Inservice 2013: The State of the College Address
The Hero's Journey
Intro Music: Roar (Katy Perry)
Good morning and welcome. I always love the energy in the room as we connect with colleagues, and the burst of energy that hits the campus when students and the faculty come back. It's great to see all of you - the faces of the people who make the college what it is today. This is one day when we can celebrate all of our accomplishments with joy and look forward with curiosity and perhaps some apprehension to what the new academic year will bring us. I feel so fortunate to be able to share this time with you and to share another academic year, now my thirteenth, as your president. Don't know about you, but I am revved up and ready to go. SLIDES WITH FALL COLORS
Today, as I have each year, I will share and celebrate with you some of the many accomplishments you made possible; talk about what is ahead and then some reflections on how we might get there – together. It was suggested to me by Sandy Brown Jensen that we have been on a Hero's Journey together and that it is a good framework for these remarks. You may recall the work of Joseph Campbell who studied the great myths of different cultures and eras and found similar patterns - what he called the Hero's Journey. We will explore this Hero's Journey. There is no question that the work we do is heroic, that there is no shortage of heroes or sheroes at Lane among our faculty, staff, and students.
Clifford Mayes says, "Looking at teaching and learning as an archetypal Hero's Journey is a good way of talking about education in its psychological and spiritual depths because the Hero's Journey is fundamentally an educative one." This is so because the Hero's Journey is not just an action-packed story about how a hero enters a forest of trials and tribulations, meets with helpers and enemies, slays a monster or two, finds a mate and returns home as a hero. Think Star Wars. Ultimately, it is a symbol of the emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth of the individual. It's about asking and answering the big questions. The journey begins with a young person receiving a "call" to leave the comfortable security of home to go into an arena of trials. The hero is not left entirely alone. The hero typically meets a Wise Old man or Woman who assists the hero. Often there is a battle with monsters and demons, but if she prevails there is a great reward in store and the hero must decide whether to leave this mystical realm in which so much has been suffered, learned and won to return to her native land and restore and enrich it. Sound familiar? Sounds remarkably like the journey of our students and perhaps our own.
So here goes – the State of the College 13.0.
Section 2 - Gratitudes and Welcome
I want to express my appreciation to everyone who worked over the summer to close out last year and prepare for the new academic year. That takes a lot of work! Our classified staff and managers, in particular, work year-round to assure that summer school happens and that we are ready to go for fall term. I also want to thank the faculty, many of whom may have been off campus but were still engaged in reviewing curriculum and practice and getting ready for the new year.
I had a busy summer but did have an opportunity to get away a bit. Like many of you, perhaps, it's the time in my life when I am caring for elders, and I am learning so much from this experience. As usual, I made my annual sojourn to Scotland to take care of my mother. SCOTLAND SLIDE At 96, she is amazing; her physical health is failing, but she is as sharp as a tack. When I flew over in May because no one thought she would survive surgery for a broken right leg and broken left hip, after a couple of days when it was touch and go, she regained consciousness. After first noting that her three daughters were all there, she said, "Mary, I don't have a leg to stand on." I just hope I have a tenth of her wit, zest for life and curiosity for what goes on in the world if I get to be her age. And here in Eugene, a dear friend who is 92 and has no family to care for her, who started college in 1939 and received her PhD in 1951, the year I was born, and taught at Northern Illinois. She has dementia, and as those of you who are dealing with that know, it is sad to see this great mind deteriorate, having the same conversation over and over as if it's the first time within the course of an hour. I am learning patience and being in the moment because for her, there is no immediate past, only the moment.
I also had the great excitement of having my son Matt's wedding in my back yard. He and Jamie make a great couple. (Pic of Matt and Jamie's Wedding) Lane's fabulous CML staff prepared a great vegan brunch, so I could just sit back and enjoy. And then I was off for a few days to the health and fitness camp to renew myself through exercise, meditation, and laughing a lot with good friends. I hope that whatever you did this summer, all of you had some time to rest and renew and enjoy the glorious Oregon summer. FILLER SLIDE I hope that you had time to spend with the most important people in your lives and that the memories of summer will sustain you as you dive in and do the transformational work that makes Lane such a great place.
