Month: April 2021

Higher Education, Quality

Time for Reflection and Celebration

Missy Alexander

It is the end of April and my calendar is filled with opportunities to celebrate. There are award ceremonies, commencement ceremonies (yes, plural for COVID reasons), student research presentations (for us that is Western Research Day) and even our system awards for teaching and research. Despite the restrictions we have had to navigate this year, there is a lot to be proud of. We have managed to create lots of wonderful opportunities to learn and thrive, as is our purpose.

As I begin to make the rounds, attending as many events as I can, I am reminded just how wonderful higher education can be. For example, last week I interviewed three students who will serve as our commencement speakers this year. Several years ago, WCSU decided to make our students to focus of our commencement ceremonies, instead of trying to bring in a celebrity speaker. As a public university that is proud of the many paths our students take to complete their degrees, we want the spotlight to shine on their accomplishments. Their stories never fail to inspire.

This year, we have three ceremonies to allow for appropriate safety protocols, so we have three speakers. Former police officer, now entrepreneur with a social justice focus, Isaac Jean-Pierre will represent the students of the Ancell School of Business. The Macricostas School of Arts & Sciences will be represented by Bakhtawar Izzat, a first generation college graduate who truly embraced every opportunity that our university offers and plans to make a life of helping other first generation students do the same. Music Education major, Serena Valentin, will speak at our combined ceremony for the School of Visual and Performing Arts and the School of Professional Studies. As a future teacher, Serena has a deep appreciation for the personal experiences of her faculty and how they have shaped her development as a future teacher.

Not only are the commencement speakers impressive, but so are the graduates. Thanks to the efforts of media services and the social media working group, we have a beautiful display of our graduates on our home page.

Under the leadership of Dr. Michelle Monette, WCSU will host its first virtual Western Research Day. Usually this is an in person affair and it is so much fun to talk to the many students presenting the results of their hard work in laboratories and libraries over the last year. This time it will be a three day online event, so that we have time to look through and interact with our students and select this year’s award winners. This is such an important opportunity for our students, but also our faculty. This is the time when get to see all of our efforts come together. I am always inspired.

This is also the time for our spring productions. The students and faculty in the arts really had to reimagine how to operate in a COVID-19 world. They rose to the challenge with the kind of creativity we’ve come to expect from them. So, check out the theatre productions this week https://www.wcsu.edu/news/2021/04/15/wcsu-theatre-arts-announces-spring-virtual-production-series/, and the virtual exhibition of the work of our MFA graduates https://www.wcsu.edu/news/2021/04/05/wcsu-master-of-fine-arts-students-present-virtual-exhibition-3/.

There will be lots of other smaller ceremonies to induct students into honor societies, and I will do my best to provide the appropriate congratulatory remarks. I don’t really matter – the work was done by our students and faculty – but I am so grateful to be part of all of the results. This year, more than ever, we need that opportunity to reflect on the work we have done together.

We must extend congratulations to two of WCSU’s faculty members, who have been honored with awards from the Connecticut Board of Regents.

Dr. Maya Aloni, associate professor of psychology, has won the system-wide award for Teaching. Maya has been a strong contributor to our First Year program and served as an important resource as our university transitioned to online instruction last year. She is a truly student-focused professor, who continuously strives to create great learning experiences.

Dr. Josh Cordeira, associate professor of biology, won the campus award for research. His research focuses on factors that are linked to obesity and to its reduction in mice. Josh shared the results of recent research on potential links between exercise and a reduced desire for fatty foods at the fall 2020 Scholars in Action Program. He regularly engages our students in his ongoing research projects, while continuously revising topics in Anatomy and Physiology to engage his students in this important line of inquiry.

And dare I mention it, but we have had an excellent year moving forward initiatives in our strategic plan. Two weeks ago, I took a few moments to gather some updates on strategic planning activities and was delighted to discover so much progress. The director of our Education Access Programs, Rob Pote, launched our re-imagined Bridge Program (EAP) last fall and the results are very positive. The hard work of Julie Hunter, First-Year Librarian, and Lauren Arvisais, Tutoring Resource Center Coordinator (with groundwork done by many others) has resulted in a new Peer-Mentor Program that will start in the fall. New career courses are on the schedule, thanks to the work of the director of the Career Success Center, Kathleen Lindenmayer, assistant professor of management, Alexandra Galli-Debicella, and assistant professor of Writing, Michael Lewis. All of these are great initiatives for recruiting and supporting our students.

There was so much more that I’ll have to wait until the strategic plan updates to get to the rest, but as I review the work, I am incredibly proud of all that my colleagues have managed to accomplish this year. But that is what the end of the year is all about, noticing the work we’ve done.

