Sustaining The Learning College
Learning organization system attributes provided
a foundation for the whole organization, not just the students to
learn and enabled the College to develop a system that should
ensure the stability and continuity of the strategic planning and
assessment processes.
Procedural Integrity and Routines:
To ensure accountability for the new system model, Board policies
and College job descriptions were reviewed and updated. Accountability for maintaining the learning college has, as a
result, become a documented responsibility at every level of the
organizational chart, beginning with the Board of Trustees. The
committee charges, timeline, and written procedures for the
planning and assessment processes ensure a reliable routine from
year to year.
Shared Governance:
One of the first findings of the Internal Review Team was a lack of
employee trust in administration. The system developing around the
creation of the Learning college has resulted in a previously
untapped level of shared governance by involving staff in all of
the processes of strategic planning and budgeting. The committees
involve a large number of staff in identifying issues, collecting
and analyzing data, and examining, selecting and recommending
potential solutions. The structure also gives staff serving on OPIC
the responsibility of considering committee recommendations and
deciding if they are adequately justified for funding. Although
intrinsic to the learning college, the levels of input built into
the system are not yet fully realized. OPIC members received
training at their strategic planning retreat in the summer of 2005,
and more professional development in the future on how shared
governance can enhance the learning college.
Organizational Culture:
Faculty who returned to campus in the Fall of 2004 for the opening
in-service, perhaps unaware of the work of the task force that had
occurred during the summer, found the transformation to a learning
college well underway. The coherence of the learning college system
represented by the Organizational Planning and Improvement System
and the committee charges was immediately appreciated, if not
completely understood. Faculty continued to focus primarily on the
tasks required to establish the academic assessment system,
assuming that since they were teachers, they must always have been
part of a learning institution, so what had changed? Staff struggled
with the concept of how making student learning central to their
actions was different, if at all from the strong customer-service
focus they already practiced.
As it became clear that setting up a learning
college philosophy and establishing a learning college system were
not the same as embedding the learning college concept into the
organizational culture, a diverse group of faculty and administrators attended the League for Innovation's Learning
College Summit (June 2005) in Oak Brook, Illinois. The group returned from the conference
determined to work toward both a better understanding of what a
learning college is and a more intentional commitment on the part
of the College community to pursue that model. Several initiatives
were immediately put into place:
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