ED477912 2003-03-00 Professional

Development: Leading Organizational

Change in Community Colleges. ERIC

Digest.

ERIC Development Team

www.eric.ed.gov

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Professional Development: Leading Organizational Change in

Community Colleges. ERIC Digest........................................ 1

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: WHAT IS IT?....................... 2

NEW FORMATS FOR DELIVERY........................................... 2

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: A TOOL FOR CHANGE.......... 5

REFERENCES.................................................................. 5

ERIC Identifier: ED477912

Publication Date: 2003-03-00

Author: Stern, Stefanie

Source: ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges Los Angeles CA.

Professional Development: Leading

Organizational Change in Community Colleges.

ERIC Digest.

THIS DIGEST WAS CREATED BY ERIC, THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

INFORMATION CENTER. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ERIC, CONTACT

ED477912 2003-03-00 Professional Development: Leading Organizational Change in

Community Colleges. ERIC Digest.

Page 1 of 6
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During the last few decades, professional development programs at many community

colleges have evolved into dynamic forces creating institutional change by design.

Comprehensive and powerful professional development programs have emerged that

are no longer solely employee-centered outlets for individual improvement.

Contemporary programs typically include all employees, recognizing that classified staff,

counselors, administrators, college leaders, and faculty play significant roles in the

shaping of the organization. Professional development itself focuses on topics specific

to employee classification, but also examines issues facing the college as a whole. New

goals of professional development are twofold: (1) to provide in-service training to all

employee groups in a college, keeping in mind the challenges in reaching all

employees, and (2) to enhance the broader mission and goals of the institution. The

combination of the two is leading to substantive organizational change within community

colleges.

This Digest, drawn from "Enhancing Community Colleges Through Professional

Development" (New Directions for Community Colleges, Winter 2002), reviews the

context for the professional development movement today, describes programs that

have utilized new formats for delivery, and demonstrates the impact professional

development can make in addressing institutional needs.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: WHAT IS IT?

Faced with a constantly changing environment - "an increasingly diverse student body

with varying expectations, learning styles, and service preferences; new and growing

competition; technological advancements; and changing governmental policies and

societal demands" - community colleges have recognized the need to plan and

implement change through professional development (Watts and Hammons, 2002, pp.

5-6). Watts (2002) describes professional development as it emerged three decades

ago as "loose connections of activities" that "when strung together looked fairly

impressive" (p. 1). Watts and Hammons (2002) state that early programs were intended

to support the college in becoming more efficient and effective in a time of increased

public accountability and competition for limited tax dollars. Programs were

employee-centered and focused primarily on faculty. Professional development

programs that survived and thrived through the cuts of the 1980s and through the 1990s

have established legitimacy and identity through their comprehensive and responsive

approaches to developing human resources.

Today, compounding the above issues are anticipated faculty and leadership shortages

as retirement nears for many well-trained personnel. As community colleges face new

political, social, and economic demands on their institutions, new "formats for delivery"

of professional development programs have been adopted.

NEW FORMATS FOR DELIVERY

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Page 2 of 6 ED477912 2003-03-00 Professional Development: Leading Organizational Change in

Community Colleges. ERIC Digest.
Successful professional development programs have become "permanent fixtures"

typically when someone has championed the cause, facilitating the way for support

among a senior-level administrator who allocates the funds, and assigns staff

responsibility for program administration (Watts and Hammons, 2002). Successful

programs are well organized, may be centralized and run by a single office on campus,

occur on a regular basis, and have made professional development part of the job

description of employees. Most importantly, they prove their importance to the success

of the college.

The following examples show some of the different forms professional development can

take and how new delivery formats are working for colleges.

New Faculty Orientation

Between 1999 and 2002, about 35 percent of the faculty retired from St. Louis

Community College, reflecting a nationwide trend in faculty and leadership retirement

that will continue for the next several years. The New Faculty Orientation (NFO)

program at St. Louis Community College, as described by Welch (2002), was created in

1999 to find ways of strengthening the college through its new faculty. The program

consisted of a highly programmed, weeklong orientation before the start of the school

year; a weekly campus activity during the fall to acquaint faculty with resources; and an

instructional skills weekend workshop in the spring or summer. New faculty are paid to

participate in these programs, run primarily by veteran staff and faculty facilitators.

While the NFO program invites new faculty to participate in a yearlong professional

development experience with goals ranging from modeling a learning-centered

environment to encouraging collegiality, the program is also creating outcomes that

benefit the entire college. These include: (1) attracting new faculty with outstanding

credentials; (2) training faculty in using tools to supplement their enthusiasm for

teaching (topics include distance education, classroom assessment, and cooperative

learning); (3) allowing faculty to gain the knowledge and confidence to try new things;

(4) orienting faculty to a multidisciplinary and multidimensional college; (5) building

inter-departmental alliances; and (6) setting the foundation that professional

development and learning methodologies are a lifelong process.

Web-Based Faculty Development

Valencia Community College (Florida) set up an online faculty development program

consisting of face-to-face orientation meeting followed by online sessions, which provide

a syllabus, a set of assignments, ongoing discussion threads, and assessments (Nellis

et al., 2002). Administered using Time-Revealed Scenarios (TRS) software by

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ED477912 2003-03-00 Professional Development: Leading Organizational Change in

Community Colleges. ERIC Digest.

Page 3 of 6
WisdomTools, Inc., the online training sessions facilitate "Teaching in College," a

course in active-learning classroom techniques, student learning assessments, and

other commonly encountered teaching and learning problems in community colleges.

