering books with fewer pictures, less-costly paper, and paperback covers?

I'm sure every student and every faculty member agrees with these things. Now if only the book publishers of the world would agree!


Thursday, November 1, 2007

The Secret Life of Socrates

According to Diogenes Laertius, Socrates "was very clever in all rhetorical exercises, as Idomeneus also assures us. But the thirty tyrants forbade him to give lessons in the art of speaking and arguing, as Xenophon tells us. ... For he was the first man, as Favorinus says in his Universal History, who, in conjunction with Aeschines his student, taught people how to become orators. And Idomeneus makes the same assertion in his essay on the Socratic School. Similarly, he was the first person who conversed about human life; and was also the first philosopher who was condemned to death and executed."

The accusations against Socrates may have stemmed from the following conversation that may have been recorded by Plato in his Secret Lives of Eminent Philosophers:

SOCRATES: Thus we see that Justice is so great a virtue that it cannot be denied to any man, and that freedom of speech is likewise.

KORPORATIOS: It is not Justice that is our stumbling-block. Tell us, O Socrates, how it is that your students learn.

SOCRATES: They are instructed through discussion. As the discussion progresses, viewpoints are both expressed and examined.

BUROCRATES: And how is their learning measured?

SOCRATES: They learn as they debate. Their comprehension of those principles progresses at their individual rates.

BUROCRATES: But it is necessary that your goals and objectives be clearly stated in writing.

SOCRATES: The comprehension of societal virtues is the goal. Of this my students are certain.

BUROCRATES: These goals must be written on papyrus, and it is necessary that they be accompanied by measurable outcomes.

KORPORATIOS: It is no surprise that you do not have enough students to maintain your workload, according to the formula established by the Thirty, and approved by the Thirteen.

SOCRATES: The goal of instruction is found in the heart of every student who comes to learn. The outcome is simple. The learner has a better grasp of how to function in a free society.

BUROCRATES: Firstly, write these things down. Secondly, it is difficult to see how you measure their progress in completing your courses.

SOCRATES: Some students never understand. But as they speak freely, I am able to perceive their comprehension of the virtues.

BUROCRATES: Why have you written none of these things in a sullabos? And why have you failed to conform with the established practices that lead to a sound education?

SOCRATES: SIr, I perceive these practices to be counterproductive.

KORPORATIOS: Be careful, Socrates, that you do not approach blasphemy!

BUROCRATES: We must also see that you have informed disabled students of their rights.

KORPORATIOS: It is further necessary that you conduct multiple-choice student evaluations of your instructional processes.

SOCRATES: I am certain, sirs, that my discussions produce learning, for my former students demonstrate knowledge of the principles in which I instructed them.

BUROCRATES: And yet you avoid the necessary things, such as multiple instruments of measurement. I determine that your practices are unsound, and that no one will ever learn through your methods.

KORPORATIOS: I further discern that you should be denied tenure at this institution -- both for corrupting the youth with your concept of the discussion of different ideas and for your failure to conform to the sound educational methods. Disagreement is not expedient, but forms, and measurement keys, and paperwork are both expedient and necessary.

-----------------------

Epilogue:
According to Plato's account of The Defense of Socrates, the oracle at Delphi had pronounced Socrates to be the wisest man in Athens, but his opponents did not consider him so. Socrates was found guilty of "corrupting the youth of Athens" by a vote of 280 to 220. For his crimes against the state, he was imprisoned and forced to commit suicide by drinking hemlock.