Dr. Kay Eggleston: Good afternoon.
We are pleased to welcome our Chancellor Dr. Joe D. May, to Richland College this afternoon.
In his keynote address during the 50th anniversary celebration of the DCCCDs founding, Dr. May introduced us to the network concept.
Today, he joins us at Richland College, to elaborate on his vision, for an Integrated Higher Education Regional Network that will become the DCCCD way, in inspiring individual success, improving the quality of life for families, strengthening the communities we serve, improving, and helping our employers prosper in their businesses.
It is an exciting time to be in the DCCCD, as together, we focus on the future, and the vital role, each one of us, will play in realizing this vision.
So please join me, in a joyful Thunderduck welcome for our Chancellor, Dr. Joe D.May.
Dr. Joe May: OK thank you, thank you very much.
It's great to be here and, and really is always really fun for me to get a chance to come here to Richland College, and spend a little time with you.
I've been really looking for to having this conversation.
I've been having several around the District, as it relates to the Network, and the great work that you're doing already, that contributes to that, so in a way, I apologize I've got a little bit formal with wiring and all that kind of stuff on, but hopefully every can hear and then we'll -- I want to be sure that there's opportunity for some dialogue with you as well.
And I know many of you here, have other responsibilities today rather than being here and I appreciate you taking time.
But I also know, that some of you may need get up and run and I surely understand that serving our students, and meeting the needs of our community, are incredibly important, but I really do appreciate you'd taken the time.
And then, I look forward to, to hearing back from you.
The, you know -- and I just hear some thoughts with you, and some of it is a little bit perhaps a repetitive of some other things that I've talked about before, because it really does all tie together in some way.
Because I've -- back in January of last year, I talked about our role in our community, and I call it the DCCCD way, when I laid out that the -- that we have fundamental responsibility I believe, as colleges, and as district, in the following areas.
And I talked about, helping prepare our community to succeed, and I want to talk a little bit more about that, today with you.
Because I think this is where it all begins, as I said at conference day, this is the reason why we were created, as the community leaders came together and said, we want to ensure that our community is successful not only in the short run but for the long run.
Helping businesses to prosper and I think that's become a growing importance of what we do, as colleges within the district, I think everyone would have agree, and that we've always had the responsibility for inspiring individuals to achieve, to dream, to set aspirations that are much higher than what they would done otherwise.
And then, then ultimately, improving the quality of life for everyone in our community.
And as I said, and we call this the DCCCD way, because this really gets at the essence of why we were created and why we exist.
So as we look at it, I believe that one of the ways, and frankly, perhaps the primary ways, we look at the future and see the evolution, I want to talk a little bit more about that at community colleges, that the way lived up to our responsibility in the community, it can best be done to what I called the Regional Integrated Higher Education Network.
So what does that mean and what's that about, and how it does affect me, how does it affect you students, employers, and others in the community.
And I want to touch on as much of that as I can today and see that if you have some insider or some things that make sense, so this pretty small right? So we -- we're going to have trouble reading that, but it really is all about the network idea, it's pretty fundamental.
It's designed to connect individuals, with the employers, other constituents, stake holders, I want to read it because I get it right here, and efficiently and rapidly get them the resources they need.
So the idea is that it's all about connections and how quickly we can get the resources to the people that they need, for whatever purpose they might -- may have.
And if would think about it, is the interconnections of a higher education network will allow us to better leverage our programs and services of other colleges, community based organizations, universities, employers and non institutional providers of courses, so what is that all mean? Basically, as we start thinking about this, it's about realizing that we need to be connecting to other resources for the betterment of our community, our employers, our students and improve the quality of life for everyone.
And the folks that I've admired most, who've done the most thinking on this have been the hospital.
So I talked a little bit about that at conference day.
Spending some time with the leadership at Texas Health Resources, they a begin to talk to them about the -- how they put together from the leadership of Doug Hawthorne CEO at Presbyterian, to create -- and I'll hit more of this later, a network that literally 250 different hospitals, clinics and other providers here in the North Texas area from one hospital.
And he said, you know, he said, "We realized that individually we were very good" and he said, "But there were always limitations," he said "it was like chain linked fenced."
So the idea is that each of entities would remain separate and independent.
But much like wire, but when they touch each other in the right way, suddenly you get something that's much stronger, more power and serves much greater purpose than the individual strands did it independently to begin with, he said.
So that's was always the idea, how do we takes something that's good now, and how do we leverage it, and how do we make connections in such a way that better meets the needs of the community.
Because that's really what's it's all about, he said, we can have the finest hospital in the community but if a person can't get there for our services then who -- how we benefit them at the end of the day? So it really it's about connecting resources in such a way that in our case students can find those resources quickly and efficiently as possible.