So, let’s not forget to reflect on our efforts and celebrate our accomplishments. This year is more impressive than ever because we’ve risen above so many challenges. Yet all along the way, people met those challenges and pushed ahead for the real goal–creating great educational experiences.

I am humbled, as always. Thanks everyone.

Free Speech, Higher Education, Technology

Education as Sacred Space

Missy Alexander

Well, here we are on what we hope is the brink of the end of the pandemic, and the impact of the last year has begun to emerge. Last week’s higher education news tells an interesting tale.

  • First, there was the Zoom story. As campuses jumped into digital platforms, many opting for (fighting for) Zoom, no one understood that they had usage clauses that allowed them to refuse to support potentially controversial campus events. We worried about Zoom Bombing, but not about censorship of us. As Zoom addresses this part of their contract (see Zoom Addresses Academic Freedom Concerns in Inside Higher Ed) because they want to continue to work with higher education, I find myself wondering how we are thinking about technology and censorship overall.
  • Second, Florida legislators have proposed legislation that allows students to record classes. They need permission to post their recordings, but the intention of this documentation is clear: The bill, which sailed through Florida’s House of Representatives and Senate, says that a student may record video or audio of class lectures not only for their own personal educational use but also “in connection with a complaint to the public institution of higher education where the recording was made, or as evidence in, or in preparation for, a criminal or civil proceeding.” (Lights, Camera, Teach)

Couple these with the countless instances of parent complaints that administrators and faculty have experienced over the last year because the parent happened to walk by and hear something they didn’t like when their student was “in” class, and it appears that these digital learning platforms are undermining the sacred spaces for learning we depend on in higher education.

Technologies are not just tools–they have power to fully re-define the organizations, communities, and cultures they inhabit. This is Media Ecology 101 (see Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman for primers). Leaping into these new environments without thinking them through can be a dangerous thing. The last year has been nothing but leaping in without the time to think things through. As we emerge from this pandemic and regroup about what universities will look like in the years to come, we must not neglect fundamental questions about the interaction between our technologies and our definitions of education.

Here are some things I’d like all of us to consider.

Exploration of controversial topics is a necessary component of higher education.

In K-12, we may introduce some of the tough things about our history, culture, and the nature of human existence, but we tread lightly because the students are young and potentially fragile. At universities we educate adults (beginner adults, perhaps, but adults nonetheless). As such, this is the time to stop mincing words and get to the heart of some of the most difficult conversations about “life, the universe, and everything” (thank you Douglas Adams). These conversations are a necessary part of education and we are all likely to be uncomfortable. Too bad. Controversial and/or ambiguous subjects are at the heart of learning, creating knowledge, and changing the world. Think Darwin, Wright, Arendt, de Beauvior.

Classrooms must be seen as sacred spaces.

As educators, we like to say “there are no stupid questions.” In reality, there are lots of stupid questions. These are questions that reveal we weren’t listening carefully, didn’t read the assignment, didn’t read the syllabus, etc. Nevertheless, we want our students to trust us enough to go ahead and ask. Questions are the path to clarification, understanding, and sometimes great conversations about where misunderstandings come from. Students must feel free to speak without being humiliated, and so we cultivate that openness to every question, not just the good ones, in all that we do. Being recorded asking these questions is just not fair.

At the same time, in the flow of an explanation, faculty are likely to make statements that they would then like to re-phrase or clarify. They may be exploring a novel idea that they are thinking through out loud, or they may simply stumble in describing something and then step back to rephrase. They may also take on a delicate topic and bravely work through difficult ideas in collaboration with their students. Those conversations frequently lead to words and phrases that can look controversial if taken out of the context of the whole. Allowing students to record these conversations will fundamentally undermine a conversational and exploratory (Socratic) approach to education. Under the threat of recordings, faculty will be forced to read from notes and PowerPoint slides without engaging in anything but short answer questions.

University students must be treated as adults.

This is not just about the family members listening in to their student’s classes and intervening inappropriately. Those violations of the walls of the classroom are a curious outgrowth of the pandemic when online learners have been surrounded by their families. Post-pandemic, online learners might find a room of their own once again. That is as it should be.

But even before the pandemic I was being courted by technology vendors who wanted to help me take attendance via students’ phones. This was posed a solution to the vagaries of faculty attendance taking, and as an opportunity to intervene if we notice that students are missing too many classes. While attendance is, indeed, the number one barrier to student success at my university, I roundly refused this technological intervention. I do not want the power to track our students’ every moves. They should be able to move freely, outside of our view, because they are adults. Adults are responsible for their own attendance. To make it our job is to re-enforce adolescent behaviors and worse, keep the motivation for education externally located. This is a terrible idea for higher education.

