EDU-715 Rampe-Eggleston

Hi, my name is Amanda Rampy Egleston.

For my final paper,

I interviewed my colleague Sally at Monroe

Community College Sally is the associate director

of advisement and she implemented a college

wide approach to taking advising notes.

So as far as the overview of the organization,

Monroe Community College is a pretty large community

college and it's part of the Sunni system,

the state University of new york.

Um It's kind of a combination of an urban and suburban college.

The main campus is in a suburb of Rochester,

but we have lots and lots of students who come from Rochester City High Schools.

We have another campus are secondary campus is located in downtown Rochester and we

have a few others for specific programs

such as our public safety training facility.

Also in a suburb.

Um I think it's also important to note

that equity gaps are a real concern at MCC.

So in Rochester are Rochester City school district

is one of the worst performing school district

in new york state due to a whole host of equity concerns and historical issues.

However, right next door,

we have really affluent suburb um suburban high school districts

such as Pittsford Sutherland and brighten,

both of which are in the top 10 of school districts in new york state.

So that makes some really interesting challenges

um As far as the size of the institution,

I can let you know that we have about 22,000 students if you add up all of our credit,

non credit workforce, um type stuff,

but if we're talking FTE s or full time equivalent students,

we usually average around 10,000.

So next we're gonna talk about leading up to the change.

So setting the stage for this change,

the college was involved in a lot of reform efforts.

So guided pathways and our switch to that model was spurring a lot of

changes and there were a lot of other grant funded things that were happening,

um grants through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

things through achieving the dream jobs for the future.

Strong start to finish all of those kinds of organizations around higher

ed that we hear about when we talk about reform initiatives.

So those were causing the college to kind of assess some different things.

Big reform that this kind of fell under was

a complete overhaul of the advising model at MCC.

So, um looking at that more broadly and in order to do that,

the college formed what we call the I A B, or the integrated advising board,

and they were looking at the advising model more broadly,

but they were also charged with assessing advising notes at the college.

And then the other thing to keep in mind is there was a lot of frustration.

So,

the condition of advising notes before this change was that

they either didn't exist and folks just wouldn't take them,

or if you worked in the Professional advising center, you would take notes by hand,

you would write down paragraphs and paragraphs

on actual sheet of carbon copy paper.

So this was in like 2017,

were still using duplicate forms with the white paper on top and

the yellow paper underneath and your right and tear them apart.

Um and we hand it to the student and they probably lose it.

The other copy maintained by advising got scanned and saved in

a software system that very few people had access to.

So the results of that was that a lot of people

had just kind of no idea what was going on with

the given student students would end up repeating themselves a lot

and there was just a feeling that it was really inefficient.

So the next thing I want to talk about is

a little bit about the team that implemented the change.

So I mentioned that there was the integrated advising board

and this group was established and empowered by the vice president of the college,

who knew that some changes with advising were needed,

um Sally who I interviewed was one of the co chairs of that board, along with jess.

And so sally and jess were the co chairs,

but um every area was really represented.

So there was the registrar, there were faculty members,

there were folks from admissions, folks from advising folks from financial aid,

really, every area of the college that you can think of was a part of the bigger group.

It's also important to note that there

were cross divisional sponsors for this work.

So the Assistant vice president for academic services as well as the Assistant

vice president for enrollment management were both

sponsors of the integrated advising board.

So what does that mean?

Historically at the college things have been really siloed

between academic services and student services or enrollment management.

So by creating this co sponsorship model that allowed the team to report

up to these sponsors and ensure that things that they were doing,

we're going to make both divisions happy.

Once the group got into talking about advisement notes,

then they started to think this group might be a little big,

so they talked within themselves and decided a subgroup would be more effective.

So a subgroup of about four people were the

ones who really worked on implementing advising notes.

So the steps to create these

first, there was a charge from the Vice President's,

where the vice president's said,

we need to do something about advising more broadly.

But part of that is that we need to come up with

a system for advising notes to be used consistently across the college.

Once that was reviewed by the Integrated Advising Board,

they decided to make a sub group, they said these 3-4 people,

they really use advising notes the most they understand it

and,

you know,

they're the ones that can come up with a system that's going to work really well.

And so that subgroup met and made recommendations

while that was happening sally had a lot

of regular meetings with these sponsors and she

did mention that at times she felt frustrated

because she would think they were on the right track and then she would meet with the

A VPs who would say oh no we don't want you to do it that way,

why don't you revisit it, come back around and come back once you've reconsidered?

Um But she did say that at the end of the day,

even though it was frustrating at the time,

ultimately it was helpful because she didn't get too far off on the wrong track.

It's also important to know that um Sally

mentioned not just the team of the integrated advising

board but this subgroup that consisted of just

a few members made kind of another team with

Jody who was the degree works coordinator at the time for our

degree works audit system where the notes would ultimately be kept.

And also from I. T.

And this was interesting for me to hear because

during some projects that I'm involved in right now

we've had some issues connecting with I. T.

And it hasn't always felt like we have the same priorities

according to sally about five years ago when this change was happening it

was a lot more in alignment and beth are programmer that really helped

with this project was just like part of the team showed up to

those meetings and was super helpful and there was a sense of trust.

Um so once they got it actually implemented in the technical sense

um you know, going back and forth and back and forth with those recommendations,

those sponsor meetings going back to I.

T.

Um once they got it launched there was just a lot

of professional development and so it's important to keep in mind,

you know anything at a college, you have faculty,

no one's going to tell them what to do, you're going to convince them,

you're going to show them the value.

And so that's what sally set out to

do with these different professional development efforts,

such as meetings,

trainings, posting videos,

creating and advising notes manual and other things like that.

So lastly I just want to talk about the leadership approach.

So I thought that there were a lot of aspects here of servant leadership.

So when I talked to sally and I asked her,

I said you know what is your leadership philosophy?

She talked a lot about relationships and how it's

really important when she's going to work with somebody to

really get to know them and get to trust them

and have them trust her and build that relationship.

So just to give an idea about sally that's sally on the left there,

the blonde lady with um Tony who used to work in our advising office.

And I like this picture of them because it kind of

shows some of that that relationship in the advertising department.

So the way that Greenleaf describes servant leadership in the North House text,

Um I listed out the 10 steps here and I wanted

to talk a little bit about how sally exemplifies these,

so finding it is important to build relationships.

Um she also talked about really listening

to people first and taking actions second.

She talked about showing empathy for people who might be feeling freaked out

by a change or need some extra support and facilitating conversations around that.

Um and also trying to see the bigger context.

Um But I thought it was really interesting that um

she talked about how the one of the most important things

was that she and jest her co chair were able to

meet outside of the bigger group and come up

with some recommendations to bring to the group.

So to me that spoke to the conceptualization the foresight and

the stewardship where they weren't just coming in and saying like,

okay, it's up to all of us to figure it out.

They were actually stewarding the rest of the group along

with them to kind of come to the change together.

So

that's some of the overview of how we

implemented advising notes at Monroe Community College.

Thanks

EDU-715 Rampe-Eggleston

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