A special welcome to all of you who are with us for the first time. Could everyone who has joined the college since this time last year please stand? Let's welcome them. We are so glad you are here and wish you a long and successful relationship with the college. Please reach out to them over the next weeks and months to introduce yourselves and make them feel at home.
I would like to welcome our board members who are here today. Our elected board does a great job on behalf of the community and provides solid and stable leadership for all of us. I especially want to thank Rosie Pryor for stepping up to be chair. Rosie has had a long and successful career in marketing and public relations, currently at Oregon Community Credit Union. Her father was the first president at Clatsop Community College. I also want to recognize my friend and colleague Nancy Golden, retired superintendent of Springfield Public Schools and now Chief Education Officer for the State of Oregon. We're glad to have her here with us this morning.
Thank you to the following Planning Committee members for their many and varied contributions to this year's Fall In-service effort, we could not have done so without them:
Joan Aschim, Siv Serene Barnum, Brett Rowlett, Susan Carkin, Dawn DeWolf, Maurice Hamington, Marisa Hastie, Meredith Keene-Wlson, Donna Koechig, Michael Levick, Russ Pierson, Wendy Simmons, Tracy Simms, Roberta Stitt, RoseMarie Tillman, John Watson, and Donna Zmolek.
Additional thanks to Roxanne Watson, our event coordinator, Neil Isaacson and the Printing & Graphics staff, the CML event staff and banquet chefs, CPDT members for welcoming staff this morning and coordinating today's Annual Root Beer Social in the Learning Garden, Julie Sheen, our Learning Garden coordinator for hosting the social, Mark Richardson and facilities staff for allowing us to borrow and transform our college golf carts into Organic Quinoa Transport Pods to assist staff with transportation to the Learning Garden, Marisa Hastie, our FPD coordinator for hosting the annual Faculty Sabbatical Reports, which were shared on Wednesday, and to Sandy Brown Jensen who suggested the theme of the Hero's Journey. And of course, my fashion consultant....Rodney Brown.
Section 3 – Kudos
But before we look forward, let's take just a few minutes to look back. It is important to take some time to celebrate what is right with Lane and to recognize the many people that have contributed to these accomplishments. I'd like you to, for at least today, reflect on your own best work. For it is all these individual and collective acts that make up the fabric of Lane Community College.
Even if what you were thinking about is not reflected in these upcoming slides, what is important is that you recognize that you accomplished something and made a real difference. It may have been in a quiet way, unobserved by most, but that doesn't make it any less important. So let's take a look at some of the highlights from last year.
Run highlights PowerPoint video
Absolutely amazing! I do want to give an additional shout out to the winners of the Faculty Recognition Awards and would ask that you stand if you are here. Slides of winners
Melissa Stark, Music, Dance, & Theatre Arts
Deborah Landforce, Women in Transition
Stan Swank, Science
Dan Carrere, Business/Computer Information Technology
Mark Huntington, Advanced Technology
Leslie Greer, Health Professions
Herb Moore, Advance Technology
Stan Taylor, Social Science
Michael McDonald, Language, Literature, and Communication
Let's give them another round of applause.
And also to our classified employees of the month. Our classified staff individually and collectively make this place hum, and let's recognize our awardees again.
If you could please stand as I say your name.
SLIDE – Pictures of classified staff of month
August 2012 – Josie Skeers, Specialized Support Services
October 2012– Georgia Soto, Child & Family Education
November 2012 – Russ Pierson, FMP
December 2012 – Michael Levick, Academic Technology
January 2013 – Tina Reyes, Continuing Education
April 2013 – Gwenda Sluyk, Information Technology
May 2013 – Kyle Schmidt, Information Technology
June 2013 – James McConkey, Music, Dance, & Theatre Arts
Please join me in giving a round of applause for the monthly recipients.
As notable as those achievements are for our monthly recipients, each year we identify that one individual to be the Classified Employee of the Year. It is my great pleasure this year to name the 2013 Classified Employee of the Year. James McConkey, would you please join me at the podium to receive this well-deserved award while I share a bit about you with your colleagues?
Here are some quotes from the nominations:
"James is a master at creative thinking and problem solving, as he is constantly trying to reconcile production/concert realities with the director's vision. He's always respectful and collegial – the best colleague we could have! Everything he does is of the highest quality, and he does it all with a wonderful, patient attitude. We literally could not do what we do without him."
