Environmental Scan Part II: the Dark Ages to the Enlightened Age

In my last post, I began an environmental scan, starting with NSCC as an institution; and in particular with the college's mission, vision and values as a lens through which I can evaluate best practices and to guide my own development and alignment with that mission. In this post, I would like to begin a scan of the department I work in - Academic Quality Assurance & Program Development - my contributions to its development and my new management role.

The Dark Ages - those of us who worked in this area of NSCC through the years just prior to the creation of the Academic Quality Assurance & Program Development division (AQA&PD), would understand what I mean by the dark ages. Overall leadership of Academic Services in general was less-than-stellar, but the area of curriculum management was particularly deficient. Alternating between periods of micromanagement and the wild, wild west, there was no consistency, alignment, or clarity of the departmental mission. Plenty of work was done - most of which was generally ignored by everyone, even those who sponsored major academic projects. Great ideas came...and went. Projects - when they didn't completely fail mid-course - resulted in recommendations, policies, processes and so on that were never acted on or implemented. Communications were non-existent and morale in the unit was accordingly dismal.

One abiding consistency was the understanding that curriculum consultants (who reported to School Deans) were responsible for maintaining the curriculum and bringing curriculum to an increasingly quality-driven level. For the most part, curriculum consultants and academic chairs ran the faculty working groups and that activity was focused on defining and capturing the curriculum - in particular the program and course outcomes. Meanwhile, Program Review and Renewal was generally ineffective and scarcely used, with the exception of those programs which had external review and accreditation. It was also considered a specialized function and so (for any major reviews outside of those accreditations) I was most often the one who conducted them.

The Enlightened Age - With the creation of a department of Academic Quality Assurance & Program Development in 2013, much of that experience has been erased and almost everything about the work of the curriculum consultant changed with the exception of the one constant noted above - that consultants are still responsible to facilitate the maintenance of curriculum and to elevate the quality of that documentation. Under the new structure, consultants are detached from direct reporting to Schools and are assigned to a Dean for the new department. Under his direction, Faculty Working Groups are given back to faculty; consultants become change champions and quality process specialists; the function of program review is distributed across all the consultants and this has resulted in the ability to get back to a rigorous and comprehensive calendar of reviews for all programs.

Of particular significance to this blog, the new Dean - recognizing the need to assign unit coordination to an operational manager - created the role for which I was successful in competition (Manager for Program Development). I believe that this is a significant opportunity for me to grow and contribute at a whole new level, and also for the department and the team to benefit from a structure in which the supporting and coordination functions I was providing previously (ad-hoc) now become a more significant part of my official role, while the Dean can spend more time and effort focusing on strategic and policy direction. Win-win!

In my next post, I will begin to go from looking backward to look inward - to my strengths and opportunities for growth - and outward to the expectations of the department and my team.I recently met with my mentor again and we are starting to move towards defining the possible outcomes of our mentorship. Future blog posts will present those outcomes in greater detail. Meanwhile, welcome to the age of enlightenment.

Environmental Scan

I'd like to treat this blog as a sort of ePortfolio journal - allowing a channel for reflection on this new role. As an institution, NSCC has some definite ideas about what portfolio learning is about, and the notion of the environmental scan is one important element. A suggested approach is to look backward, inward, outward, and then forward as an exploration of self and the development of a career or learning plan. I'll start my scan with a look at the development and status of the institution and the department within which I will be managing. 

NSCC is the second-youngest provincial public secondary institution in Canada - formed in the mid-nineties from the aggregation of a network of vocational training institutions across the province of Nova Scotia. The College's first president, Ray Ivany (1995-2005) - now president of Acadia University - recently addressed NSCC's College Leadership Forum providing a rich history lesson on the College's birth and formative years. He recounted that the objective in those first few years was simply to change public perception of adult vocational training from the "Trades School" to the modern Community College. He reinforced the critical connection that NSCC continues to hold with Industry and Community. He also reiterated the contention that he and the other members of last year's One Nova Scotia commission presented in their momentous report "Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Action for Nova Scotians" - that NSCC will be disproportionately called upon to contribute to the initiatives that will turn the Nova Scotia economy around. "This", he said, "is the very validation of the College's mission statement - Building Nova Scotia's economy and quality of life through education and innovation."

Fast forward twenty years from NSCCs initiation: the College is quickly growing up, and hitting maturity at a time when the Province desperately needs it's help to avoid an economic collapse (at least according to Mr. Ivany's commission report). NSCCs plan at the beginning of this century was to leapfrog the rest of the national post-secondary marketplace by adopting best practices of those more established colleges while avoiding all the attendant pitfalls they have experienced. The journey has not been quite that straightforward for NSCC and there are many who still don't get behind the idea of access programming on one hand and innovative applied research on the other. Ray Ivany suggests we stay that unique course and not waiver or give in to those who see "the university as the mature form of a college".

His speech reminded me of a conversation I had with him in 2005. I asked Ray if he thought that NSCC could fully adopt Terry O'Banion's concept of The Learning Centred College. He replied "Stephen, O'Banion doesn't it have it all right - no one has it all right - and even if he did, NSCC must use it's own vision, values, and mission as a lens through which it will interpret those best practices".

My first learning activity as a new manager in this department will be to print out the college's Mission, Vision and Values statements and post it up on my desk so that I can be reminded of what we are trying to achieve, to give context to my part in that mission, and to provide a lens through which I might interpret best practices in management.  

Next post, I will examine the history of the department of Academic Quality Assurance & Program Development, and reflect on my contributions to date in its evolution.