In Anglo-Saxon literature, we find warring tribes, mead-hall intrigue, glorious battles, and even an occasional monster or two. Sometimes, when wars became too expensive, tribal leaders would marry off their daughters or sisters to leaders of enemy tribes in the hope of “weaving” peace. These women, known as peaceweavers, had a “seat at the table,” where they could pass around drink cups, charm warriors, and take the king to bed. Peacweaving just didn’t work. These women saw their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers killed by each other’s hands. The peaceweaver was a vulnerable pawn with little to no value of her own. Glory was valued, and when short-term victories rather than long-term planning captures the poets’ “headlines,” well, let’s just say, the Anglo-Saxons were defeated once and for all in 1066. Political leaders have recently determined that community colleges are fields where glory can be won. Consequently, our faculty are rarely consulted when broad-sweeping educational reform is proposed or imposed upon us. Even if we are, it is too often for the purpose of achieving “buy-in.” It is tempting to vie for that seat at the table at any cost, but the Faculty Council cannot be the peaceweavers! If SUNY’s community colleges are going to continue to be credible options for all students

who wish to create better choices for themselves, their families, and their communities, the Faculty Council needs to have much more than a seat at the table. Our faculty need to be able to create sustainable academic sites of discovery that will inform our farmers, warriors, poets, scientists, and future leaders. We are tired and poor. So what! Through organization, commitment, communication, and a sustainable infrastructure, we can put forth a vision that is academically sound, achievable, and relevant. The Faculty Council Matters. It must. You must. The community college faculty must! Let’s work together to save our colleges from those who simply see us as a means to an end. We are the faculty! Tina Good, Ph.D. President Faculty Council of Community Colleges

Letter from the president

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“We are not peaceweavers!” says Faculty Council President Tina Good.

1 Letter from the president 2 K-12 partnerships 3 Seamless transfer 4 Moeckel’s Matters

5 Performance-based funding 6 Distinguished Service Award 7 Meet Renee Lathrop 8 News from the delegates

In this issue

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Faculty Council Matters Spring 2013 page 2

By Johanna Duncan-Poitier SUNY Senior Vice Chancellor for Community Colleges and the Education Pipeline SUNY's Office of the Education Pipeline was awarded $3.5 million in Race to the Top (RTTT) funds last summer by the New York State Education Department to develop and implement a comprehensive teacher education initiative with SUNY faculty. The goal of this initiative is to engage higher education faculty in the renewal of teacher and school leader preparation. From the earliest stages of development, we have taken every effort to ensure that this work is designed and driven by the needs and expectations of our SUNY faculty.

As part of SUNY’s work to strengthen the education pipeline, a major convening was held in November 2012 to formally launch the SUNY Teacher and Leader Education Network (S-TEN) in Albany. Chancellor Nancy Zimpher provided a keynote address and featured speakers included Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, Stanford University; Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents; and John B. King, commissioner of education. In addition, faculty leaders in teacher and school leader education highlighted best practices and examples of work underway across SUNY. Each of SUNY’s 22 campus locations with teacher and education leader programs has convened a Campus Teacher Education Network (C-TEN)

team. The C-TENs each comprise 7 to 12 members, including faculty from across the sectors, PreK-12 p r i n c ip a l s a n d t e a c h e r s , superintendents, and other partners. The campus-based teams will be dedicated to renewing the preparation of teachers and school leaders to effect change in student outcomes in their regions.

The C-TENs are convening a professional development series this spring. The sessions will focus on four key topic areas: 1) common core standards; 2) clinically rich teacher and leader preparation; 3) performance assessments; and 4) data driven instruction. Next steps in implementing the teacher education initiative will include: 1) an Online Resource Center to support activities relating to the systematic vetting, archiving, retrieving and dissemination of online educational resources,

webinars, and online courses; 2) grants to support Faculty-Led Regional P-20 Collaborative Projects; 3) grants for Campus-Based Clinically-Rich Practices Implementation Projects for activities such as comprehensive coaching models, lesson studies, grand rounds approach, and assessment centers; 4) regional Centers of Pedagogy to support activities relating to communities of practice, field practices for rural and urban education, and other areas of study, as needed. The vision for this initiative is that by fall 2014, SUNY will have established a network of institutions with the common purpose of renew al and improvement of the preparation of teachers and educational leaders in New York State.