Please join me in honoring the 2013 Classified Employee of the Year.
We've recognized these classified staff members, and there are many more yet to be recognized. Your stories comprise what makes this institution great. Join us this year in nominating individuals who are demonstrating excellence, innovation, diversity and partnerships that stand above the rest.
Finally, we don't have any formal recognition for managers, but they also pulled their weight last year, so I would like to recognize them for everything they did.
Slide of a sunset
I want to take just a moment to acknowledge the passing of some of our own:
Former faculty and staff:
Tzvi Lachman, Training & Development
Joe Searl, Social Science
Betsy Bliss, Public Safety
Jerry Sirois, Counseling
David Shellabarger, Mathematics
Anne Marie Prengaman, Language, Literature, & Communication
Jerry Hall, Science
Nancy Rogers, Enrollment Services
Scott Williams – Theater volunteer
All of these people made a tremendous contribution to the college. They will be sorely missed.
Another highlight from last year our new Downtown Campus. DC slide. Last year, we had the opening of Titan Court. In January, we began classes in the new LEED platinum building. This was an amazing accomplishment for the college in bringing together $53 million of public investment and making something truly magnificent happen to create a wonderful learning environment for students and trigger the revitalization of downtown Eugene. Eventually the housing will create a revenue stream that will contribute to the general fund to help better fulfill our mission. A special thanks to Dave Willis, Todd Smith, and the FMP staff, and to Greg Morgan for pulling together all of the complicated financing for the project. Despite the increased supply of student housing downtown, I am happy to announce that we are 96% leased up for the fall – about 70% are Lane students, 29% are Ducks. 30% are international students. Jenette Kane and her team and our great student ambassadors deserve a lot of credit for making this happen. I'd also like to thank Jennifer Falzerano and her staff for bringing international students to Lane and to Titan Court.
What a year! To all of you: bravo, and thanks for continuing to go above and beyond to serve our students and the community.
You have been sitting for a while now, so it's almost time for a stretch break. Once we start to look ahead at what's on the plate for this year, you will get exhausted pretty quickly. Sometimes it feels too hard and we feel too weary, we all experience "stretches" during the school year, excuse the pun, when the grind of daily routines take their toll – working at a feverish pace, overwhelming demands, work never done, papers to grade, budgets to balance, contracts to settle, floors to be mopped. But we must remember that our students can be turned off so easily, and we need to be alive in this work so it is important that we each take care of our own health and wellness. In the spirit of strengthening our bodies and deepening those squats, let's direct our attention to Wendy Simmons and Layne King, to take a one-minute stretch break.
30 seconds of dance music for Wendy and Layne to dance to the stage
Stretch slide
Section 4 - What's ahead
As we leave last year behind and look ahead, let me start with a poem from Wendell Berry:
Horseback on Sunday morning, Harvest over,
we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer's end. SLIDE of Persimmons
In time's maze over fall fields, we name names that went west from here, names
That rest on graves.
We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed's marrow
Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. SLIDE OF GEESE
Abandon, as in love or sleep, hold them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. SLIDE What we need is here
And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.
So as we leave the sharp sweet of summer's end and embark on a new academic year, it feels good to be quiet in heart, in eye, clear. I feel that way, I hope you do, too. And it feels good to know that what we need is here. What we need is right here – in the intelligence, passion, commitment, experience and love of learning that each of you brings to this work that we do. This time last year, I said that we would be focusing on strengthening and deepening, strengthening and deepening our everyday practice whether it is teaching, or supporting or cooking or cleaning, strengthening and deepening our passion for our work, strengthening and deepening our relationships with each other, and strengthening and deepening the many initiatives that were underway. Just as well there were no new initiatives, because as you know we went through some profound changes in terms of leadership of the college. I had completed many of my national commitments, so the timing was good for me to turn my attention internally. I realize that there are cycles in these jobs we do – from my early years as president when I was very internally focused, to stepping out into community, legislative, fundraising and national work, and now to be able to come full circle has been a joy. So many people stepped up and carried initiatives forward, truly strengthening and deepening the work as you saw in the slide show. We also were able to take advantage of this opportunity to develop new leadership for the college, and as you know, forming a new team requires a lot of clear communication about who is doing what – sorta like this: Who's on First Clip
But we are going to do better than that. We have a great team and I'd like to introduce them:
ET photos
Brian Kelly, VP College Services; Maurice Hamington, Executive Dean – Transfer; Dawn DeWolf, Executive Dean, Career and Technical, Kerry Levett, Executive Dean, Student Affairs, Jen Steele, Budget Director, joined by Dennis Carr, Human resources, Bill Schuetz, IT, Donna Koechig, Diversity and Professional and Organizational Development, Craig Taylor, IRAP and Tracy Simms, Director of Marketing and PR.
