LAHC Dean's Blog

In my time at ACC, I’ve seen half a dozen presidents and chancellors ride in on choruses of Collaboration and wash out on dirges of Not Much Has Changed. We have a new chancellor and a new opportunity to practice what we preach about collaborative decision-making — and I am actually optimistic about the cultural changes to come. But before we uncork the champagne, we need to think hard about what collaborative decision-making actually looks like.

In a nutshell, collaborative decisions must be guided throughout by integrity, based on principles that cut across sectional interests, and balance the tendency to replicate old patterns against fetishizing “newness” for its own sake. In addition to these already-formidable challenges, collaborative decision-making must also embrace and encourage participation that is managed productively and grounded in reality.

The guiding principle that I call “sufficient uniformity” has come up in several conversations recently, so I thought it might be useful to elaborate. But first, two history lessons.

In January, I will have been part of the ACC community for 38 years, and I’ve seen a lot in my time here. One pattern that struck me early on was our tendency — which incidentally is not unique to ACC — to swing wildly between two extreme responses to challenges in our institution. One end of the continuum is to open the gates and let people solve their problems as best they can. The results are pretty predictable: Lots of specific solutions to what may actually be challenges we share across units or even across the college. And because people have invested their time and energy in their specific solutions, it’s a very short step from “solution” to “defending turf.”

In April of 2019, I published a post on this blog that turned out to be a roadmap for a successful dual credit mission for the humanities. To those of you inclined to fret about metrics, let me observe that “successful” in that sentence means that, against all odds, we’re still teaching college humanities in high schools.

In my original post, I articulated two important principles behind my work with dual credit. First, I put to rest the question of whether dual credit is a fundamentally bad idea — not by refuting the numerous objections, but simply by stating a policy of not engaging in that conversation with anyone, any more. My motive was not to run from detractors, but to announce that I was too busy finding ways to make dual credit successful for our faculty and our students. As I put it then, “That ship, as they say, has sailed, and like it or not, we’re deckhands.”

If you haven’t seen the Department of Education’s “financial value transparency and gainful-employment rule” in the news, this Higher Ed article will catch you up — in preparation for a parable.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/student-aid-policy/2023/09/27/education-department-finalizes-gainful-employment?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d04dd41a4e-BNU_20230517_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d04dd41a4e-199406389&mc_cid=d04dd41a4e&mc_eid=be3053f863

There’s a lot to think about here. I have a doctorate in philosophy, and no one mentioned debt or gainful employment at any point in graduate career — unless you count an occasional discussion of how to attract the right sort of attention during an interview. I’m sure most of us have similar experiences, which might tempt us to take the position that the “transparency” that was good enough for me should be good enough for everyone. But let’s also reflect on the fact that higher ed in the US has become considerably more expensive since I was a student.

My point is that this is a conversation we need to have, particularly in community colleges. And here’s a parable to provoke discussion.

Degree plans appear to be innocent administrative devices; let’s talk about subtexts.

I served as department chair for many years, and in that time, I advised and mentored my share of students, many of whom were philosophy majors. Listening to students talk about their aspirations and experiences, I picked up on what they picked up on in their degree plans, namely, the way plans impose a certain reading of time. Students wouldn’t express this in terms like “phenomenology of time consciousness”; rather, a great many of them said things like, “I have to take X next semester — I’m already behind.”

There’s a lot to unpack in this sense of behindness, and I won’t aim for comprehensiveness in one little post. But I will draw attention to several issues I consider determinative of students success. Let’s start with a hidden injury of degree plans: By making a specific temporal framework normative, we imply that deviation is abnormal.

I’m seeing more and more instances of individual responses to student AI use, and as the numbers rise, so does the incoherence of our collective messaging. I decided to chase this bogeyman primarily to provoke some conversations about what our messaging should be, and perhaps even to reveal something about the bogeyman itself.

