Standard 3
Organization and Governance

Team Members:

David Hopcroft, lead, Professor

Cynthia Brassington, Instructor

Monica Mattscheck, Director of Financial Aid

Karen Moran, Instructor

Sara Van Orden, Science Lab Assistant

Description

The organizational structure of Quinebaug Valley Community College and the higher education system of which it is a constituent part have changed significantly, but the internal governance structure of the College, based on a democratic ideal, continues to function much as it did ten years ago. At the system level, the major changes have been the result of the full integration, in 1993, of the Connecticut Community-Technical College (CCTC) system, creating twelve institutions where there had previously been seventeen. As was noted in the College’s Fifth-Year Report (1996), with the formation of the twelve comprehensive colleges, each college had technical programs added to its mission. At the institutional level, the principal organizational changes have resulted from the merging of the former Academic Division and Division of Student Services into a unit called the Division of Learning and Student Development.

The CCTC Board of Trustees continues to govern at the system level under the provisions of Public Act 89-160. The system retains the Community-Technical College designation in its name, but by the decision of the Board of Trustees, the twelve institutions that make up the system were renamed Community Colleges on October 21, 1999, with a nine-month implementation period.

The current Board of Trustees consists of sixteen members, including two student trustees elected by the Student Electoral Assembly. The Board has established four committees: academic policies, budgets and facilities, personnel, and planning and assessment. The twelve Regional Advisory Councils (RACs), statutorily required councils of local citizens, meet four times a year to advise the Board and each local institution regarding the programmatic and educational needs of the region served by each college. The Board of Trustees appoints members of each RAC, based on nominations by the president of each college.

Responsibility for day-to-day operations of the system rests with the Chancellor, who oversees the system office. In addition, a system office staff member, responsible to the Chancellor in the appropriate area, assists each of the Board’s committees. The Chancellor is also advised by a Council of Presidents and by a Council of Chairs that consists of the leaders of the system councils of presidents, deans of continuing education, academic deans, deans of students, and deans of administrative services. There has been an attempt within the system to develop a shared governance structure, also. A Community College Senate, representing full-and part-time faculty, professional staff, classified employees, and students, was chartered in 1998 and held its first elections in 1999, but it has been struggling with organizational issues and has not yet received recognition by the system office or the Board of Trustees.

At the institutional level, the College’s chief administrative officer is the President. All other administrators, committees, and constituencies are advisory to her. Central to this advisory relationship are the College’s monthly general staff meetings. Virtually all matters affecting the institution are discussed at these meetings, which are required (unless other College obligations supersede) of all faculty, professional staff, and classified personnel at the institution. The President is also advised by the Regional Advisory Council representing the College’s general service area. In addition, the President meets weekly with a Cabinet—composed of the deans of Administrative Services and Learning and Student Development, the director of the Center for Community and Professional Learning, and the executive assistant to the president—to ensure that the administrative functions of the College are carried out and that the divisions have frequent representation at the highest level within the College.

Each division of the College is organized according to its functions. The current QVCC organizational chart, maintained by Administrative Services, shows the functional divisions of each area. The 1997 merger of the Academic and Student Services divisions into the Division of Learning and Student Development (LSD) was the result of a confluence of opportunities and needs. The Dean of Student Services was retiring and there was concern about an operational gap between the divisions. The College had adopted a new guiding principle under the title of Learners First, and to serve that principle it recognized an opportunity to align better the functions and responsibilities of teaching faculty and student services personnel. The creation of the LSD Division seemed an excellent way to foster a closer working relationship between the two areas, as well as to use the salary money from the retired dean’s position to fund a career placement office and a full-time position in the Learning Center. All staff were asked for input prior to reorganization, and there were several revisions made as the new structure developed over several months.

As part of the reorganization, there was a restructuring of positions and responsibilities in the student development area of the new division, with no reduction in staff. The former Academic Dean became dean of the new combined division. The positions of Director of Records, Director of Admissions, and Director of Career Services no longer clearly identified the assignment of functions within the division. Responsibilities were restructured based on the needs of the College and the experience of the directors in those areas, and three new job titles were created that reflected those new responsibilities: Director of Learning Services, Director of Outreach and Employment Services, and Director of Enrollment and Research Services. At the same time, financial aid functions were moved into the Administrative Services Division, although the financial aid office remains physically in the LSD area; also, the learning center was repositioned to report to the Director of Learning Services.

The Director of the Willimantic Center also reports to the Dean of LSD. The Center coordinates Willimantic-based programs and is staffed by six professional staff members, one classified staff member, and a number of student employees. Other faculty and staff, including student development and library staff, are shared between Danielson and Willimantic. Although the Willimantic Center is subject to the same policies and procedures as the main campus, some procedures are modified as appropriate to accommodate the needs of the Center’s location and available resources.

As a result of the reorganization, the Continuing Education Division was expanded to reflect its involvement in a broad range of activities and programs: administering credit courses on Saturdays and during the summer session, providing a variety of services to business and industry, hosting programs for young people and seniors, handling College-wide marketing and advertising, and overseeing the daycare facility at the Danielson campus. The division’s new name, the Center for Community and Professional Learning (CPL), expresses these broadened responsibilities. The Director of CPL reports to the President and is a member of the President’s Cabinet.