We were able to spend some focused time together earlier in the summer. We discussed the college and our personal values and our calling to this work. We discussed the culture that we desire to work in and who we are and what we each bring to the team and developed expectations for each other. We had an in-depth discussion about how we develop a culture of respect, inclusion and caring and what it means to each of us to be cared for and then we got down to the nitty gritty of our strategic directions and the work we need to accomplish this year.
I am very excited about this team. This year we will continue to strengthen and deepen, but our focus will be connection, convergence and caring. Connecting the dots of all of our initiatives, caring about the work and each other.
So back to that Hero's Journey. It starts with the Call to Adventure. And an adventure it will be. I believe that the work we do in community colleges is truly a calling. Where else do you get to transform lives, learn and create the future of our community? It is noble work, work we should be proud of. What called you to this adventure? Let's take a look at some of our heroes....Hero's Journey – 1st clip, Call to Adventure
Clive is so introverted....
So with that call to adventure, let me just lay out some of what's ahead on this adventure. I'll start at the national level with President Obama's latest: A Better Bargain for the Middle Class: Making College More Affordable Paying for Performance. Picture of Obama
Some of the elements include:
Tie financial aid to college performance, starting with publishing new college ratings before the 2015 school yearChallenge states to fund public colleges based on performanceHold students and colleges receiving student aid responsible for making progress toward a degreeChallenge colleges to offer students a greater range of affordable, high-quality options than they do todayGive consumers clear, transparent information on college performance to help them make the decisions that work best for themEncourage innovation by stripping away unnecessary regulations
In response, Dr. Walter Bumphus, (picture of Dr. Bumphus) president of our national association AACC, noted that community colleges are formally committed to achieving higher graduation rates (although the rates continue to be misrepresented in federal measuring frameworks) and that this commitment has been carried through the AACC's 21st Century Commission on the Future of Community College and the work all of us doing. He added that "First and foremost, community colleges are local entities, albeit serving a broader national purpose. Federal policy should augment and not supplant state and local policy. He also stated that the federal government should not "rate" colleges. Picture of US world reports with an x through it Community colleges do not support private entities ranking community colleges, and they oppose the federal government's doing likewise. Furthermore, tying federal student aid to ratings is problematic. Even if equitable ratings could be developed, community college students are often not sufficiently mobile to be able to attend an institution that is not local.
Also on the national level there are more and more outside influencers – more and more organizations are moving into the higher education space and telling is what we should be doing, often with little or no real understanding of the work that we do. While I am not opposed to listening and taking to "outsiders," and I am not interested in simply defending the status quo, but I think we need a united front on responding with a clear message that community colleges, and Lane in particular, are already fully engaged in redesign, reform and a focus on progression and completion and we don't need to be shamed into it or incentivized to do it. We're already doing it.
Many of the report from "outsiders" are based on erroneous data. Well, the data are accurate as far as they go, but the framework of full time, first time students and graduation rates is only part of the story. Do we need to improve our graduation rate, currently at 12%? Yes, but this does not give a complete and accurate picture of the work we do. I am very concerned that without a concerted effort, the proposals that are being discussed in Washington will move forward. Every time one of these reports comes out we refute the findings, but the conclusions continue to get legs. I think we need to adopt a more comprehensive set of metrics that include all of our students and all of our mission – whether it's the Voluntary Framework for Accountability that's been developed at the national level or something else but our current strategies are failing us.