So a couple of things, I think networks matter because if you look at what's happening in today's world almost all innovations are the result of financial and physical resources coming together with talent.
And, then finally a network that creates innovation and some of you may have read even Walter Isaacson's book on the innovators, he makes a statement in there, so there's almost no example of a single innovation occurring in isolation.
It was always in connection with others and other organization or rather people in the process.
So when these assets combine in a culture that supports risk taking, then we can have what -- Bruce Katz talks about in his book "The Metropolitan Revolution" he says that we create an innovation ecosystem.
And that's the idea that by people coming together in an environment where they can share ideas, share risk, figure out the solutions to problems innovation then occurs.
And so this is really, as we talk about it, about leveraging, what the assets that we already have, creating -- really a synergistic -- a synergistic relationship between individuals, between institutions, between businesses, between non-government agencies and of course, a higher education utilizing the resources that we have here to facilitate and make that happen.
And the goal is to accelerate problem solving in our community.
So that's kind of the broad idea.
So what does all that mean? As we get to -- well I mentioned the health care network, and I want to use an example that just came out, some of you -- did you see where the UT Southwestern and Texas Health Resources became an integrated health care network expanding that even further from the original -- some of you have seen that announcement recently? A few nods of the head here.
Well the idea was pretty straightforward, I had the chance to sit down and talk with the CEOs of both of the organization.
And I said, you know, tell me, tell me why you did that? What they said was pretty simply, UT Southwestern is one the best research teaching hospitals in the world, they have six Nobel Laureates.
THR said, we'll never to hire six Nobel Laureates, we'll never able to get that kind of expertise, and to bring in to our organization.
So what we want to do is to remain separate, separately accredited, separate staffing, and separate in every way.
But now, they're linked together in such a way that a patient can start out at one location operated by UT Southwestern, and end up at a hospital or a clinic, or site operated by THR, all seamless and the patient doesn't know the difference.
So in talking to them, I, you see, I asked them a couple of questions, I said, "So, what did THR bring?" Said well we've got, one of the finest burn centers in the world and there's -- that's the only one of its type.
So we'll contribute that to the network, we'll also contribute the fact, that we have two sites that can do liver transplants or other specialties that are there.
And so that way it's got to be replicated across the area.
We'll take the best of both in make all of that now available to our patients, in a seamless way.
So as we look at it, that what he said was -- and the interesting phrase is kind of stuck with me, they said that patient and community success equals hospital success.
I like that, you'll see it again in the different form here in a few moments.
So as I begin thinking about this and having conversation about how do we really change and improve our community in a way that we we're created to do.
I really do think that -- and how do we create this network.
Well I think we got to kind of start with ourselves, as we look at it, before we change our community.
We've really have got to change ourselves to reflect those same values that we're talking about, and I believed that the best way to do it, is by creating a higher education network, that focuses on solving specific problems of individuals, employers and -- that existing our community.
By using the network approach, combined with our resources and resources of others, that will create an innovation engine that is for the purpose of changing our community, that's the real goal.
How do we build that community?
If we think about the evolution of community colleges, I want to give you two different kind of approaches to this.
If we go back, it was really all about in the 1965, 50 years ago, of how do we create access?
How do we provide access to individuals and to our community for the programs and services that are needed in order to help community to succeed, to businesses to prosper, to inspire individuals, to give them hope where there wasn't hope.
Literally three million people have taken advantage of that over the last 50 years, and it's worked very well.
But what? Then we said that's not enough right? That it's not only about access, it's about student success.
Making sure that people come through our doors, leave with the knowledge, the skills, the ability, but also a certificate or an award, or a diploma, or a degree that has value in the -- in today's economy, and today's market place.
Today I believe we're seeing a trend toward measuring community success, and let me tell you why I think that's important, for us and why I think that really as a fundamental change in terms of how folks are looking at us.
You know, you're probably aware right now nationally if you read any of the higher education publications you don't have to read very far to see that accreditation is under attack.
It's under attack everywhere, it's under attack out of the Department of Education, it's under attack by institutions that are happy with it, it's under on just about every front.
And in fact, the Department of Ed has just released some new guidelines and procedures saying, they want to create some new accreditors that are out there, that had a very different focus.
And the whole issue is really this community success, what the issue is that they really want to look outcomes.
Well we've be looking with outcomes for a long time, they're talking about it differently.
They're talking about in -- outcomes in terms of how it impacts the community as a whole.
Some of you may have noticed that the White House within the last 30 days has released a scorecard.
That scorecard, well frankly it's misleading, it's not very helpful to do what I would like to see to make decisions.
But there's something that it does, that's very unique, it lists the average income earned by graduates of every college that's on the scorecard.
Now in it of itself that's not that helpful either because as we know, graduates of different of programs make different salaries.