Faculty experience collaborative and problem-based learning through discussion of

ongoing scenarios. Above all, the web-based faculty development delivery system

requires that teachers themselves be active learners, redesign syllabi, share tips, and

apply newly-learned tools to their classrooms and report back to their colleagues during

the duration of the course. The asynchronous online format allows multiple goals to be

met. The online course: (1) reaches faculty who have little time to participate in person,

capturing the participation of part-time and adjunct faculty; (2) provides a rich array of

online resources and activities for faculty; (3) utilizes a self-discovery learning format;

(4) increases interaction between instructors and the faculty development department;

and (5) results in a less intimidating format for part-time and less experienced faculty

with the benefit of linking them to existing resources and encouraging a sense of

inclusiveness.

Comprehensive Programs

The Teaching and Learning Center at College of DuPage (Illinois) has been noted by

Troller (2002) as a place where faculty and staff come together to learn. A centralized

office presents courses and workshops and invites all personnel to participate. Faculty,

administrators, and staff attend the same course offerings, sitting side-by-side during

sessions on diversity, advising, time management, supervision, teaching and learning,

technology, and wellness. Creating a comprehensive professional development

program (one that does not compartmentalize by employee classification) allows for

multiple benefits to the entire institution because it offers: (1) less duplication in courses,

saving time and money, and allowing opportunity for a wider variety of courses; (2) a

unique forum for employee groups who do not interact on a daily basis to share their

views and ideas with each other, build rapport, and collaborate cross-sectionally; (3)

centralized tracking, evaluation, and administration that monitors the quality of activities

and the potential for follow-up programs; and (4) social interaction that results in better

navigation through institutional processes and a greater spirit of cooperation.

Great Teachers to Great College Seminar

Retreats offer another approach to the comprehensive learning environment. For over

30 years, the Great Teachers Seminar (GTS) concept (essentially, a loosely structured

faculty retreat) has provided the opportunity for faculty to come together to "share

successes, identify and solve each other's pedagogical challenges, connect with other

faculty, and recommit themselves to teaching excellence." Bergeron and McHargue

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Page 4 of 6 ED477912 2003-03-00 Professional Development: Leading Organizational Change in

Community Colleges. ERIC Digest.
(2002) have appropriately called this format of professional development "well-facilitated

shoptalk" (p. 75). However, during the 1980s, the GTS began to include other college

constituencies, and during the 1990s this model evolved into the Great College Seminar

where the entire staff was invited to participate. Administrators, faculty, support staff,

and students meet to "discuss collegewide issues, to celebrate, to elaborate on what is

working well, and to identify issues that need attention" (pp. 80-81). These models have

served institutions in becoming learning organizations whose involved participants

strengthen the college.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: A TOOL FOR

CHANGE

Professional development is an effective vehicle for organizational change. Programs

that have matured over the past 30 years into comprehensive and responsive entities

are shifting attention away from job categories toward seeing employees as change

agents within an organizational structure. New formats are reaching many new college

constituencies and are including in their goals the broader aims of the institution.

Professional development has become an entity that really makes a difference.

Colleges and universities have as their mission teaching, research, and public service,

but must also address the task of self-renewal. Active participation in professional

development activities, especially when participants are empowered to relate their role

to making a difference in the college, provides the opportunity for informal leadership

development and ultimately organizational change. Given the role of higher education to

respond to community and societal changes, the need for professional development

programs has been firmly established.

For more information on professional organizations, including national conferences and

other resources, see the National Council for Staff, Program, and Organizational

Development (http://www.ncspod.org/) and the National Institute for Staff and

Organizational Development (http://www.nisod.org/).

REFERENCES

This Digest is drawn from "Enhancing Community Colleges Through Professional

Development." New Directions for Community Colleges, Number 120, edited by Gordon

E. Watts. San Francisco: Josey Bass, Winter 2002.

Bergeron, P. and McHargue, M.. Recent Advantages in Retreats: Adapting the Great

Teachers Seminar Model to Serve an Entire College. (pp. 75-84)

Nellis, P., Hosman, D., King, J.M., and Armstead, C.. Web-Based Faculty Development

Using Time-Revealed Scenarios. (pp. 27-34)

Troller, K. T. The College of DuPage Teaching and Learning Center: A Comprehensive

ERIC Resource Center www.eric.ed.gov

ED477912 2003-03-00 Professional Development: Leading Organizational Change in

Community Colleges. ERIC Digest.

Page 5 of 6
Professional Development Program. (pp. 67-74)

Watts, G. E. Editor's Notes. (pp. 1-4)

Watts, G. E. and Hammons, J. O. Professional Development: Setting the Context. (pp.

5-10)

Welch, G. F. A New Faculty Orientation Program: Building a Core of New Faculty to

Shape the Future of the College. (pp. 11-16)

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This project has been funded at least in part with Federal funds from the U.S.

Department of Education under contract number ED-99-CO-0010. The content of this

publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of

Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations

imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. ERIC Digests are in the public domain and

may be freely reproduced.

University of California, Los Angeles, 3051 Moore Hall, P.O. Box 951521, Los Angeles,

CA 90095

Title: Professional Development: Leading Organizational Change in Community

Colleges. ERIC Digest.

Document Type: Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs)

(071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073);

Available From: ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges. University of California

at Los Angeles, 3051 Moore Hall, P.O. Box 951521, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524. Tel:

310-825-3931. For full text: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/ERIC/eric.html.

Descriptors: Change Strategies, Community Colleges, Distance Education, Faculty

Development, Organizational Change, Orientation, Professional Development,

Seminars, Two Year Colleges, Workshops, World Wide Web

Identifiers: ERIC Digests

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