We all know that students use the internet to complete assignments, and it’s a natural progression for students to use AI. But let’s also face some unpleasant realities: There are plenty of people in community and business leadership — and academia, even in our own institution — who  freely admit to using AI to support their work. In fact, one of my colleague deans in another institution is establishing an entire course on writing AI prompts, on the premise that knowing how to leverage the resources of ChatGPT is a “marketable skill.” I would argue that it may soon be more of a survival skill.

It’s been about one month since I landed, so I thought it would be nice to send a dispatch from my exile in France. The question is, what can I do from here that would seem genuine but wouldn’t involve getting any work from there?

I was sitting at my favorite dive, Le Progrès, contemplating this conundrum, and it hit me: Why not join the deans’ meeting to say hello? After all, the one thing I can still do that will be immediately recognizable by everyone who knows me and won’t land me any work is to be disruptive. So, I thought, Why not disrupt Gaye Lynn’s meeting?

Unfortunately, my clever plan to be recognizably disruptive while avoiding any work was thwarted — I’m assuming by the weather, but it could be that Gaye Lynn took me off the invitation as an act of mercy (or alternately, knowing me as she does and anticipating this train of thought, as an act of sabotage). Either way, I didn’t have the link.

My first month here has been lovely; restful, but also productive — in a variety of ways. I don’t know how much you’re following EU news, but we’re having nation-wide protests against Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64. Now, there are two interesting things about this proposal and the ensuing unrest. First, by current French standards — not Macron’s new plan — I am already past retirement age. That’s something to think about.

The next day after the protests, in fact, I was chatting with one person in the bar (which I try to visit daily), and I mentioned that, in the US, people born after 1960 don’t get their full social security benefit until 67. I thought she was going to have a stroke. She was barely able to shake her head in dismay and force out, “Métro, travaille, tombe” (“Subway, work, grave”), which was the protesters’ chant du jour. She obviously got it wrong: We hardly have any subways.

Second, it’s invigorating to be in a country in which people are still pretty serious about democracy, a seriousness that extends to striking and marching as a civic duty alongside voting. As an aside, I have long thought that the real French motto shouldn’t be Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité but the much more accurate Liberté, Egalité, Faire-Grevité. I haven’t offered this opinion too publicly here, but I’m confident that, after a certain amount of protesting, it would catch on. Which appears to be Macron’s strategy, incidentally.

It’s even more invigorating to be personally involved. On the day of the first retirement reform protest, I had planned to drop off my recycling and have a café allongé at my favorite coffee shop, Mokka (not to be confused with my favorite bar, Le Progrès). Rennes had basically shut down — and I don’t mean by the protesters; I mean for the protesters. It was like Mardi Gras: People were either marching and chanting and waving signs and colorful banners, or watching — and mostly cheering — the marching and chanting and banner-waving. Many businesses had closed to give employees time to march or watch. Yes, sadly there was a good bit of random, senseless violence — mostly breaking the windows of important symbols of malignant capitalist hegemony, like banks, police stations, and Starbucks — but for the most part, the protesters booed the vandals and generally policed themselves.

As I was walking to the recycling center, more or less in the middle of the protest, someone in the crowd set a Tesla on fire directly across the street. The crowd generally expressed disapproval, but someone — possibly the police, it wasn’t clear — set off several tear gas canisters. So there I was, dutifully sorting my glass and paper recycling in a cloud of tear gas, like a misplaced German soul. How exhilarating! The coffee and croissant were even better that morning. 

Obviously, I’m doing fine. I love just about everything about France, and especially the people. One of my very few complaints is that, for some unfathomable reason, Rennes has not seen fit to import Hippeas Chick Pea Puffs, which, following the lead of Eric “Respect My Authoritah” Cartman, I call “cheesy poofs.”

On a possibly related front, I’m making great progress on my sabbatical projects (and reading Aristotle in German).

I’d like to say that I miss ACC, but I would have to lie, and I generally avoid lying where there’s a viable alternative (like telling the truth). I can say without resorting to pseudo-lying or related forms of deception that I miss you, my colleagues. You make rolling ACC’s boulders up the mountain tolerable — at least I have interesting company.

Take care and have a great spring! 

Matthew,
Dean In Exile

Source: Auto Draft