Another consequence of the restructuring was the transformation of the Academic Council. Academic Council was an advisory body to the Academic Dean. It was composed of twelve members elected to staggered two-year terms from among the teaching faculty, library staff, administrators and other personnel reporting to the Academic Dean. Along with its two subcommittees—the Academic Planning and Policy Committee and the Educational Services Committee—the Council reviewed courses, programs, and policies within the Academic Division and made recommendations to the dean. After the creation of LSD, the Academic Council and its committees were reorganized. A new Academic Issues Committee, responsible for making recommendations regarding courses, programs, and distinctly academic issues, is now chosen from among personnel of the entire division, with three of the four elected committee members required to be teaching faculty. A second committee, Division Planning and Policy, has responsibility for making recommendations regarding divisional issues not specifically academic in nature; the members are elected from the personnel of the entire division, with one seat reserved for a member of the full-time teaching faculty. A new Division Council was created to act on recommendations from the committees and to serve as a clearinghouse for issues needing discussion. All full- and half-time personnel of the LSD Division are eligible to be elected to Division Council. Under this structure, one member of the Academic Issues Committee will always represent non-teaching professionals, and one seat on Division Planning and Policy will always represent faculty, but there is the statistical possibility that Division Council might be made up entirely of members of one category. In addition, an adjunct faculty seat (created for the Academic Council) has been reserved on Division Council and a seat is available for a student selected by the Student Government Association (although currently that seat is not filled). Thus, Division Council has seven members, the chair being a non-voting member. The Dean of LSD attends all Council meetings to report on new and updated information and to give and receive feedback regarding Council issues, but she does not hold a seat on Council or vote as part of its deliberations.

Standing committees and task groups that are advisory to the President do much of the work of the College. Some of these committees are defined by the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Board of Trustees and the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges, the principal bargaining unit for faculty and professional staff. These committees are elected annually by the members of the bargaining unit. Other committees, such as the Lead Planning Team, the Instructional Technology Committee, the Committee for Services for Students with Disabilities, and the Safety Committee, are appointed by the President based on assignment requests from College staff. Voluntary ad hoc committees and task groups are created whenever a group of staff members identifies a need and agrees to address it. Many of the functions often performed by single dedicated employees at some institutions are typically carried out by committees at QVCC. In addition, a Total Quality Steering Committee oversees the work of voluntary short-term task groups, called Process Improvement Teams (PITs), designed to recommend solutions to specifically defined problems. For example, one PIT looked at the schedule of courses, surveyed students, and made recommendations for changing the schedule to include an additional evening time slot and more once-a-week classes, especially in the evenings. Other PITs developed a policy manual for improving and standardizing telephone answering at the College and recommended improvements to the interoffice mail service between Danielson and Willimantic.

All committees are given time at general staff meetings to report on the progress of their work and to give the entire staff an opportunity for input. Most committee recommendations are eventually brought to general staff meetings for review, and full staff approval is needed for adoption and implementation of most of the College’s policies.

Students are provided a voice in QVCC’s organization and governance at the system and College levels. There are two students on the Board of Trustees and two community college students on the Standing Advisory Committee to the Board of Governors, and there is a student representative to the QVCC Foundation (the private foundation that raises money for scholarships, professional development, and other special College needs). Students may also take advantage of the student seat on Division Council, and students serve as members on some College committees, such as the Total Quality Steering Committee. The principal student organization, however, is the Student Government Association (SGA), an elected student senate whose responsibilities include making decisions about extra-curricular programs for students and disbursing funds generated by student activity fees. Students hold an annual election for SGA officers according to a process articulated in the Student Government Association Constitution, although that process has evolved in recent years. The elected officers announce meeting times and dates, and any student may attend meetings and vote on matters under discussion. In addition, the chairs of particular student activities, such as a student book club and intramural sports teams, have regularly attended SGA meetings. Willimantic students have become more active in SGA since the fall of 1998, when a request to use student money to purchase furniture for a student sitting area at the Willimantic Center was denied by the SGA. In the spring of 1999, the SGA began holding meetings using the College’s compressed video system so students at both campuses could attend. The visibility and productivity of the SGA is generally defined by the personality of its president and executive officers. In 2000-2001, the officers represented both the Willimantic and Danielson populations, and the new SGA is working on innovative programs and activities intended to involve students from both campuses and build stronger links between the campuses.

Appraisal

Members of the administration, staff, and faculty generally understand the organization and governance structure at QVCC. The Administrative Services Division maintains the organizational chart, and all staff and faculty are provided with regularly updated directories indexed by division and responsibility. Administrative Services has also published a guide for staff, which provides more specific information about who does what in the Business Office.

The foundation of governance at QVCC is the pervasive volunteerism and willingness of the staff. Through their extensive involvement in committees and task groups, and the open discussion at general staff meetings, all staff members are given ample opportunity for input and participation in the College’s decisions.