It's simply taking the salary of a college aggregating that all together and saying, that's something that a person can make a decision on, that's not helpful.
But what it does indicate that they're looking at is something beyond the degree, beyond the certificate.
What's occurring after they graduate, what's happening in the community? We're seeing the same thing in K12, right now, where the -- basically the idea of being -- it's not enough to look at if a person graduates from high school anymore, are they going to college?
And if they get into college, are they completing? So there's scorecards popping up that shows of students who graduate from high school, what percentage of that high school now graduate with some type of certificate, award or degree within the six year period of time.
And the idea is to focus on the metrics of the community.
And we're seeing in the other areas as well, we're really looking at what's happening to job growth?
What's happening to the economic prosperity?
What's happening to the growth of community?
And I think that is we start to see this trend unfold, that all really ties together in a picture that it really is, along the way of hospitals.
That student and community success equal college success.
If our communities are prospering because of the way we're providing leadership within the communities, by the way that we're working with the community to solve a specific problem in that community, then we will be viewed as successful.
What we're seeing -- at those of you, who worked to solve right now and engaged in community knows that the community is more than willing to help support us as long as the understand how we contributing to, to solving their problems.
So access to higher education remains still, very important.
We can't solve the problems of individuals if we can't get them in the door.
We can't solve the problems of employers if we don't have people that we can prepare for the jobs that are there.
We can't solve the problems of our community, if we can't raise the education level of our overall community, not just some, but everyone in the community.
You know, previously when I was here I talked about the fact that today some colleges for everyone, that the model has really shifted because of what's happened in the economy.
We've seen since 1970 that where in 1970, 25% of the jobs required a post secondary education, 75% middle class jobs could be achieved with no more than a high school diploma.
Today that's now about 35% of the jobs can be achieve with only a high school diploma, but only -- and about still 30% require a bachelors degree, but the rest require some education, certification, two year degree beyond high school, which means that really everyone today needs to be participating in, but it's enough to participate.
At the end of the day, we got to make that they're able to make a living wage, but also contribute to the quality of life of our community.
But there's more to it than that as we look at it.
So as we think about it, I believe that the network concept is really the missing piece.
Hospitals figured it out 15 years ago, we're starting to see discussions in all areas of the country now about the importance of making this work.
So here we have within the district, we're just blessed, I have tell you, with physical resources, our fiscal plans, our campuses, as well as our financial resources, that allow us to offer programs and services that meet the needs of students in the communities that we serve, we also have available talent, that's you, that's our students, others in our organization.
But we're really are a great resource of talent, learning and discovery resources that are here, and what do people often say about us, that we're the best kept secret.
Right? That we've got all these resources, we've got stability, but a people don't always understand exactly what we have.
I really think the missing piece is the network concept of how we connect, to others, and how we connect to individuals, other organizations.
And if these come together, this is really what begins to create the what I would call a higher ed innovation ecosystem, that it's great to have resources, it's great to have the people and the talent.
So how do we, how do we expand this? Beyond what we've done in the past, and really begin to innovate in a way that allows us to change at the same pace of our community?
They were either virtually all technical, where you see South Carolina or North Carolina systems that were created, or they were all transfer oriented like, Mississippi and Alabama, and some others.
^M00:20:04 One of the unique things about the creation of the Dallas Country Community College District it was one of the first to move to the second model which is a comprehensive model.
Which said they did not only would do transfer, will not only do technical will add to that a strong commitment to the community service and non-credit programs continuing education and others.
It will all make this a part of the primary mission of the organization.
So, that created a real buzz throughout the country when Dallas started doing something different.
And say, now we're not just opening our doors to people who want to transfer, we're not just opening our doors to people who want to get a skill, we're really opening our doors to include everyone in the community and provide that opportunity.
But as we look at that what we did exactly what hospitals have done with the comprehensive model.
We said each institution was a standalone college and that on their own they worked to develop all the comprehensive programs that they needed.
And frankly I think that probably worked pretty well back when we didn't need as many programs as we need today.
When there weren't as many careers that required education beyond high school when still we were only trying to educate roughly 25% of the population.
Now as Texas we've set a goal that we would educate, provide 60% of the population with some type of post secondary credential by 2030 and thinking about that then if that's going to work and we keep doing business the way we've been doing it for the last 50 years I don't think we can get to that 60% I think we'll still see a lot of people not take advantage of it.
I've called some other non consumers you've heard me used that term before.
But the reality is, that we have something to offer that people aren't buying for their own benefit for the benefit of their employers and for the benefit of the community.
So, how do we make that happen and I think it's the third model which is the Integrated Network which is the idea that we put the student or the employer or the problem at the center.