So in terms of the Heroes Journey some of these national ideas unfortunately may take us to the next phase of our journey – down into the abyss. Hero's Journey Part 2 Clip
There is one more report that shows a little promise: Bridging the Higher Education Divide Strengthening Community Colleges and Restoring the American Dream developed by the Century Foundation Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges from Becoming Separate and Unequal; Shot of front page of report The Task Force, which included presidents and faculty from community colleges as well as policy wonks concluded what we all know: that community colleges are asked to educate those students with the greatest needs, using the least funds, but they raised the important issue that we are increasingly separate but unequal institutions. Our higher education system is growing more and more unequal in terms of equity in funding and support for students most in need. One of the recommendations the task force makes calls for increased funding for those institutions that serve the students with the greatest needs, not unlike Title 1 funding that K-12 receives. I do have concerns about their proposals on outcomes based funding, but at least they recognize that progress is important and give consideration to where students start as well as where they end up.
Honestly, I was conflicted about how much energy to put into all of this at the national level. I mean is anything going to come out of Washington right now but some of these so-called reforms can be implemented by Executive Order and just last week Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appeared at the Times Summit for Higher Education in NYC. I had decided to give this invitation only event a pass, and I don't know if that was the right call or not. The headline in Inside Higher Ed read: Duncan Chides 1 Dupont Circle (the address of most of the higher education groups in Washington DC, including AACC.) Picture of Arne Duncan He admonished critics of the Obama administration's plan for a federal college rating system and pledged to move full-speed ahead in developing the metrics by which institutions will be judged. He stated that the reaction to the proposal by some college leaders and higher education groups had been "premature and more than a little silly." He said that the difficulty of creating a ratings system for higher education should not be an excuse for inaction, urging higher education leaders to stop "propping up the status quo."
The Education Department will produce a draft rating system in about a year and a final version by December 2014, Duncan said. The administration has said its goal is to launch a rating system in the 2015 academic year and persuade Congress to link that system to federal student aid dollars by 2018.
So I think it is important that we connect with our national organizations – for me that would be AACC and ACCT, but it could be your discipline groups or national unions to track this. This may seem a little distant from the work you do every day, but it is part of our context and could seriously impact our work.
State slide
At the state level some of the issues mirror the federal level. The State Board of Education is considering performance based funding. I am personally opposed to this form of funding for community colleges in Oregon but the train is moving. I have managed to engage the presidents in a discussion to focus on the why and the what rather than the how. That is why are we considering this mechanism and what benefit will it have as opposed to the mechanics of a formula which is where most of the discussion has been. I want to thank Phil Martinez for his research and thoughtful analysis of performance base funding.
As you know the State Board of Education is responsible at the state level for K-14. Effective next July we will work with the Higher Education Coordinating Commission - the HECC – as in: SLIDE what the HECC? I think it's important that somebody is thinking about higher education, but we do not need a governing board at the state level. We have a locally elected board, and with the State Board community colleges pretty much flew under the radar because K-12 took up most of their attention. So we will have to monitor the development of the HECC carefully. We know many of the HECC members appointed by the governor including faculty and our own student body vice president Anayeli Jimenez, and we will be working closely with the HECC to influence their policy decisions.
I am excited about ConnectEd Lane County SLIDE LOGO and our selection to be one of the 11 regional partnerships participating in the Regional Achievement Collaborative Pilot, a program of the Oregon Education Investment Board. The collaborative will work to find ways to prepare children for kindergarten, creating opportunities for high school students to earn college credit, and ensuring smooth transitions into career and college, to help Oregon meet its 40-40-20 goals of educational attainment. Partners are Lane Community College, all 16 Lane County school districts, Lane Education Service District, University of Oregon, United Way of Lane County, Educational Policy Improvement Center and Lane County. We set the stage for this in 2010 when Greg Rikhoff from the UO and I created the partnership.
You may have heard of a couple of other ideas—Pay it Forward, and last week Senator Hass promoted an initiative to provide the first two years of college free.
Hero's Journey Part 3 Clip
College Level
At the college level we have a few things on our collective plate.
We are guided by our mission, core themes and strategic directions. SLIDE Learning and Student Success – notwithstanding all I've said above about potential challenges – must be our focus, yes because of these external pressures, but also because our students deserve the best we can give them. SLIDE
We have been assessing all of the initiatives and we will be working on connection and convergence. We will be looking for alignment and developing integrated structures that move the work forward. Maurice Hamington is leading this effort, along with Kerry Levett.
