Creating resources for community college staff.

Abstract

High turnover rates in both faculty and leaders at community colleges mean an influx of new personnel who often require training to acclimate to working in a two-year college. Reported here are the outcomes of a graduate class project to create a professional development tool to help orient new community college employees. The product was the creation of a website reviewing pertinent information regarding community colleges.

Introduction

Shifts in demographics and retirements have resulted in community colleges witnessing high turnovers in the ranks of both the college presidency and in faculty. In 2001, 21% of all community college presidents were new (Corrigan, 2002), whereas in 1993, 33% of all community college faculty were new (Finkelstein, Seal, & Schuster, 1998). The graying of the professorate and college leaders lays the foundation for continued hiring of new employees in the community college sector. Weisman and Vaughan (2001) noted that 79% of sitting community college presidents indicated they anticipated retiring in the next 10 years. Similar predictions are made for the academic side of the institution (Finkelstein, Seal, & Schuster, 1998). While some of these new hires may have experiences within the community college context, others are coming to their positions from outside of higher education (Corrigan, 2002; Finkelstein, Seal, & Schuster, 1998). Given this outsider status, it is important to consider how these new employees come to understand their new work contexts within community colleges. Researchers (Gibson-Harman, Rodriguez, & Haworth, 2002; Watts & Hammons, 2002) have documented the need to provide development opportunities for faculty and professional staff, but do not offer prescriptions on how to accomplish this mandate.

Faculty development practices at two-year institutions have included a number of forms (Grant & Keim, 2002), but in general "lack goals--especially goals that are tied to the institutional mission" (Murray, 2002, p. 91). Murray further argued, "effective faculty development programs have administrative support, are formalized, structured, and goal-directed, make a connection between faculty development and the reward structure, have faculty ownership, and are valued by administrators" (p. 96). Watts and Hammons (2002) challenge that "those newly hired into a community college over the next decade need to be well trained.... and also need to be acclimated to the community college itself' (p. 6).

The information presented in this paper outlines a project created to begin to address the need to provide an understanding of the community college context for new hires. The origins of this project are rooted in a request by a community college president (personal communications D. Burns, January 6, 2004), and supported by the literature, that was fulfilled by students in a graduate course in the Administration of Community Colleges at Central Michigan University. The goal was to create a new employee program that provided a sense of what it means to work at a community college, complete with issues facing community colleges, information on community college students, and a sense of historical location of these institutions within the larger higher education environment.

Project Design