Right now, HR must be crazy busy. I know this because when school starts in the fall there is always a long, long line of new employees who get introduced by our college president and are given lime-green "Tech-Awesome" t-shirts at the annual Welcome Back Breakfast. The new folks have to come from somewhere.
Year after year, our hiring process has been in good hands: my friends in HR are nothing if not methodical. They believe, like self-help author Robert Collier, that success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. With little fanfare or recognition, HR associates help departments hire staff while at the same time they keep and manage job descriptions, stay current on employment law and practice, update and publicize new term salary and benefit packages, rule on personnel questions and have dozens of other "duties as assigned" that a non-HR person like me sleeps better not knowing about.
But hiring those newbies: that's the future of our institution, that's where HR makes its mark. The school relies on qualified, motivated, creative, honest, trustworthy and hard-working employees to put flesh and blood onto the strategic scaffolding built by leadership-conducted listening sessions. An excellent HR department is able to consistently find quality people to fill empty slots across the college caused by retirements, reassignments, resignations and new programs
Last year, for example, my department had to replace two long-time faculty members who retired. With the help of HR, the two positions were posted, electronic applications and resumes were collected and interviews scheduled. Then HR helped write the interview questions and chaired the interview panel to make sure we didn't ask something dumb (and illegal). After we selected our top candidates, HR checked references, made offers, answered questions and arranged for start dates and training. We ended up with two excellent new teammates. This process takes a lot of time. Now, multiply this process times 50, 60 or 100 times for departments across the school. That's my working definition of a crazy busy summer.
If I were charged with building a college from scratch, I would start by hiring a top notch HR department like the one we have. Without it, all the data collection, strategic plans, creative curriculum, guidelines and hopes would collapse under its own non-implemented dead weight. You need a roster of top people to create, manage and maintain excellence. And, I'm not just talking about hiring brilliant and inspirational faculty -- though we have a lot of them. Leadership, support and technical staff also need to be the best in order to continue to move ahead as a Leader College. Those Tech-Awesome t-shirts need to find happy new hands every August.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Sunday, June 21, 2015
After 35 years, Summa Cum Book Club
This week, our book club ended its year with a discussion of the venerable Chinese classic, Tao Te Ching (2012), in an excellent translation by Derek Lin. The 2500 year-old book of lessons was an unlikely though not unusual choice for us. Through 35 years, club members have mixed classics with the contemporary. We have curious and eclectic tastes.
The book club, dubbed the Summa Book Club by founding members who translated the word tongue-in-cheek from Latin to mean the "highest," begins with a summer potluck at which we choose the dates and books for our monthly Monday meetings. A couple or single (we have both) takes turns hosting the group once or twice (September to June) and prepares a short discussion along within light munchies, wine, beer and soda. It's been a good group to be a part of. My wife and I, late-comers joining in 1992, have nurtured lasting friendships formed through commonly read pages and chapters. You really get to know someone when you hear them passionately debate character motives in The Merchant of Venice.
The advantage of a regular book club is it pressures (in a nice way) members to read selections that we would not normally read (Ulysses by James Joyce springs to mind). We trust the literary judgement of fellow members -- most of the time (everyone agrees The Aquarian Conspiracy was an epic miss; the wisdom of Mary, Queen of Scots is still debated ten years later). We read the book in time for the meeting because we don't want to diss the selections of other members, and we all like to contribute -- not a lot of shy people in this group.
And, since Green Bay is home to a number of private and public colleges, we have access to outside speakers who are more than happy to talk with an engaged, reasonably intelligent group of readers about a favorite subject and author. Just this past January, for example, we invited a local retired educator who is a leader in the international Dietrich Bonhoeffer organization to talk about the Eric Metaxis biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2010). It's good to nurture local literary talent as well as friendships.
My wife and I often contribute science fiction book recommendations to the group, one of our particular interests, and successfully recommended Philip K. Dick's, Man in the High Castle, during our first hosted discussion in January of 1993. Our other choices have ranged from On Writing by Stephen King, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote to Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putman. I can recall these books because one of our members, a diligent, retired and venerable newspaper editor, keeps an historical record of our books and dates. After twenty or thirty years, the list is useful so we don't repeat ourselves -- "My Antonia? No, we read that in 2004." The group tends toward non-fiction (Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankel) and biographies (An American Caesar by William Manchester), religious (Paradise Lost by John Milton) and literary (Flannery O'Connor short stories). Popular fiction is always popular such as The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and Cold Mountain by Charles Fraser. Other books are recommended on a whim (The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and You Only Grow Old Once by Dr. Seuss). They are all worthy.
Now that the 2014-2015 books have been shelved, it's time to select books for the next year. Already, we have a book bag and Kindle list filled with selections that we will bring to the potluck and will narrow them down to one or two recommendations after seeing the choices of other members. And, since a large percentage of group are journalism or English majors, we all think it is important that a summa booklist of a Summa Book Club has book titles representing all 26 letters of the alphabet. We are missing a few letters. So if you know of books that start with the letters "Q", "V" and "X", please pass along the titles. The potluck is in August.