Post-Pandemic, higher education will continue to use technologies to create educational opportunities and experiences. That can be to the good. We should explore pedagogies, imaginatively blend learning environments, and expand access to education wherever possible. But make no mistake, adopting new technologies will change what we mean when we say higher education. As we adopt them we should not lose sight of the critical experiences that are central to learning as (young) adults. Those experiences will include conversations that are informative, imaginative, controversial, and uncomfortable. These conversations should not be sacrificed as we adopt new technologies.

It is imperative that universities continue to create environments designed to support the development of our students’ abilities to think independently and critically as they navigate difficult and confusing ideas. Universities provide an opportunity to hone those skills in a community devoted to drawing out ideas rather than shutting them down. Those conversations will not take place in a censored or surveilled environment. They can only happen if we continue to create sacred spaces for learning.

Affordability, Higher Education

America’s Strategic Plan

Missy Alexander

When I started writing this blog a couple of years ago, I decided on the following tag line: Public Higher Education: America’s Strategic Plan. Honestly, I was chaffing at the notion that public education institutions were being charged with developing strategic plans that were focused on defining our place in a market of educational institutions. Public higher education is not meant to make a profit. In most cases, we were set up to serve a particular region’s educational needs and we were not designed to compete across regions (although, of course, we do). As I see it, we exist to support two fundamental goals of the nation – cultivate an informed citizenry and support the potential for social mobility. If we are to strategize, we should be focused on better ways to meet those goals rather than identifying market share and seeking improved rankings.

I am less snarky about institutional planning today but I still balk at the market focus. The funding models for higher education have changed significantly and public institutions are now tuition dependent with no choice but to find ways to compete with each other to survive. In New England, where the opportunities for education are vast and the student population dwindling, this need is particularly acute. Public universities that can focus on prestige (higher admission standards and big ticket research opportunities) are working their way up the ranking lists. Some schools have niche programs, carving out a focused identity and usually staying small. Regional comprehensives that focus on access are doing their best to focus on the transformative power of education, largely in terms of socio-economic gains. None of these strategies are negative, but they are trapping us in a competitive cycle that loses track of our essential value.

The good news is that infrastructure is the hot new buzz word, and a big re-think is going on. President Biden is proposing all kinds of investments in higher education, from increasing the Pell Grants and NSF funding, to funds specifically focused on equity. At the state level there is a strong focus on community colleges as an important part of lifting people out of poverty through specific career training. Somewhat more broadly, all of higher education is being incentivized to support particular career trajectories in STEM and Healthcare. This is a good first step, but at this important, once in a century moment, when infrastructure is the word of the day, we need to think bigger.

Let me put it plainly, without a fundamental shift in how public higher education is imagined in relation to the core goals and values of the United States, we will continue to find ourselves chasing rankings and students instead of focusing on learning. While I know it strikes some as a nice-to-have, higher education is essential to the economy we have built so far and the one to emerge. Just as the nation progressed from providing a 6th grade education to a comprehensive K-12 education, and increasingly a pre-K education, it is time to think of public higher education as something that must be universally available (yes, free). It is the essential component of our national infrastructure.

I am not saying we are more important than healthcare. I am saying developing a good healthcare system relies on educating scientists, doctors, nurses, engineers, actuaries, community liaisons, bilingual front line support for treatment and benefits administration, culturally aware people to navigate community norms that might keep them from following healthcare instruction, and so on. From two-year entry level degrees to doctoral degrees, the whole system relies on education.

Transportation infrastructure is the same story. We need engineers and urban planners, supervisors and pavers, economic development professionals and safety specialists, environmental and computer scientists, people with an understanding of the barriers to usage of public transportation and those who understand how to optimize work schedules to stagger demand. From two-year entry level degrees to doctoral degrees, the whole system relies on education.

Economic development is 100% connected to the educational opportunities available in a community. But it isn’t just the narrow focus of trained financial managers or skills in advanced manufacturing. It is the fullness of ongoing access to education over the life of a career so that people can retrain or refocus their knowledge as the world and/or their interests change. Supporting ongoing access means reframing our thinking about education as a one-time investment (2 or 4 years) to something that people keep returning to throughout their lives.

And, of course, all of these professionally focused arguments for education totally neglect the rest of our value – fostering the insights into human culture, behavior, histories, and discoveries that help us put our world in context. An educated society does not stop at understanding how elections work and how to get a job. It must continue to the why of it all. Obviously, the question of why and the meanings we ascribe to our existence grow with us. The value of the more broadly focused liberal arts thinking often comes into focus long after we encounter them. Each phase of our lives might compel us to think further, ask new questions, and pursue ideas ancient and new. This broad and inquisitive thinking is also infrastructure, with foundations laid in our early education so that there are opportunities to follow up later. It provides room for the growth that we say we value and the emergence of new perspectives that can literally change the world.