College committees and work groups are assessed at the end of every academic year. Committees provide these assessments in brief reports to the general staff meeting and in written reports to the President and the Cabinet. Included in the committee assessments are recommendations for the coming year. Although most committees discuss the work of the past year and lay out some goals for the coming year, committees have been occasionally been discontinued, merged, or given new directions as a result of year-end assessments. As an example, a Diversity Committee and Program Planning Committee were combined into the Multicultural Program Planning Committee.

In the spring of 2001, the President’s Cabinet began updating the QVCC Governance Charter with a review of relevant sections by each division, and the article on committees reviewed by the committee chairs. The most recently approved Governance Charter for the College had been published in April of 1991, and thus it did not reflect the organizational changes. There was no currently valid flow chart showing how policy changes are to be recommended or policy decisions implemented. There was, for example, a need to clarify the role or place of the Total Quality Steering Committee and Process Improvement Teams in the governance structure. While PITs are designed to provide responses to specific problems, and thus are accorded a fairly high level of credibility in making recommendations, there had been some confusion and misunderstanding expressed about their relationship to the general governance structure—a concern to which the Steering Committee was sensitive, prompting its consideration of governance implications in the work of PITs.

The merger of the Academic and Student Services areas, like any major change in an institution, created some stresses, but the College made an effort to include staff in both the planning and implementation of the changes. Plans for merging the divisions were discussed during the summer of 1997, then revised after further discussion with staff that fall, with the changes being implemented in October. During the Fall semester, there was a formal evaluation of changes in organizational architecture, which went out to all College staff, as well as a questionnaire on reorganization specifically focused on the Learning and Student Development Division. The latter survey was used to guide the creation of the Division Council and the new division committees. In October of 1998, the President sent a memo to all staff asking for feedback about the changes, then held two open meetings with interested staff for further discussion. A summary of the survey and subsequent meetings, including the concerns expressed, was circulated to all staff. Faculty felt that the reorganization would reduce the influence of the former Academic Division’s members in policy decisions affecting student learning, and moreover they were concerned that the change would result in an overworked dean who would be forced to reduce access to individual faculty members. These perceptions were strengthened by the physical move of the former Academic Dean—in becoming Dean of LSD—out of a separate office and into the office formerly occupied by the Dean of Student Services. On the other hand, student services professionals were concerned that the restructured positions would overwhelm them with a need to learn new responsibilities and functions, that the concerns of the former Academic Division would overshadow those of student services both in the new division and at the level of College policy, and that students would be confused by the changes. Because the Dean of Student Services was retiring and the former Academic Dean was assigned the leadership of the merged division, some of those concerns were exacerbated.

In order to address some of those issues, the new Dean of Learning and Student Development held frequent meetings with faculty and student development staff, both separately and together, to work on transition concerns. She also created a Dean’s Staff, consisting of all the division’s directors and one faculty member, which meets regularly to encourage the flow of information within the division and to solve problems. The Dean’s Staff has no governance role. For its part, the Academic Council moved quickly yet deliberately to reorganize, using a process that involved significant feedback from members of both original divisions, to develop a structure that was inclusive of the entire division but retained a strong faculty voice in the development of academic policy and practice. Concern about the potential for a Division Council comprised entirely of professional staff or entirely of teaching faculty has been expressed three times since 1998—twice in discussions in Division Council and once in a meeting of the full division—but so far there has been no recommendation to make substantial changes to the Council or committee structure.

Although work needs to be done on the SGA constitution and structure, the Fall 2000 election of SGA officers was the first to involve fully the students of both campuses, resulting in the election of full-time Willimantic students as president and treasurer of the SGA and full-time Danielson students as vice-president and secretary.

Projection

· QVCC will continue to assess the effectiveness of its internal governance and organization. Central to this assessment will be the revision of the Governance Charter to reflect changes in the organization of the College and include the role of the Total Quality Steering Committee and PITs.

· College committees and work groups will continue to be assessed at the end of every academic year, with recommendations made for continuance, termination, or modification of the committees or their functions.

· In line with the College’s commitment to continuous improvement, the Total Quality Steering Committee is currently piloting a monitoring process to determine the effectiveness of PIT recommendations. The information thus collected will be used to make improvements to the work of the PITs.

· The Student Government Association will continue to seek new ways to ensure good representation from both campuses through the use of technologies such as compressed video for meetings and through activities like “Willi Day,” which encouraged students from Danielson to visit the Willimantic Center.

· The future of the Community College Senate is highly uncertain, and its possible impact on the system’s governance structure cannot be foreseen.

Documents

Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges and the CCTC Board of Trustees

Committee membership lists 1995-2001

Community College Senate bylaws

Division Council bylaws

Formal evaluation of changes in organizational architecture, with summary of meetings and concerns expressed

Organizational chart

Public Act 89-160

Questionnaire on LSD reorganization

QVCC Governance Charter, April 19, 1991

QVCC Governance Charter, revised

Regional Advisory Council legislative statute

Regional Advisory Council Membership

Student Government Association Constitution