And we created in such a way that we give people the opportunity to succeed and they don't have to figure it out by themselves.
And I'll just share with you as we look at this because if we look today we have outstanding college -- Richland is one of the best, recognized throughout the world as an outstanding college.
This district is recognized as one of the best something we can be very, very proud of, but we basically have built upon a model that requires that we continue to grow resources in a way that every institution is everything to all people, but in reality that's just not the way it works.
And so, what would we want to work to -- well the idea again being that we put the individual at the center.
Let me just give you maybe an example and I'm sure that you have others as it turns out we know that students are figuring out on their own how to create networks where none exist.
They're inventing this for themselves.
How do I know that? Well when I looked at enrollment patterns what I see is about 40% of our students are taking classes from multiple colleges and not just within the Dallas County Community College District.
They're taking them from parent, they're taking them from college, they're taking from else place, but they're not asking permission to do that, they're not telling us about it in all cases sometimes they do sometimes they don't.
But when they do and I'll -- again I think the reason why, and I was talking to a group of advisers recently about this and they shared with me, said "Well of course we're -- if we were advising at my college and the student says they want to take a class through another I'm going to try to talk out of it.
I'm going to try to get them to go to my college.
"And I said "Really?" He said "Yeah", so it is kind of understood that that's the way to leave -- so, what the student does is just they don't tell you, they just go off and they enroll at the other college and they figure it out on their own and sometimes that works them, sometimes they run into sometimes transfer difficulty because it's not really focused on what their needs are.
If we had a student today from Pleasant Grove show up our Pleasant Grove Campus which is part of Eastfield College and walk in and say, "I want to enter a nursing program I want to become an RN."
They would listen, they would talk to them about the programs and they would tell them that person that there're three options within our district they wouldn't mention anything else outside the district at all to them, they would say, if you go to Mountain View or El Centro or Brookhaven.
But what we know is that that student would say thank you and leave and we would probably never see that student again, but we know someone from that neighborhood probably doesn't have transportation that's the reality of many that live there.
And so, as they come in our door we know that probably if you rely on public transportation, you really can't get to Mountain View.
It's just not doable, you can get to Brookhaven but it's not an easy route.
So really the only option is El Centro for that person in many cases.
And yet, so how do we connect them from where they are today, frankly needing a middle class middle wage job.
And here's what else we know about this, depending on the background, if I'm the single adult to make a living wage today in Dallas County according to the data at the MIT and I think we're circulating some of this around the colleges right now.
It takes roughly $10.50 an hour, if I'm a young man or woman coming out of high school by myself I can live with that.
But if I'm a person usually female in this case that has one child it requires $21.42 an hour to make a living wage.
So, the fastest track the fastest path to poverty for someone today as a single parent that has a child, all right.
We know that, we that we see the impact that's a challenging situation.
So, as we look at the needs of the individual, how do we begin to take that into account and realizing that in order to have that, they've got to have the equivalent resources, of a salary of $43,000 a year that's what that really means, so that means that we've got to connect them to others or they don't really stand a chance of getting through our program.
Maybe they are living at home and that helps, maybe they have some other assistance that's out there.
So, as we've talked about -- and some of you have also heard me mentioned single stop, well that's really kind part of the model, it's how we connect them to all the resources in the network that are there.
If they need transportation assistance, food stamps, child care or the other resources that they need because the goal is to get the individual to the ultimate goal of being able to earn a middle wage, support themselves, support their family and improve the quality of the community.
So, as we look at that the needs don't stop with us at the end though and they don't stop with jobs.
And we've got them already and I'll talk about some of the networks that we already have in place, but the same thing is true if we're to get from here to a four year degree.
So the RN student's says, "Wait a minute I don't want to just -- all you're telling me is what to do with El Centro and how to get the RN but I'm going to need a bachelors degree because I know what's going on in health care and the job market is changing and they requires a baccalaureate degree, so tell me how you connect me to the next phase of the network and how do you put that in place right now to make that happen."
So maybe we now co-enroll students jointly with multiple institutions so that we extend that in a very different way.
So, the idea of the network is to figure out the connections and how we'd get people from where they are in life to where they want to be.
And frankly where you and I need them to be as citizens in our community.
So we already have existing networks, right.
We've done it in K12 we didn't start that way 50 years ago but we figure out dual credit programs is a logical extension of how you connect to a high school in a way that allows them to begin to work with us prior to enrolling and guess what, the federal government announced just this week that they were doing an experimental program to reinforce that, realizing the same thing as going on that extending that network into K12.
So, for the first time on an experimental basis high school students do enroll in the college probably community college in most cases will be eligible for Pell Grants, big, big change.
We've been funding that ourselves, right, Dr.
Eggleston, I mean that's how we've made that happen.