Early College/Career Options SLIDE
A second major initiative is our partnership with 4J to locate their Early College/Career Options program here at the college. ECCO is not a "high school completion program" nor an "adult high school" (shades of the past). ECCO is an early college high school run by the school district in partnership with Lane Community College and on our campus, taking advantage of the incredible "power of the site" to transform the lives of the students.
2. The early college model provides an unparalleled opportunity for Lane faculty and staff to observe, communicate, and collaborate with the faculty, staff, and students of a local high school. This will also be an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the work and challenges of our local high schools in preparing students for success in college, and to share insights from the college perspective. This is a chance for high school and college folks to learn from each other. I believe this an opportunity like no other to break down barriers between high school and college and for our faculty and staff to play a part in "growing a more prepared student" for Lane.
3. We are setting the gold standard in Oregon (and potentially beyond) as far as developing a seamless pathway between high school and college, with a focus on student success.
4. With a $100,000 Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) grant recently received, we will be working to make ECCO a model school that will demonstrate cutting-edge blended learning and innovative approaches to preparing students for college success (at Lane!). We will also be exploring the potential for development of a regional model that will extend opportunities to students beyond 4J.
5. In a time of declining enrollment, we now have a true "feeder school" with potential for growth right here on our campus. I believe there is no more effective recruitment strategy than providing a welcoming, supportive, collaborative environment where a motivated group of students can see every day what incredible opportunities exist for them here at Lane and beyond.
6. I think the school's motto is awesome: "Come Willingly. Find Your Purpose. Do the Work. Leave Prepared. Live Empowered."
Center for Student Success
One of the most extensive facilities renovations will start very soon – the transformation of the Center building into a Center for Learning and Student Success. SLIDE OF rendering of Center Bringing together instructional support services for our students from tutoring to library to technology support, as well as reinvented food services, this $35 million project will not only transform how we serve students, it will transform the look of our campus, creating a beautiful central plaza. This project will take about three years but will truly be worth the wait. Please engage in the multiple opportunities to influence the design of this project.
Foundation
I will also be working with our Foundation staff. Slide of Harvest Dinner You will recall that we launched our first major gifts campaign, Opening Doors, in 2007 with a goal of $23 million to include funding for our Health and Wellness Center. We closed out the campaign at $29 million raised. Phenomenal. There is no stopping our Foundation, and we are in the early stages of our next campaign planning that will fund the Center building renovation, the Center for Learning and Student Success, a new Culinary Institute, scholarships and endowment funding for some of our niche programs. We are about to embark on a feasibility study to see how possible this campaign is and our new Foundation Director Wendy Jett told me that I could not make any public announcement about campaign goals because we need to assess the feasibility and then have two or three years to go through the quiet phases of a campaign.....but can you keep a secret? We are going to raise $40 million dollars over the next few years. This is an imperative for the college and for our student and we are going to need your help. What can you give? Who do you know? You don't need to do the ask – just connect us up, and we'll tell our story and make our case.
And about a year from now we will be hosting a team from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities for our full scale accreditation. Over the course of this year, we will be writing our self study and again invite your participation in assessing our compliance with the standards. This is an institutional evaluation that reflects our collective performance so it we want to make sure we are telling our collective story. Maurice is leading this work.
There is so much more – we are seeing an enrollment decline after dealing with a 43% increase from 2008-2011 and that has a pretty significant impact on our budget now that tuition and fees are over 40% of our budget, but let's save that for another day. Then there is completing the negotiations with LCCEA, but our focus should be the core work of teaching and learning and serving students.
So how do we get all this done? Well, remember that Call to Adventure?
Something called us to Lane Community College—hopefully our vision and mission—and so it might be important to remember that calling.
Our students are also called to adventure when they decide to come to Lane. According to Professor Clifford Mayes, it is the faculty and staff cultural and emotional insights that are the major determinants in deciding whether the student ultimately interprets the call to adventure as a threat or an opportunity. Kim Stafford, the quintessential Oregonian, talks about the School of Magic. SLIDE
For a learner, food is what you don't know.
Facts and stories, songs and blessings become
your menu of delight. You seek, find, feast.
For a teacher, food is what you can't know
without the festive hunger of learners. You set the table.
A multitude of hungers there convene.
Among us, may the feast appear.