Introducing the new SUNY Teacher and Leader Education Network (S-TEN)

April 4 Teacher and Leader Performance Assessments including the edTPA examination, the revised School Building Leader Performance Assessment, and the new NYS Teacher Certification examinations.

April 23 Annual Professional Performance Review and Data Driven Instruction Locations to be announced. For mor e info rmatio n, emai l STEN@suny.edu.

Upcoming C-TEN convenings

Duncan-Poitier urges faculty to attend one of the upcoming teacher education workshops.

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By Tina Good, Ph.D. President, FCCC Last week I was at the AAC&U conference on general education and assessment. While there, I heard wonderful tales of how new and coherent programs of study had been developed at various institutions. The keynote speakers spoke about their institutions who apparently did not struggle with the student transfer issues that we do in SUNY. They built programs that integrated knowledge through co-curricular and curricular activities. Transfer was rarely, if ever, mentioned by these speakers. Perhaps the Queen of Hearts yells “off with their heads” if transfer is even suggested. How nice it must be to build a curriculum with the assumption that the students within that program will begin and end their associate or baccalaureate learning experiences at the same institution. I guess. I certainly wouldn’t know. The truth is, students today are swirling around from institution to institution to institution and program to program to program while we, as faculty, are trying to hold on to old traditions of coherent and autonomous programs. Old paradigms aren’t working but we haven’t found the paradigms yet that will assure academic integrity or even the survival of higher education as we know it or at least want to know it. To quote another Wonderland adventurer, "How puzzling all these changes are." So the very worst has happened. A paradigm has been imposed upon us that seeks to recognize the realities of student transfer patterns

while honoring traditional value systems that have historically subordinated community colleges, their faculty, and their students. In the name of “what’s best for our students,” the habit of dialogue among the faculty across the sectors that was developing only a few short years ago has been replaced by the privileging of the last two years of study in a baccalaureate degree. Instead of dialoging with each other as faculty, we must now dialog with the SUNY Provost’s office in order to convince our reviewers that the first two years of study will meet the needs of the last two years—nothing more, nothing less. Open SUNY, early college high schools, concurrent enrollment, reverse transfer and cross registration are just further signs that the model of the small liberal arts college where students begin and end their education experiences is just not a workable model anymore. Maybe thinking about coherence and autonomy on

a system level is the answer and maybe it’s not, but once faculty either surrender or are forced to surrender their purview over curriculum and standards, once dialog is curtailed among the faculty, once we allow the subordination of one group to meet the needs of another group, one has to wonder, just how good will this be for our students. We've got to find our way out of this Wonderland.

The Wonderland of SUNY Seamless Transfer

Faculty Council of Community Colleges State University Plaza

Albany, NY 12246 518.320.1651

http://www.fccc.suny.edu

Volume 1 ● Issue 2

Leanne Warshauer………….………..Editor warshal@sunysuffolk.edu

“Perhaps the Queen of

Hearts yells ‘off with their

heads’ if transfer is even

suggested.”

-- Tina Good

Faculty Council Matters Spring 2013 page 4

By Deborah L. Moeckel, Ph.D. SUNY Assistant Provost for Community College Education The legal source of authorization for accreditation activities is the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA). This legislation has many academic implications tied to accreditation in that all of our institutions have to demonstrate compliance with the regulations as part of the accreditation process. The federal government wants to be certain that the funding for federal financial aid provides value for money. For some reason, the argument that “we’re good because we say so” works about as well with the government as non-evidence based arguments work in our classes. Many of the HEOA requirements have already had an implementation deadline. College bookstores, for example, must now make textbook information available well in advance of the start of classes so that students can shop for best values. Other HEOA requirements taking effect in the past year or two involve making institutional information available to potential students, such as retention rates and employment of graduates, among others. The report, “Information Required to Be Disclosed under Higher Education Act of 1965,”* gives good information about meeting these requirements. If you’re not catatonic yet, you may be interested to know that

the portions of the HEOA which have most recently had an impact on accreditation activities, and for which Middle States is assessing as of spring 2013, affect four areas in particular: distance education, transfer of credit, the Title IV student loan default rate, and the credit hour. Middle States visiting teams have been instructed to evaluate institutions for compliance to the HEOA requirements in those four areas specifically. Here’s the gist: Distance Education Institutions have to provide evidence that the students taking online courses are the ones actually doing the work. Generally this can be managed by secure login procedures.