Second progression of the model of what we've been doing with an existing network or early college high schools or charter schools in the case of here at Richland where we said, OK we can do more than we've been doing, yeah, bringing them out of high school into our program that was good.
Getting them dual credit for college and high school was better, but now we can get students that graduate with 75 hours on the average what I saw this past year of college credit at the same time that their earning a high school diploma.
So it extends it even further, so now we really are.
And we don't see the students in our college after their in high school because they're ready to accelerate a network right into a University and they do it very well.
Business and industry training, another way, it took forever for community colleges to really get into this area because it required networking in a different way with economic development organizations, where business and industry and other, but we figured it out and we made that work.
We've done it with Articulation and transfer in fact, we have hundreds of those.
And note, these have been in play since the beginning, but frankly they didn't start out as being formalized agreements until relatively recently in the history of our colleges, where we sat down and say, "It's too important to take these to chance, these situations to chance.
We need to help people connect and maneuver because we're hearing horror stories coming back about what happens to students when we don't work with them, when we don't create a network with the University and they get there and they find out they had to retake classes, they spend more dollars than they need to spend, they get discouraged, and they come home and they don't finish.
So it's important, and here within the district, they what we did with the health care resources is another great example of bridging colleges together in a network, programs together with employers and a true network concept.
So it's not a foreign concept to us, but we've only looked at it in bits and pieces across our colleges, we've really not look at it, we've said, and why do we pick health care, because the health care folks were figuring out network themselves, and they were going "Doggon it this is too important, we can't leave this a chance."
And how well has it worked? Out of our 80,000 students, 20,000 of them are enrolled in health care programs today in the district, it's huge in terms of the impact.
And we're getting people great paying jobs, it has among the highest salaries on average of all of our graduates as soon as you go through those programs, but it's because in this case, the employers, the hospitals said, we have to do it, well not everyone is as organized as health care and other industries are out there need our help too.
But so are the individuals because, individuals don't know how to figure this out on their own, they know they want to take advantage of the opportunities we have, but they don't how to evaluate those opportunities given, what's happening in the job market, given what's happening in their community.
And we know also that for most of our students, 95% of our graduates never leave Texas, 73% never leave the Dallas Fort Worth area.
So they're looking to come to us, so that they can stay here, raise a family, support whatever lifestyle they're wanting to support, but also be able to stay in the community.
So as we think about network, I think that's my hospital, they didn't just go national, they really looked locally, and try to figure out how to make this happen.
So let me kind of talk about as I see it, what are the phases of doing this, because we can't just do it all at once right? It really takes some time, it takes some thinking and planning, and there's going to be a lot of opportunity for both.
I think one of the things that we said that we have to do at the very beginning was to firmly establish our leadership in community convening, and I'll talk a little bit more about this on few minutes.
And that we want to really reinforce and clarify our role, our specific role, and preparing our community for success.
We want to align our programs and services with the needs of the community.
And we want to ensure that individuals have the opportunity to gain knowledge, the skills, the abilities to really help our community to succeed because getting that and not, not being able to contribute, I think is a disconnect.
So let me just kind of hit each of these.
First, convene, and I'll talk about why I think this is important, this is actually I think a quote here from -- pull up the source maybe, I didn't.
It's from Bruce Katz, who made this statement, "The informal power to convene is probably the least respected tool that is civic leader possesses.
In the end, collaboration and network building are the most important foundations for transformative action in a city and metropolis.
Everything that follows, vision, strategy, tactics and impact is derivative.
The idea is that, we realize that the power we have to convene, we do it in class rooms, we do it with our meeting space, our community space that we have, but it's one of the most powerful tools that we have, so as we set out to begin to work on it, one of the first things we did, is we got to create the capacity to convene, and I'll hit this in a few moments, we also need to clarify our role in the -- in community leadership.
What we're seeing this happen today, it's more than just local, that we're connected nationally, we're connected to rural community.
And that our students today really have to be tied in to all of that, in order to be successful, I hear it all the time for employers, from employers who -- well I was talking recently to the president of Texas Instruments, he said, "Joe," he said, "90% of our products are sold internationally," he said, "That's the world in which we live and operate."
Talking to architects, telling me the same thing, never even occurred to me that, there's so much of what they do is, around the world.
And that, so we set this, in fact, this two items right now, are the actually the official goal of Dallas County Community College District that the board approved and the bottom one is purpose for why we exist, which is to ensured Dallas County is vibrant growing and economically stable for future generations.
So it's more than just providing an education.
It really is about, and our board is taking that on to say, we will meet the needs of the communities that we serve.
