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Imagine a community college vice president of instruction who is married to a community college vice president of student services. They are used to arguing, pretty much all the time, along the lines of their respective institutional interests. One fine day, they are out for a drive, and they are uncharacteristically silent. They had argued earlier about which division was really responsible for declining enrollment, and neither wanted to concede his/her position. As the car passes a farm, they notice a field in which mules and pigs are grazing. The instruction vice president asks the student services vice president, sarcastically, “Relatives of yours?” “Yes, indeed” replies the vice president of student services, “in-laws.”
Opportunities for Discord
There are plenty of opportunities for discord on community college campuses. An assumption exists, that student services and instruction staff members will find opportunities to disagree.
Low retention can cause instruction staff members to criticize counselors for failing to help students prepare realistic education plans, while student services staff members could cite instructors’ failure to encourage and assist their students. Low enrollment might cause student services staff to blame instruction staff for failure to schedule enough classes at times convenient for students, who often have to work. Instruction staff would likely charge the student services outreach and admissions staff with failure to recruit students and then making registration processes cumbersome. The infamous 50% Law is perfectly suited to creating conflict. Instruction folks cling tenaciously to the law, because it forces expenditures on classroom-related activities and staff. Student services bemoans the fact that the staff members they desperately need to provide adequate support services for students are often low priorities in hiring.
A United Front
At MiraCosta College we (Julie Hatoff, VP of Instructional Services, and Dick Robertson, VP of Student Services) have worked collaboratively for 19 years. We pledged, from the outset, that we would present a united front, so that staff members in both student services and instruction would observe only a model of cooperation, not one of competition. Both of us had experienced dysfunctional relationships with former colleagues and we wanted to create for our college and for ourselves an atmosphere which was conducive to mutual support of student success. Since we began working together, MiraCosta has doubled in size, added a satellite campus and a Community Learning Center, and functioned under the direction of three exceptional presidents.
Early in our joint tenure at MiraCosta, we realized the importance of creating an impression for the college community of our commitment to mutual respect. We both wanted the college to embrace Project Puente, but there had been little movement to affiliate with the program. We decided to make a joint application and to provide dual oversight for Puente. College planners liked the concept and the program was launched successfully. That collaboration opened the door to more partnership efforts.
Partnership and Joint Programs
Now, in 2006, the instruction and student services vice presidents supervise together three important college functions; the Institute for International Perspectives; the University Transfer Center; and the Tutoring and Academic Support Center. These partnerships underline the emphasis both divisions have placed on collaboration in the interest of strong, institution-wide support of student success. Staff members in both divisions accept responsibility for the programs and are held accountable, through the program review process, for quality and productivity.
Joint supervision of programs is not the usual business management model. However, program managers and the programs themselves have flourished at MiraCosta. Both vice presidents make time to supervise cooperatively and to assure that the messages received by the program managers are consistent.
Ingredients for a Successful Partnership
We have found other ingredients to a successful student services and instruction partnership. We interact with the college president carefully, so that we avoid, as much as is humanly possible, a sense of competition for attention. We meet off-campus for breakfast or lunch, on occasion, to make sure that we are “on the same page” or at least reading the same book. When instructional deans and student services deans were beginning to snipe at each other, we organized joint meetings of the deans once each month. The meetings have markedly improved the relationships and helped the deans to understand how important it is to work together to solve problems and cooperate on initiatives.
Lest readers think we have created the perfect relationship, we should point out that we have distinctly different personality types (one is an ENTJ and the other an ENFP in Myers-Briggs Personality Type Inventory acronyms), and we tend to view the world from opposite perspectives. We try to disagree without being disagreeable. Despite differences, the shared “bottom line” is a commitment to collegiality and to working together to help students succeed. The focus has not changed for 19 years.
We are confident that we have forged a lasting partnership, one which has helped MiraCosta College to grow and to serve students and the community far better than would have been the case if we had been estranged.
There are no “pigs” (maybe a few mules….) in our family, on either side.
Email the authors and editor: drobertson@miracosta.edu and jhatoff@miracosta.edu
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