So, I’m glad that infrastructure is in fashion and I hope that we can use this momentary embrace of long-term thinking to truly plan for the long-term of public higher education. Let’s commit to our true value as an essential component of a just and thriving society. Let’s fund education in a way that allows us to focus our strategic plans on learning instead of market share. Let’s recognize that public education is America’s strategic plan for a great society.

Accountability, Quality, Return on Investment

Outcomes Based Funding Metrics

Missy Alexander

This morning I read with interest a report from The Education Trust, entitled Re-Imagining Outcomes Based Funding. I was following up on Emma Whitford’s piece in Inside Higher Ed that focused on outcomes based funding (OBF) as a tool for supporting equity. I must admit, I shuddered as I considered the hundred ways outcomes funding goes wrong, but Whitford and the report helped me to think about things in new ways. Chief among those ways was that this approach actually supports a focus on who campuses admit, not just retention and graduation rates, and suggests that funding should take that into account. It seems we are getting somewhere on raising awareness about the bluntness of those measures. Hooray.

As I read through the metrics suggested, I saw some thoughtful connections between the students enrolled and the ways that our legislators might think about funding. Instead of just looking at retention and graduation rates, this approach prioritizes investing in campuses that serve more diverse student bodies. It also brings in an important new variable for OBF–campus climate.

Campus climate is often an invisible component in the retention and graduation rates of a university. We spend a lot of time looking at ways to support under-prepared students and we seek out opportunities for scholarships for our under-funded students and these are really important things to do. But, for first generation students and students of color these efforts are not sufficient. They must feel welcome.

So how do we do that? Well, campus climate surveys are one way. Interestingly enough, they are not inexpensive to administer, and they are even more expensive to use. It isn’t enough to gather the data; we need qualified personnel to analyze that same data and help the campus community find opportunities to improve. The funding for this work has to be new dollars. If it isn’t, it will get cut from the budget as soon as we have to prioritize our efforts. We will always focus on direct student support over the broader climate every time. So, I’m glad this idea was raised in the report, but there are important financial implications to consider.

Then there was another piece in the report that gave me pause. In the section called “Ten Steps for Design” (of outcomes based funding models), the following was step five:

“Discourage institutions from reducing access to high-quality degrees or credentials for students from low income backgrounds and students of color.”

This statement is a response to the negative consequences OBF as it has been implemented in the past. In short, the easiest way to improve retention and graduation rates is to change your admissions standards. Better prepared students do better than those on the margins. Better funded students do better than those who struggle to pay for their education. First-generation college students manage more uncertainty than their second or third generation peers and may be retained at somewhat lower levels. All of these students are likely to take longer than four years to graduate. Yes, the older model incentivized a less-inclusive campus. The new suggested strategies are a marked improvement.

At WCSU about 35% of our student body are the first in their families to go to college. We are a relatively affordable school and find that this is attractive to lots of Pell-Eligible students. We are also an increasingly diverse community, something we view as entirely positive, but our history is less so and we are still learning about our invisible barriers and biases, as we seek to be an inclusive campus. Most of what we do fits well into this Re-imagined OBE Funding Framework with its focus on equity. In theory, we should benefit from greater support for our campus based on this model.

But I must admit I do worry about additional unintended consequences if timelines for effectiveness are not robust enough and if there is not continuous dialog with our state representatives about how they read our metrics. For example:

  1. Even when recruiting and admission standards are comparable, a majority residential campus will do better on retention and graduation measures than a majority commuter campus. It is simply easier to help a student who is struggling when they have a regular presence in the campus community.
  2. Sufficient funding to create comparable experiences for our needier students is also an important consideration. Opportunities for internships, research experiences, or study abroad may require a cash infusion or higher need students will skip them for more work hours. They simply need the funds. Unfortunately, these are the same high impact educational experiences that inspire degree completion, applications to graduate schools, and broaden career opportunities. Without that funding stream, schools who serve the less wealthy are likely to have outcomes measures that look weaker than their better funded peers.
  3. Finally, timelines for evaluation are critical. Improvement of anything cannot really be seen in under six years in higher education. While degrees are imagined in four year increments, the students who need more support tend to take five to six years. The effectiveness of an intervention on retention could show up quickly, but its sustained impact will take time. All other interventions will be better seen over the course of a degree. But six years is also a minimum, because you will only be measuring a first cohort at that mark. Sustained improvement is better captured in 8-10 year cycles.

These nuances are hard to convey when elections are in 2- and 4-year cycles. No matter how invested elected officials are in education, there is opportunity for too narrow a view. So, I remain skeptical about the ability to create an outcomes based funding model that can truly support great education that is equitable. But I am very excited to see equity put at the center of the question. That is a great leap forward.