SUNY Oneonta Institutional Planning

3/9 Dialogue Session Notes, Governance

Dialog on Cross-Division Collaboration

March 9

Notes by K Jones

• Would like to see design of co-curricular transcript that helps students track what they're doing and see what others are doing; can combine with micro-credentials to help a student build a career. Need to clearly articulate skills they gain from that; has to be reward for those involved in making that happen.
• (Chat) Engage (Campus Connection?) captures many of those things (LEAD, service hours, student dev), we call it a record as it is not at all verified. Agreed on micro-credentials. Could also capture curricular active learning things if set up. Used as a resume building tool.
• Could link to new Gen Ed
• We do have the structure in place for the idea of the "Engaged Learner Award" or "Degree of Distinction" which has already been worked on; and we could pick that up again.
• Retention is an area of student success that no one division can own. Generating those collaborations?
  • Part is knowing we're all in this together. I can't feel threatened if someone else comes up with a good idea, and vice versa. We have to work on being open to collaborations. Can talk about a lot of tools, like early warning system, but need to be open to that collaboration.
  • Coming back to Gen Ed and defining learning outcomes; I think we collaborate a ton and do pretty well. Student progress committee is a good example; we have a variety of new outreach initiatives, but I think it's that we don't know what it amounts to, and that has to do with learning outcomes.
  • Idea of having institutional learning outcomes or learning priorities that we can all agree that every one of our graduates will have; if we can identify that, then we can work together toward that. Right now we may have multiple groups working on student success, but we don't have that commonality.
  • We do work together but sometimes some people throw up walls.
• A big issue in terms of cross-divisional collaboration is communication; sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. We operate like a larger institution instead of the small institution we are. I think technology can help us better come together. Each of us is working really hard, but it is not coordinated in a collaborative way.
• Cross-communication would be helpful if we had a platform. We are making progress in identifying a platform like that (like Starfish) to help parts of the campus track student progress; request help for students, etc.  Getting that up will be a period of collaboration.
• How can we maintain communications so that we can continue to work together and learn from each other? I come back to identifying a time period when we can come together to discuss issues.
• Hi priority; harnessing info across campus and finding ways to enable use of that information will help with decision making
• Who is missing from the current structures of collaboration? Who are we not coming back to on a regular basis? We sometimes make assumptions that people don't want to collaborate, but that should not be an assumption?
• No mechanism to point out when someone is not included.
• Need to not be defensive and not have to apologize about saying how we're feeling. Sometimes things come up so quickly its hard to know who
• Very often same people are involved in same endeavors; a wealth of talent in community because either people do not feel comfortable or are not asked. It would help us to go out of our comfort zone and ask people even if they're rough around edges… need to proactively reach out to include people who we wouldn't normally ask.
• Adding to that point, there can be a lot of turnover at different levels; there might be awesome people who haven't been here long, and they're just doing their thing, and not everyone may know that. Structure of college doesn't necessary elevate new employees.  Can build it into the process.
• In some community breakfasts we've had, people have asked for something like a roster of areas of expertise for potential consultants for different groups; so creating that internal consulting groups for people who'd be comfortable doing that.
• Wondering how much of the problem is overlooking it (outreach to other individuals) because of the speed with which we're trying to do things; and we lose valuable input.
• List of things potentially going on, accessible, and not known across campus. That (common learning) was kind of the idea  of the teach-outs, and looking to extend that.
• Thinking about what we used to call "admin forums" there were also chairs and deans there, there was some cross collaboration between admin, student support offices, faculty chairs, deans, etc. At those forums we did a lot of this. We did a lot of sharing and feedback, presentations, etc. They were valuable, and we stopped doing them with a presidential transition. I'm wondering if some iteration of that would be helpful; maybe like the teach-in, opportunity to give thoughts and ask questions.
• Discussion in chat on onboarding new faculty members;
• possibly a system that enables new hires to be added to opportunities for lists
• Had things in the past like admin forum, booklet at beginning of year "new faces" introducing new faculty members
• Discussion of new orientation, culture, nuts & bolts of how communication works here.
• On automated systems adding people to certain things -- would need more details, but we do have an identity management system and have been making strides working with HR and people are added to certain services they'd need. Have process coordinating with SUNY and give access to account, etc. The "wish list" is you automatically get access to all the things you need.
• Discussion about knowing what's going on…. There's a "Bill Email" you can be added to it, and you can easily see what's going on. There's a Gap because people are not automatically added to that. Have no idea how often the listservs are updated, but there are a lot of times that people on those listservs are no longer in those buildings, so they can be better updated.
• Folks expressed that it's been difficult to learn the ins and outs of the college so that they can get involved in things.
• Having a strategic plan with goals and direction will make it more clear about where, when, and why we should be collaborating. And help us clarify what we're not trying to do.
• Should be working together to develop a system that works… that enables us to collaborate when we need to.
• Agreed, regardless of who sits in what office, the institution should be able to keep moving… a person in any one office can only help facilitate that.