The book club, dubbed the Summa Book Club by founding members who translated the word tongue-in-cheek from Latin to mean the "highest," begins with a summer potluck at which we choose the dates and books for our monthly Monday meetings. A couple or single (we have both) takes turns hosting the group once or twice (September to June) and prepares a short discussion along within light munchies, wine, beer and soda. It's been a good group to be a part of. My wife and I, late-comers joining in 1992, have nurtured lasting friendships formed through commonly read pages and chapters. You really get to know someone when you hear them passionately debate character motives in The Merchant of Venice.
The advantage of a regular book club is it pressures (in a nice way) members to read selections that we would not normally read (Ulysses by James Joyce springs to mind). We trust the literary judgement of fellow members -- most of the time (everyone agrees The Aquarian Conspiracy was an epic miss; the wisdom of Mary, Queen of Scots is still debated ten years later). We read the book in time for the meeting because we don't want to diss the selections of other members, and we all like to contribute -- not a lot of shy people in this group.
And, since Green Bay is home to a number of private and public colleges, we have access to outside speakers who are more than happy to talk with an engaged, reasonably intelligent group of readers about a favorite subject and author. Just this past January, for example, we invited a local retired educator who is a leader in the international Dietrich Bonhoeffer organization to talk about the Eric Metaxis biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2010). It's good to nurture local literary talent as well as friendships.
My wife and I often contribute science fiction book recommendations to the group, one of our particular interests, and successfully recommended Philip K. Dick's, Man in the High Castle, during our first hosted discussion in January of 1993. Our other choices have ranged from On Writing by Stephen King, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote to Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putman. I can recall these books because one of our members, a diligent, retired and venerable newspaper editor, keeps an historical record of our books and dates. After twenty or thirty years, the list is useful so we don't repeat ourselves -- "My Antonia? No, we read that in 2004." The group tends toward non-fiction (Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankel) and biographies (An American Caesar by William Manchester), religious (Paradise Lost by John Milton) and literary (Flannery O'Connor short stories). Popular fiction is always popular such as The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and Cold Mountain by Charles Fraser. Other books are recommended on a whim (The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and You Only Grow Old Once by Dr. Seuss). They are all worthy.
Now that the 2014-2015 books have been shelved, it's time to select books for the next year. Already, we have a book bag and Kindle list filled with selections that we will bring to the potluck and will narrow them down to one or two recommendations after seeing the choices of other members. And, since a large percentage of group are journalism or English majors, we all think it is important that a summa booklist of a Summa Book Club has book titles representing all 26 letters of the alphabet. We are missing a few letters. So if you know of books that start with the letters "Q", "V" and "X", please pass along the titles. The potluck is in August.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
GED 2015 Graduation: It Makes a Difference
I was uneasy about the GED graduation last week. Last year, more than 400 GED and HSED students completed the credential and almost 50 attended the June celebration. That graduate to stage ratio is typical for us. Ten to fifteen percent of our students usually take the time to return to cross the stage in cap and gown and with big, big smiles on their faces. Other graduates have moved on with their lives.
The graduating class last year was impressive because it included the final graduates of the pre-GED 2014 era added to those who had just completed the new GED set of tests. Since then, the number of GED students has dropped not just with us but in GED classroom across the country. States report that successful completers (those who have passed all four new GED tests) are only eight percent of the totals from earlier years. Our school has done better than most, we are at 20-25 percent of previous years, but we are still down, a lot.
As we prepped for this year's GED graduation, an initial count listed only four or five students out of more than 90 graduates had ordered caps and gowns for the ceremony. So rather than have 40-50 graduates crowd the commons, like last year, we would have only a fraction of that number. There might be more dignitaries on the stage than graduates in the seats -- not a good promotion for our program.
I thought we might downsize the ceremony to make the drop in numbers less conspicuous. Maybe we could have grads lunch with the President and Vice-President of Learning at the college instead. Maybe we could use a large lecture room for the ceremony instead of the more public commons area where it was usually held. Maybe we skip the ceremony entirely this year. Still a decision was made by leadership to carry on with the ceremony exactly as it had been done in the past. As I walked down the stairs to the assembly area, I was worried.
I shouldn't have been. I should have been thinking about starfish.
Every year, new employees are initiated to the culture of our college through the inspirational story by Loren Eisley about the starfish, the girl and the beach walker. One version goes like this:
An old man was walking on the beach one morning after a storm. In the distance, he could see someone moving like a dancer. As he came closer, he saw that it was a young woman picking up starfish and gently throwing them into the ocean.
“Young lady, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”
“The sun is up, and the tide is going out, and if I do not throw them in they will die, “she said.
“But young lady, do you not realize that there are many miles of beach and thousands of starfish? You cannot possible make a difference.”
The young lady listened politely, then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea.
“It made a difference for that one."
I did stop worrying when I saw a group of three of my HSED students, Josh, Kay-Lynn and Indigo, who I had worked with all spring -- I was pleased to see all of them, and their families. These three stuck together in the classroom, urged each other on and continued their fellowship right up to the graduation stage. Each of them overcame personal and academic obstacles to make it to this night. The ceremony made a difference to them.