Then what we saw we had to do was to align board priorities with community needs, so I'm not going into go into this, but you can look this up, this is word for word, the board priorities for the current year, and it lays out specifically how that we will transform the work place, how that we prepare people for both -- and expand to early college high schools, get more people out of high school into our program, prepare more people to transfer, provide a more personal experience for students, align our programs to meet the needs of business and industry.
And frankly, grow to scale to align with the economy, that's really what these lay out.
And then what we want to do is number four, help our individuals to succeed.
And we said, that we -- to this end we will be known not by whom we exclude, but rather by whom we include in the network and how we connect them to the resources they need to succeed.
So as we look at this, what does this really mean? Well we've created convenient space throughout the district and -- but primary there at the district office.
We've had about 104 people go through training, to learn compression planning to make help that possible.
We've now brought together mayors, economic devolvement leaders, superintendents of schools, CEOs of all the seven teaching hospitals in the community, in total 60 different groups from our community, to engage them in the process of convening, why?.
Because what we're feeling is, without us pulling together no one will.
No one will pull them together for the purpose of solving the real problems that are there.
So as we look at meeting these four needs and facing them over time, where do we begin the process? I want to kind of lay this out because we've given this a lot of thought as we look at where we need to go, we spend a lot of time talking with folks in the health care industry about where they begin, and it became clear that it's all about student navigation.
That that's really the greatest challenge.
Students coming in don't know how to access us in such a way that gets them a 100% of the time to where they need to be, depending on a lot of circumstances, depending on which door they come in, depending on where they show up, or whose office or what happens to them.
So I've ask Dr. Mary Brumbach, I think most of you know Mary, has been here for awhile in district, as the Chief Strategy Officer for the district to begin to take compressive look at student navigation.
And to this end, I'm going to need your help to do it.
The goal is to get every person in Dallas County to be able to contribute to the success of the community.
And so if we do that, we need to look at all the various ways that people come in the door and what happens to them in that process.
So we want to start by taking a look at the student experience from the very beginning.
Now you've done that at Richland College, all of our Colleges have done it, but it's with the idea that we're going to be self contained.
It's connecting them always to other things that are out there.
So I'm going to ask that we pull together teams, a faculty, staff, students, community members, and that we do an in depth look at students, what's happening to them.
Whether their coming in online or they're graduating from high school, were they dropped out, and earned a high school equivalency, where they came in to do enrollment, or they came in through early college high school, or charter school, whether they went to a university and transferred back to us, whether they are working for an employer whose paying their way, whether their part of the Texas workforce commission, getting help and benefits that come through our doors.
It really didn't matter, what we need to look at is, every single way that people tap into our system, and to figure whose referring them.
Not just when they came to our door and how do we integrate with that.
If they're showing up that the Consulate General's Office of Mexico who tells me that they are.
And they're referring them to us for our ESL programs.
How are we connecting with that and making that happen? What about when people are showing up for a job and they're told that they don't have the skills but by the way that's offered at Richland College.
How do we know and how do we connect that and make that happen.
So we want to take a look at that experience.
We want to train people to observe, with student permission of course.
A photograph, record to really document these experiences in a way that we've not look at the before.
And to identify strengths, weaknesses what's working and what's not working.
And then ultimately to figure out the solutions of how we connect to make the network work.
This is actually how the hospital network got started.
It's very simple.
Texas Health Resources, the CEO, Doug Hawthorne, at Presbyterian said, "We know people are falling to the cracks.
We can look at the health care data of our community and we can see that we're not doing the job as a health care community to meet the needs of the entire population.
Look at all the data and statistics that tells us that things aren't going well.
Which means that people don't know and yet we've got the resources to make it happen we're just not able connect people to those resources to solve those problems and meet those needs.
So they -- what they did was to put together and train a team of individuals to begin following patients whether they arrived in an ambulance, whether they walked in the door, whether they came in to an ER, whether a school nurse referred them.
Regardless of how they came in the door they began to look at that.
And so we found things we never even thought we would find, he said, "We had no idea."
Said that, "We, you know, we -- things that we -- were not even in our list to look at suddenly become apparent were problems."
So I'll give you an example.
And he said, "Well, for example every one of our hospitals all but one he said that has OB services."
And he said "So we're ready 24 hours a day because babies don't come on a good schedule always they show up when they're ready."
And said, "So we're ready with the doors open to take them at anytime of the day.
"So we discovered something when we're tracking the patient, a patient who came in a 10 o'clock at night to begin the process of delivering the baby is that the cafeteria closed at nine and they're hungry."
"And so we had no way to feed them during the evening hours."
They weren't even on the radar, we weren't even thinking about that.
As something that actually made it a lower quality experience for the patient who came in and obviously under stress at that point in time.
So we don't know what's out there but I think with your help and our help and what I'd liked to do is so I'll have Mary work with us to pull a group together of leadership, of faculty and staff and others.