Transfer of Credit Institutions have to provide written policies and procedures for determining whether and how credits from other institutions are accepted. SUNY’s new seamless transfer policy may be useful here. The policies and procedures must be publically disclosed (usually on your websites or in your catalogs), and they must also specify which offices are responsible for final determination of granting transfer credit. Additionally, a “published and accessible list” of articulation agreements must be provided. I also anticipate that, given the current developments in online learning, institutional policy regarding granting of credit from assessment of prior learning, especially with regard to MOOCs, will be necessary.

Title IV Cohort Default Rate The rate at which students default on their student loans has an impact on the institution, and there are federally established limits on these rates. If the limits are exceeded for a certain period of time, the institution can lose its authority to administer federal financial aid. This is one of the reasons why the completion and success agenda is so important (other than the obvious one, that completion is good for students). Students who complete are generally less likely to default on their loans, and institutions which don’t exceed the default rate limits have a better chance of survival. SUNY has been doing considerable work in this area with chief enrollment officers, supporting campus efforts to keep default rates low.

Credit Hour Saving the best (and most applicable to faculty) for last: The regulations state that Middle States “must conduct an effective review and evaluation of the reliability and accuracy of the institution’s assignment of credit hours” 34 CFR 602.24(f).

Moeckel’s Matters What in the world is the HEOA and why should I care?

SUNY Assistant Provost for Community College Education Deborah Moeckel.

Continued on page 7

Faculty Council Matters Spring 2013 page 5

By Michael Delaney Chair, Communication and Professional Development Committee, FCCC Recently, a friend and colleague at Erie described to me how pleased she is with her current American Labor History class. The students, she reports, are really starting to “get” it. They are drawing parallels and connections between their own lives, the events of recent years, and the stories of the recent past which make up this course. They are taking positions, arguing, getting excited, and truly questioning and reasoning. Many of these students are graduates of inner city high schools and are thought to be among the most poorly prepared for college work. And of course I said to her, “Gee, what a waste of time! How is any of this going to help them get jobs?” I am lying to you. None of us would say that. What I said was, “Wow. That’s great! I envy you. That’s what we are all here for, right?” I’m sure I don’t need to make my point more explicit, but I am going to: education is a different and more powerful thing than job preparation, although the two things are compatible, and the goals of education go far beyond the immediate needs of the economy and our students’ economic futures, as crucial as they are. We’ve all heard the arguments from both the academic and business sides that a liberal education is the best career preparation: most employers are asking for soft, liberal arts skills from their employees; changing job markets and

changing technologies make specific job skills rapidly obsolete, and so on. As difficult as it is to measure success in career-oriented programs whose main goal is to get students jobs, measuring the effectiveness of education on its own terms is far harder. Education’s purpose is to transform lives and communities, not just earning potentials, although that can be a nice side effect. But the mechanisms of real learning are still mysterious, and meaningfully measuring student learning is still somewhat beyond our powers, even though there are good and important things which we can measure. The only reason I am stating things which are obvious to teachers is that they are not obvious to policy makers, business leaders, or the non-teaching public. With the recent introduction of a performance-based funding