Other GED and HSED graduates were milling about as in any other year: checking in, taking their robes out of the plastic bags, and using bobby pins to keep the mortar board (hat) on straight. Rather than worry about the number of fellow graduates around them (fifteen did attend the ceremony), their biggest worry of the night was whether the tassel should be on the right side or the left as they marched in (right side at first, graduation is official when the tassel is moved to the left).
At 6 p.m., the NWTC band (led by our college president, Dr. Jeff Rafn) started "Pomp and Circumstance" and the procession moved from the side hall way to the commons area. Just as in other years, the audience was a mix of young and old, bursting with pride as they watched their special graduates parade in for the GED or HSED credential. The student speaker was inspirational. Awarding the diplomas and the handshakes brought forth cheers and shouts for the graduates. No one noticed that the crowd was smaller than last year. The smiles, tears, cheers, cell phone photos and celebratory balloons, flowers and stuffed toys were focused on the accomplishments at hand and huge step that the graduates had made to complete their high school credential. This would make a difference.
Sometimes, I get too caught up in the business of education: what our numbers are, how can we increase our success rate, did we meet grant requirements, which texts need to be matched with what curriculum. Sometimes, I lose track of what I am really hired to do. That is to make a difference to as many of our students as I can. While I and the rest of my team work hard to be insanely successful in the work we do, we realize deep-down that we can't help everyone. What we can do is make a difference to those students on our section of the beach. I need to remember to take the time to celebrate for them and for myself.
The graduating class last year was impressive because it included the final graduates of the pre-GED 2014 era added to those who had just completed the new GED set of tests. Since then, the number of GED students has dropped not just with us but in GED classroom across the country. States report that successful completers (those who have passed all four new GED tests) are only eight percent of the totals from earlier years. Our school has done better than most, we are at 20-25 percent of previous years, but we are still down, a lot.
As we prepped for this year's GED graduation, an initial count listed only four or five students out of more than 90 graduates had ordered caps and gowns for the ceremony. So rather than have 40-50 graduates crowd the commons, like last year, we would have only a fraction of that number. There might be more dignitaries on the stage than graduates in the seats -- not a good promotion for our program.
I thought we might downsize the ceremony to make the drop in numbers less conspicuous. Maybe we could have grads lunch with the President and Vice-President of Learning at the college instead. Maybe we could use a large lecture room for the ceremony instead of the more public commons area where it was usually held. Maybe we skip the ceremony entirely this year. Still a decision was made by leadership to carry on with the ceremony exactly as it had been done in the past. As I walked down the stairs to the assembly area, I was worried.
I shouldn't have been. I should have been thinking about starfish.
Every year, new employees are initiated to the culture of our college through the inspirational story by Loren Eisley about the starfish, the girl and the beach walker. One version goes like this:
An old man was walking on the beach one morning after a storm. In the distance, he could see someone moving like a dancer. As he came closer, he saw that it was a young woman picking up starfish and gently throwing them into the ocean.
“Young lady, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”
“The sun is up, and the tide is going out, and if I do not throw them in they will die, “she said.
“But young lady, do you not realize that there are many miles of beach and thousands of starfish? You cannot possible make a difference.”
The young lady listened politely, then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea.
“It made a difference for that one."
I did stop worrying when I saw a group of three of my HSED students, Josh, Kay-Lynn and Indigo, who I had worked with all spring -- I was pleased to see all of them, and their families. These three stuck together in the classroom, urged each other on and continued their fellowship right up to the graduation stage. Each of them overcame personal and academic obstacles to make it to this night. The ceremony made a difference to them.
Other GED and HSED graduates were milling about as in any other year: checking in, taking their robes out of the plastic bags, and using bobby pins to keep the mortar board (hat) on straight. Rather than worry about the number of fellow graduates around them (fifteen did attend the ceremony), their biggest worry of the night was whether the tassel should be on the right side or the left as they marched in (right side at first, graduation is official when the tassel is moved to the left).
At 6 p.m., the NWTC band (led by our college president, Dr. Jeff Rafn) started "Pomp and Circumstance" and the procession moved from the side hall way to the commons area. Just as in other years, the audience was a mix of young and old, bursting with pride as they watched their special graduates parade in for the GED or HSED credential. The student speaker was inspirational. Awarding the diplomas and the handshakes brought forth cheers and shouts for the graduates. No one noticed that the crowd was smaller than last year. The smiles, tears, cheers, cell phone photos and celebratory balloons, flowers and stuffed toys were focused on the accomplishments at hand and huge step that the graduates had made to complete their high school credential. This would make a difference.
Sometimes, I get too caught up in the business of education: what our numbers are, how can we increase our success rate, did we meet grant requirements, which texts need to be matched with what curriculum. Sometimes, I lose track of what I am really hired to do. That is to make a difference to as many of our students as I can. While I and the rest of my team work hard to be insanely successful in the work we do, we realize deep-down that we can't help everyone. What we can do is make a difference to those students on our section of the beach. I need to remember to take the time to celebrate for them and for myself.
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