And let's take a look with what's going on.
And let's discus it to really see what works, now that's the beginning.
Now folks I'm going to be honest with you.
Every time I look at this list, it scares me because it's a daunting challenge of what all we need to look at going on.
But as I mentioned we're really focused on the student experience and if you can read this and all, that says the first contact which what I've just described is going to be the first step.
We're going to be looking at how we contact, how we interact, what happens to students through that experience as we get there.
But then there's a whole lot of other things that we need to take a look at.
Right now our budget and finance design is designed around students showing up that one college and staying with that college, even though there swirling going on we don't acknowledge that all in any way.
We don't provide a way to encourage the advisers at one college to help a student get in a program at another college.
That's actually the opposite the financial incentives work the other way.
So we've got a lot to look at as we meet those needs.
Our professional development is not designed to make that happen either.
You know I was with our advisers recently and just asked them, if a student came in to your office today and said they wanted to become a pipefitter, how many would know where to send that student?
Well in that group one hand went up and that was a person in North Lake because that's where the program is for pipefitting.
We don't know what's even in our network today and so we've got to figure out how we do that and professional development is going to be part of making that happen.
Our student services, our student services are really while we've evolved into one stop centers, we're doing really creative things, we're providing mentors, we're providing other supports.
Again if we've got to connect the across multiple lines and other nodes in the network then we also really need to look at our student services differently than we have the past as well.
Our policies, our policies are really designed to do what we're now doing.
They're really not designed to support a network type of design.
Our organizational structures.
Now what we have now with colleges now, there's no need to change that at all.
There's no need to departments, there's no need to change other things that we have.
However, we quickly have realized that we needed some support in different areas.
So one of the first things we did was to focus on the convening.
Realizing that the power to bring people together was an important role in creating the network.
We also realize that we didn't have a lot of information about what was happening to students in the community.
So we created a labor market information center that we're rolling out across the district.
So there's other services and things to make this work that we're going to need to be looking at it to make it happen.
Talent, has been expressed to me in all cases while we have outstanding people are we in all positions hiring the right types of folks that we need if we're to move into this model.
Then we need to look at that.
Do we need to look at technology? Now, I would tell you that the hospitals tell me this was key, they couldn't do it well until they got the technology right.
If you read the article on the UT Southwestern and the THR Integrated Healthcare Network, it talks about the important role of being able to share information.
Transparently, completely between the organizations so that they know information not only about a patients but vending, supplies so if there's a shortage in one place they can make up in another.
If a patient comes in needing the specialty that's not available that day there they can grab them from the other that it is a complete sharing and open transparent sharing of information at all levels within the organization.
And seamlessly going back and force saying until technology made that possible we really couldn't pull it off because even if we can load the person in an ambulance and transport them from one place to the other which we were doing, they would get there and they would have to start all over in the process.
They would have to go back through the same interview and record and some -- and said and what we have found was many times we didn't have the time to do that.
We hoped we got it right.
We hoped someone recorded the information of what they might have been allergic to.
And so technology allowed that to go back and forth.
We have the same thing happening with other student.
If they come in with us and today they go to another college often they find themselves completely starting all over in that process.
Going through some and some cases the same assessments, it's the same conversations that they previously had.
And you can see why by the time they get to some of our offices and by time they shoot me an email they're generally unhappy.
And I might say that of my email of complaints -- oh my adjusting those is about 90% involved multiple colleges.
Where I went to an adviser here they told me to this however I didn't stay there, I went to another college and did what that adviser told me to do.
And then suddenly found that it didn't work when I got there I felt like I mislead didn't get the correct information.
Countless examples of that.
Technology is going to be the key to make that happen.
Let's talk about entrepreneurialism I think innovation, I think that's the key as well when we describe this we're not looking for things to be the same.
This is not a franchise.
This is about leveraging innovation in a very different way.
Bringing people together who may not have been together before.
I'm thinking about creating a separate fund that would just be for new ideas that faculty and staff have that they want to try.
And have a group of their peers come together to say yeah we're going to fund this to make this happen.
We're willing to come up with an innovative solution.
So if we think about it from the point of view that we want to be very clear that every person has the opportunity to start anywhere they want in the network.
Once they get into the uniqueness of our organizations or institutions, it's your responsibility to help make them successful.
Frankly to help keep them even if they started out at the Pleasant Grove but ended up Richland then it's up to the college here to support that.
So we want to make that work.
But we're also interested in how do we support risk taking for new ideas that are out there? How do we create a climate where folks aren't afraid to go to bat for a student to make a difference.
To do the right thing, we think that's also an important part of the culture that we need to look at.
We -- non-credit, credit, you know, I -- we see today one of the fastest growing areas nationally is non-credit.