component, however small, into Governor Cuomo’s proposed budget for community college funding, following the lead of 16 states, with 19 others considering such measures, I think it is time to examine not only the difficulty of defining success in our programs, but also to criticize the very idea of rewarding “success” and punishing “failure” as an appropriate way to fund any portion of a system of public education. I also think it is time to examine the reasons for the failures of the public school reform movement, since financial incentives and punishments have been an integral part of that movement’s strategies. Just to be clear, I wholeheartedly support 1) accountability, 2) efforts to define and measure success, and 3) continuous improvement. I support these things always and everywhere, not just in publicly-funded education. The fact that no responsible person can argue against these ideas has made the school reform and assessment/accountability movements difficult to critique. As an introduction to the public school reform movement and its thinking, I highly recommend Diane Ravitch’s “The Death and Life of the Great American Education System.” The movement’s strategies have been based on a number of mistaken assumptions, in my opinion. First, that the public schools are collectively a failure. Second, that the performance (or lack thereof) of individual teachers is the fundamental reason for this failure. Third, that teachers themselves cannot solve the problem collectively – that the

Performance-based funding fails to empower

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collective voice of teachers (in this case, teachers’ unions) impedes resolution. Fourth, that the introduction of competitive market forces in the form of charter schools and vouchers, and of financial incentives for both individual teachers (merit pay) and schools will improve educational performance (it hasn’t). Within this movement, teachers are viewed as employees rather than professionals, who need to be managed properly to improve their performance, not as people whose expertise should influence policy. The model is old-style industrial corporate, not even reflecting the most progressive practices in corporate management, where collaboration and innovation are emphasized, organizational hierarchies are flattened, and leadership and governance functions are shared. In reading about this movement, I am certain that its adherents comprise many people who sincerely want to improve public education, but who have accepted a rather simplistic business model of the whole enterprise. At one time, Ravitch was one of these people. However, I detect a significant strain in the movement which I believe is motivated by hostility toward public spending and taxation, hostility to labor unions or anything which challenges the prerequisites of management, a desire for greater control (this is always a fundamental motivation, even when it makes things worse) or a desire for more privatization of public institutions of all sorts. We have several different models of accountability and improvement

operating here. As college faculty, we have traditions of professionalism, academic freedom, and shared governance, even if these things are being eroded in some of our institutions: a less hierarchical and more democratic and collaborative model of decision making than the top-down approach. K-12 teachers have never had these things. The reform movement’s strategies have been top-down and based on perhaps inappropriate models of competition and financial incentives. Large scale top-down reforms in American education have a long history of being ineffective, but they continue to crop up anyway, perhaps because they are simple to implement and easier for policy makers and the public to understand than more locally controlled and innovative measures which engage teachers directly. Everything has been tried to improve U.S. public K–12 education except the one thing that is most likely to work: emp ow er ing t eacher s as professionals to work together c o l l ab o r at i v e l y t o s o lv e educational problems innovatively. However, most public schools at this time lack the structures or the culture to make this happen. We, or at least many of us, still possess those structures and culture. We need to demonstrate that the local, faculty-driven approach works and the large scale, top-down approach doesn’t, but we also need more discussion and a better definition of what success really means. As I pointed out about the public school reform movement, success may not always be the point.

Performance-based Continued from page 5

By Leanne Warshauer, Ph.D. Press Officer, FCCC Dr. Dustin Swanger, president of Fulton-Montgomery Community College, is this year’s recipient of the Faculty Council’s Distinguished Service Award. Swanger is the New York Community College Association of Presidents (NYCCAP) liaison to the Faculty Council and has been an outspoken proponent of shared governance. When he arrived at Fulton-Montgomery in 2006, the college was on warning from Middle States. One of the accrediting body’s recommendations was a more inclusive model of shared governance.

Fulton-Montgomery president receives Faculty Council’s Distinguished Service Award

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Faculty Council Matters Spring 2013 page 7

Evaluation teams are to verify that there are written policies and procedures for assigning credit hours to all types of courses and activities. SUNY policy may be used to satisfy this expectation. Evidence must be provided that the policies are applied consistently across all institutional offerings, regardless of location or modality (including labs, internships, dual enrollment, online, hybrid etc.). Stay tuned for more exciting and pertinent information in the next newsletter. If there are certain topics which you would especially like to see addressed, please let

me know. If you want to know more about the HEOA and Middle States accreditation requirements for HEOA compliance, you can access their publication Verification of Compliance with Accreditation-Relevant Federal Regulations.