In another poem he notes:
There were these students. They arrived
with first words, but wanted others.
You were the door for their learning. SLIDE Open door
You were the listener, witness, friend.
How many seekers have met you
and moved on? How many were changed?
We can be that School of Magic and the door for their learning if we keep our focus.
When we look at the challenges and real work, ahead it could get overwhelming. I have a few thoughts for your consideration about how we might meet these challenges head on.
1. Professor Marshall Ganz is an expert in grassroots organizing, who lectures about what inspires people to act and to make change in the world.
He says that moving people to action is about telling stories, and remember we have been using a story telling model in much of our work, and that our stories are formed by three ways of knowing. SLIDE –head, heart and hands
knowing with the head – the cognitive, logical perspectiveknowing with the heart – what gives things meaning and what drives us to actionknowing with the hands – tools for making something happen
Ganz says, "For the hands to be engaged fruitfully, they need both the head and the heart." In other words, the best making is fueled by questions from the head and passion from the heart.
2. Hope SLIDE
I was given a passage by the Brazilian theologian, Ruben Alvez, who described hope in this way:
"What is hope? It is the presentiment that imagination is more real and reality less real than it looks. It is the suspicion that the overwhelming brutality of fact that oppresses us and represses us is not the last word. It is the hunch that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe, that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual, and that, in a miraculous and unexpected way, life is preparing the creative events which will open the way to freedom and to resurrection.
"But, hope must live with suffering. Suffering, without hope, produces resentment and despair. And hope, without suffering, creates illusions, naiveté, and drunkenness. So, let us plant dates, even though we who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see." Kim Stafford says it beautifully in his story about Lloyd. Lloyd Reynolds, the international citizen of Portland, spent his last days silent, unable to write or to speak, lying in a hospital bed. In his last day at home as his wife scurried to pack his suitcase for the hospital, Lloyd made his way outside to the garden, and there she found him on his knees awkwardly planting flower bulbs with a spoon. SLIDE of Flowers "Lloyd," she said, "you will never see those flowers bloom." He smiled at her. "They are not for me," he said, "they are for you. Salmon coming home, they are for you, the calls of the wild geese, they are for you. The last old trees, they are for you and your children, for the seventh generation and beyond, they are all blooming into being for you." So, too, at Lane we can be architects of a better future for ourselves and our students.
3. Find abundance
Kim Stafford in one of his poems talks about "abundance moving towards need." The idea that abundance can move to where it is needed, where it can transform and give people a shot at self-sufficiency and happiness. We could re-envision what abundance means. This abundance comes from knowing that we're there for one another. If the bottom falls out of my life, I have a support net, and if the bottom falls out of your life, I can be part of the support net for you. That's abundance.
4. Develop patience and know that none of his needs to have all the answers. This Rilke poem just makes me take a big sigh and relax:
Be patient toward
all that is unresolved
in your heart
Try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms
and like books written
in a very foreign tongue.
Do not seek now the
answers, which cannot
be given to you because
you would not be able
to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now....perhaps you will
then gradually,
without noticing it,
live along
some distant day
into the answer . . .
Emotional Intelligence Emotional Intelligence Quadrants and Competencies
Self-Awareness
- Emotional Self-Awareness: recognizing how our emotions affect our behavior and relationships
Self Management
- Emotional Self-Control: managing emotions and impulses; channeling them in useful ways
- Adaptability: flexibility in adapting to changing situations or overcoming obstacles
- Achievement: the drive to improve performance to meet inner standards of excellence
- Positive Outlook: persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks
Social Awareness
- Empathy: sensing others' emotions, understanding their perspective, and taking active interest in their concerns
- Organizational Awareness: reading the currents, decision networks, and politics at the organizational level
Relationship Management
- Inspirational Leadership: guiding and motivating with a compelling vision
- Influence: wielding a range of tactics for persuasion
- Coach and Mentor: bolstering others' abilities through feedback and guidance
- Conflict Management: de-escalating disagreements and orchestrating resolutions
- Teamwork and Collaboration: cooperation and team-building
6. Resilience
At the simplest level, increased resilience implies bouncing back faster after stress, enduring greater stresses and being disturbed less by a given amount of stress. To be resilient is to withstand disturbance without changing, disintegrating or becoming permanently damaged – to return to normal quickly. Resilience in complex adaptive systems like ours is adaptive capacity or adaptability. Rather than hoping to go back to how things were "before," it is not just changing in response to conditions but generating new ways of operating. Therefore, it is best defined as the ability to withstand, recover from, and reorganize in response to stress. We find this at an individual level, institutional level and community level. Very related to the point before about emotional intelligence, we are committed to professional development around the idea of resilience. Developing resilience will help each of us deal with what is going on at the college and will also have positive knock on effects in our personal, family and community life.