In fact it's growing so fast that the US Department of Education just released what they call a QUIP.
If you seen the announcement that they're looking for experimental sites because the growth of coding academies, folk likes Udacity , MOOCs, Coursera, edX, Udemy, all those folks that are out there that are providing high quality content that employers say they're preferring over that provided by colleges and university.
The US Department of Ed is now saying, we're going to make those folks eligible for Pill Grants, if they'll partner was a college or a university because what we're realizing is that non-credit is absolutely as important as credit.
I'm going to be sharing some articles on some things that are happening nationally.
I was recently at a meeting at Humber College and, you know, you always get the ideas so I'm doing the usual campus tour and I'm walking through that and complementing them on what they're doing.
And then we go on to something called the post graduate certificate program.
All right, so what's that? They said, "Well out of our 20,000 students, 4000 are full time students that have bachelor's degree that were enrolling them one of eight programs to get a fast track certificates."
"Says our fastest growing area, that's become 20% of our enrollment we can keep up with the demand so the requirement is now to this program you have to the first step of bachelor's degree."
Sounds a lot like graduate school doesn't it -- as we're and so what we're seeing that change, credit and non-credit I think the roles are changing it.
Frankly the funding of how we do at least to change as well.
Communication strategies, it's one thing as we look at individual college programs we talk about ourselves.
But how do we talk about it in terms of the network.
I think that's one of the challenges that the health care system faced early on is creating certainly the local branding but realizing that people need to understand that it doesn't stop there.
How do we make that happen which leads right to marketing.
The same issue comes into play there of how do we communicate ourselves in such a way that we're really solving the problems of individuals, of employers, of our community.
And not just telling people here's what we have come and get it if you want it.
So it's a little bit different approach.
Student aide, you know this one we really need to some thinking on -- our foundation is doing some work on that for how do we make that work between multiple institutions in different ways.
So that students get what they need when they need it and tie all that together.
And I'm sure there's more but the accountability metrics piece, if it's really about getting a person to the end goal, improving the quality of life in our community, one of the metrics that we're going to be looking at.
The US Department of Education in the White House said we need to be looking at salaries and wages.
The -- Texas in their performance model has said we need to be looking at and how individuals do when they graduate and move on what happens to them next.
And so the real metrics are going to be looking at what happens next not just what's happening while they are in our care, because ultimately that's really what it's about.
So as we think about this, I believe that and kind of going full circle here as we think about it.
That I see our role in our community as providing leadership and developing what we're calling a Regional Integrated Higher Education Network that is comprised of talent, learning and discovery of resources that fully address the problems faced by individuals by employers and by our community as a whole.
So it's pulling together these resources not just what we have under our full control but how we connect people to those resources in a way that impacts their lives.
The prosperity of our employers as well as our community which gets us back to, I think the real challenges we look to the future.
So what -- and this is where I think the innovation can come to play.
Is that utilizing the connections of a network.
We will identify and deliver solutions to real life challenges faced by individuals by employers and by our communities.
We do that now but as we tie it together with I think the greater intent, greater purpose and greater clarity about who's going to own the problems so I can give you great examples of why I think if it's not us, I don't think there's any one else to do it.
And I just real quickly on that, there's a book by Bruce Katz called "The Metropolitan Revolution."
And it's about like this I've been giving out copies of it to everyone, however if we get it just read the first chapter because that's everything you need to know.
And but what he says and he starts the book by saying basically today we have a failure at the federal level to help solve the problem of individuals and employers in our communities.
We are having a failure at the state level to do that.
The only place it can be done today is locally.
And so what we have to have are institutions to rise up and take that leadership role.
As colleges as the district we're the best position in this community to do it.
Who else already connects so many people, so many organizations, brings together the resources.
The tax payers have supported us in a way that there's no other entity that has that type of support within the community.
And so if we can do that I believe that we can really fulfill the DCCCD way.
And which is preparing our community to succeed, helping employers to prosper, inspiring individuals to achieve and improving the quality of life for all.
And that's really what the network is about.
It's bringing that together to solve the -- their problems with the help of our own resources.
Am I out of -- I think I'm out of time and I do that.
JOE Talk - College is for Everyone - Reaching Non-Consumers of Higher Education (April 27, 2015)
JOE Talk - I'm doing fine ... So what's the problem? (Aug. 20, 2014)
2015 State of the District (Feb. 2015)
2017 State of the District
Community Perspectives: Alfreda Norman
Community Perspectives: Brent Christopher
DCCCD Network News April 25, 2018
DCCCD Network News Feb. 23, 2018
DCCCD's 50th Anniversary (Aug. 28, 2015)
Dr. Joe May's DACA Letter to Congressional Leadership
JOE Talk - Network Update (Feb. 2018)