Moeckel’s Matters Continued from page 4

Delegates Matter

By Eileen Abrahams Vice President, FCCC Renee Lathrop, professor of physics at Dutchess Community College, is one of the Faculty Council’s extraordinary delegates.

Since joining the Council, Lathrop has worked tirelessly on the Academic Affairs Committee, where last year she took the lead on the committee’s general education survey. She was also key to its efforts to craft a timely response to the seamless transfer resolution. Art Lundahl, chair of the committee, attests to Lathrop’s consummate professionalism: “During our plenaries, she's always present, prompt for meetings, attentive to conversation and detail, often summarizing our deliberations and offering suggestions for further debate as the meeting unfolds.”

Lathrop said she was raised to believe that one person’s voice does make a difference. “When I was in high school, my graduating class was responsible for petitioning the school board for a new fine arts theater to be added to our high school,” she recalled. “It took four years of going to

board meetings, making signs, and getting signatures but we were able to educate enough people that the need was present, that it would not go to waste, and that it would be a benefit to several schools in the area.”

But Lathrop realizes that not every member of a campus community is instilled with like confidence, and she aims to change the hearts and minds of these colleagues. “I am really passionate about making sure that faculty and staff on my campus feel like they have a voice,” Lathrop said. “Campuses that do not have leaders that respect faculty voices or fail to bring faculty and staff to the table on academic issues will never have a fully empowered campus.”

She is clearly one such leader.

Meet Renee Lathrop, Dutchess Community College

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"President Swanger has been a steadfast and sincere advocate of shared governance,” said Robert Jones, chair of Fulton-Montgomery’s college senate. “Since coming to the college, he has nurtured our current model of governance and

Swanger Continued from page 6

has listened to the college community. Rather than being an acquiescent onlooker , President Swanger worked with our faculty and staff to bring the college into compliance with Middle States while at the same time empowering our college senate to be a real vehicle for college-wide policy and decision-making." "I know that all of my colleagues in NYCCAP congratulate the Faculty Council on its recognition of our colleague Dusty Swanger,” said Cliff Wood, president of NYCCAP. “He is a terrific administrator and also an educator who respects and supports faculty and teaching and learning,"

Faculty Council Matters Spring 2013 page 8

Ken Vennette, Fulton-Montgomery Community College and Melanie Klein, Duchess Community College

Ken and Melanie, who met at the Fall 2012 Plenary, got engaged and are planning to wed in June. Lee D. Susice, North Country Community College Lee married Stacey Leigh Mascia on 12/12/12. Christine Fogal, Monroe Community College Christine received a promotion to associate professor.

Matthew Smith, Sullivan Community College After a long vacancy, Sullivan has a new president: Dr. Karin Hilgersom. Iris Cook, Westchester Community College Iris was honored at a luncheon as part of Women's History Month at her college. The theme was “Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics." SUNY Distinguished Award recipients At a ceremony in May the community colleges will be honored by the inclusion of eight new members of the Distinguished Academy. They are: Distinguished Teaching Professor: Joanna Chrzanowski, Jefferson Community College

Elizabeth Gaffney, Westchester Community College Martin Lecker, Rockland Community College Distinguished Service Professor: Steven Keeler, Cayuga Community College Mary Beth Orrange, Erie Community College Ray Petersen, Jefferson Community College and FCCC delegate Bill Baker, Rockland Community College Frances Battisti, Broome Community College

Good news from the delegates

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By Leanne Warshauer, Ph.D. Press Officer, FCCC Faculty Council President Tina Good introduced Chairman H. Carl McCall at this year’s State of SUNY address. Good described McCall as a person who had transformed her life and said there is “no greater advocate for public education.” She also spoke briefly about the role of community colleges in the future. “. . . The conversations about how community colleges can help put people back to work are only increasing. Helping students explore possible pathways to meaningful careers and ethical lives of wonder, compassion, tolerance, and empowerment is, after all, what we do as educators.”

Faculty Council president opens the State of SUNY address