7. Build community
Build community every single day. Last month we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington. In that celebration, many renewed our commitment to his call to create "the beloved community." SLIDE OF DR. KING Dr. King's vision of a beloved community was characterized by equality of all people, by civility, by love, by world peace, by educational opportunity, by support for health and other needs, and by the willingness to crusade in non-violent ways to reach these goals. The events in his honor enable all of us to "witness" and provide testimony to these ideals and to demonstrate our own commitment, individually and collectively, to the humane causes that were espoused by this great civil rights leader, preacher, and educator. Can we do that here at Lane?
Parker Palmer says we do our best discernment in community, where many eyes, ears, sets of experiences, and voices can sort out the wheat from the chaff. All of us together are smarter than any one of us alone. When students work together, they can learn how to move toward provisional conclusions about what's true and false, what's right and wrong, which leads are worth following, and which of them can be laid down and forgotten. Can we model that for students in how we conduct ourselves in community with each other?
Institutional change doesn't come about simply through the individual acts as wonderful as those are. It happens through the formation of communities of people who have a shared moral concern and who can provide encouragement, resources, and protection for each other. I don't know of any great movement that hasn't depended on base communities to sustain individuals in the demanding work of social change.
8. Say yes to possibility
That sense of possibility disappears when we say "no" Can we be open to saying "yes" to at least the consideration of what is possible? It has to be a "yes" tempered by a clear-eyed knowledge of both what is going on and what we know to be possible.
The challenge is to stand and act in what Parker Palmer calls "the tragic gap." This is the gap between the hard facts that surround us and what we know to be possible—not our dreams or fantasies, but what we know to be possible because we've seen the evidence with our own eyes, It's an ongoing journey to stand in the tragic gap and keep acting in hopeful ways, holding the tension between what is and what could be. It's so easy to flip out either into cynicism—because the latest wave of bad news has just washed over you—or into a kind of idealism, because something has gone well and you allow yourself to imagine that it will be this way forever. There are many great leaders including Dr. King, Cesar Chavez, Aung San Suu Kyi who stood in the tragic gap for a long, long time, people who kept moving forward saying "yes" in full awareness of the hard realities around them while never abandoning their vision of possibility.
If more and more of us can hold that tension and keep moving forward by saying "yes, yes, yes" to each incremental step toward the possible, no matter how small, then I think all kinds of good things can happen.
9. Care
Care is a function of time and effort, and it pays off with greater knowledge of the other. Care fosters empathy and understanding. It doesn't resolve differences but it does create an atmosphere of greater collegiality so that the differences are not more important than our shared humanity. Care reminds us of our common humanity--our shared embodied existence. Care means listening and being present to one another. Authentic care spurs action and is the basis for activism. Care is incompatible with slogans or stereotypes or ideology, but it is found in authentic human relationships where we at least imaginatively walk in one another's shoes and learn of each other's burdens. Care is often undervalued but it is the basis for human civilization.
10. Go on the hero's journey and be a hero in your own mind
So let's know with our heads, our hearts and our hands,
Hope,
Embrace abundance,
Be Patient,
Develop emotional intelligence and resilience,
Build community,
Say yes to possibility,
Care,
And be a hero.
Lane Heroes video
Finally, the last poem written by Richard Blanco for President Obama's second inauguration, It's a poem of unity – one sun, one light, one ground, one sky, suggesting that we are together in this enterprise sharing this space, this moment and this opportunity.
Image and line from poem – One Today
....One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn't give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.
We are Lane Community College. This college is a storehouse of miracles, and if we keep our eyes peeled and listen with care, we can see the moments of wonder and transformation. They are always there waiting to be seen and savored. I wish you a wonderful year. Thank you.
Find Your Grail song