Newsletter — Office of the Provost

Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Volume 2, Issue 10

Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that I’ve already been with SUNY Brockport for two and a half years. During this time, we have taken many actions that have improved the quality of the student experience and better aligned our offerings with the needs of today’s students. Faculty have been heavily invested in these activities, committing to this important work that has allowed our University to thrive. I’ve proposed change in several of our processes, sometimes using proposals that were initially developed prior to my arrival and sometimes working to adapt actions taken from other institutions that have found success with these methods. By working together, we have made progress in reducing our budget challenges as we’ve invested in new academic programs that have allowed us to increase our enrollment.

While our enrollment growth and improved budget position is good for everyone at the University, increased section sizes and greater demand for faculty time takes a significant toll. How can we accommodate student needs without adding to the faculty workload? One message that was reinforced for me this past week at the SUNY Chief Academic Officers conference is that one of the critical elements through which we can engage faculty is by providing clear information on the context of proposed changes. And while I believe I’ve done okay in describing individual initiatives, I haven’t done as good a job at describing how these initiatives can come together to promote student success without requiring extra work on the part of the faculty. In my vision of our future, I believe we can better serve the students who are choosing to enroll at SUNY Brockport, taking account of their background and preparation, while also providing faculty sufficient time to achieve their own goals and aspirations.

In what follows I want to set out why and how I see this happening. I will start by saying I recognize this is a long communication, but I hope you’ll see why I want to put all of this out together. I welcome feedback on what I’ve written, and I look forward to continuing to engage with you on these topics.

Underlying Principals 

I hold two foundational principles to help ground our work. The first of these is the necessity to provide our students with a sense of purpose. I have spoken previously about my own experience going to college and choosing a major. My high school guidance counselor told me that since I was good at math and science, I should be an engineer. I decided to be a chemical engineer because my first roommate was a chemical engineer and told me it was fun. Not knowing any better, I made that choice, not really knowing what a chemical engineer did. I embarked on an internship in my second year and learned a little more about the work. As I continued in the program, I found organic chemistry to be very hard and physical chemistry to be even harder, but I liked the engineering courses and the internship experience allowed me to identify a post-graduation goal, so I was able to persevere and earn my degree. Our students need to find similar motivation to help them through the difficult times they will encounter as part of their college career. I believe that their ability to determine their plan and identify their goal for what they choose to do after college is critical to their success. It is for this reason that I have focused a fair amount of effort on our career awareness and experiential learning efforts.

The second principle has developed while working with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), first through my participation in the Student Success Initiative in Spring 2023 and now with our work in the Student Success Equity Intensive (SSEI). Both programs have shown that students who most need support services are usually the least likely to seek out these resources. They have also shown that the costs associated with providing “extra” services quickly become unwieldy, and that it is more effective to embed these activities into the fabric of the institution. Cost should not only be construed as dollars and cents, but also in terms of the time commitment. If we can build the support structure into the normal load, then there will be less need to provide extra support, thereby reducing the load on faculty. It is for this reason that I believe it to be essential that we work within the academic curriculum to ensure that our students are acquiring the skills that they need to be successful.

A systems approach

As I indicated previously, my background is in engineering, and particularly chemical engineering. As such, I tend to think about systems; i.e. how everything comes together to create something desirable from a series of constantly moving pieces. It is through systems planning that I am trying to effectively connect the required pieces and provide the best possible education for students while also creating a beneficial environment for faculty.

On the whiteboard in my office, I have an illustration that describes one way that our systems can be connected. Our first-year students enter the University and achieve their initial goal – that they attend college. Our immediate task is to connect them with their next goal. That starts with the first-year experience course, then through a series of engagement activities that connect them to who they hope to become. We support them with peer mentors, alumni networks, dedicated faculty, and advisors. We offer high impact practices, including internships, study abroad, service learning, and more, to help them get a better understanding of their future options. And if all goes well and everything is properly integrated, they complete their studies in four years and become alumni themselves, giving back to the institution that supported their success.

There are many elements to this system, some of which have already had investment and others that are still ongoing. A few of these are highlighted here.

Academic Careers and Experiences (ACE). Our ACE curriculum provides four essential elements for incoming students; 1) delivers the mandatory elements required by State and Federal government, 2) fosters resilience and well-being with the information needed to access services and successfully navigate the academic transition, 3) provides students with professional awareness so they can choose classes appropriate for their academic goals, and 4) begins developing a portfolio of skills that will help students advance in their professional path.

ACE is designed to respond to the concerns that faculty have expressed regarding students’ readiness to learn. It empowers students to take control of their education, giving them the sense of purpose and sense of belonging that will enable them to succeed throughout their academic career. As a transitional program, ACE gives students the study skills that they may not have gained in their prior education but will be required for the successful college student.

Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT). Many faculty are adjusting their teaching methods to accommodate the students who are currently enrolling. Last year, information from the experiential learning committee made clear that faculty were largely on their own in the development and implementation of new initiatives. A better path, as outlined by those faculty, is to take advantage of staff with expertise in instructional design to assist faculty, to serve as the institutional repository of knowledge, and to share ideas. The investment in CELT is intended to provide that support. We’ve moved our Instructional Design staff into CELT and added two additional staff with specific expertise in first year experience courses (which will help support the ACE transition) and in experiential education (to ensure our students gain from these hands-on high impact practices). Now, faculty who wish to integrate innovative teaching methods can call upon the resources available through CELT building on the knowledge already gained by others and creating a smoother pathway to implementation.

Career Design Center (CDC). Our efforts to refocus the CDC are central to the goal that we should give students a sense of purpose early in their academic career. Career awareness content is embedded in ACE so that students can learn what they can do with their education, imagine their future, and become self-motivated to achieve that outcome. We invested in support for experiential learning to help faculty build that content into their courses, providing further connection between the academic program and the student’s goals. Evidence shows that students need to engage early and often, so they can build a portfolio of skills that will provide access to the high impact experiences that will place them in a premium position to achieve their post-graduation goals. CDC is working to better align their activities with the academic programs, providing greater support for students who are seeking career experiences and supporting faculty in providing the mechanisms to embed those skill-building activities that our students need to be successful.

Learning Assistance Center (LAC).Tutoring services have historically been provided for students who need extra support to succeed in their college career. It is an “add-on” to the academic curriculum; something offered that only a portion of our students will access. Building from data that indicates embedded tutoring improves academic performance, enhances understanding and skills, increases confidence, reduces anxiety, and increases satisfaction and engagement, we started a pilot program in Developmental Math for evaluation. If the pilot is successful, we can expand to other gateway courses. Faculty can also consider other courses for which this model might be more effective. This transition will take time, as faculty engage in assessment and develop new learning tools with the support of the CDC and CELT. We will ask faculty to work with the LAC as we develop this transition, ensuring that all students retain access to these critical student success resources.

Continuous Improvement. Our ongoing assessment efforts provide many of the ideas for change. Faculty are already engaged in continuous improvement, evaluating the successes and failures of their students and considering options to revise their classes. However, with the new resources identified in the preceding paragraphs, faculty now have more opportunities to explore ways to engage today’s students. Embedding active and collaborative learning in the classroom creates time for faculty to develop strong student-faculty relationships outside of the classroom, improving intrinsic student motivation. The continuous improvement paradigm is the mechanism through which faculty can experiment with some of these ideas, changing the way the content is delivered, taking advantage of the resources that are available, helping students to self-motivate, and evaluating the effect on student success. Over time, individual faculty will learn which teaching methods are most effective for them and their students, and this will eventually lead to a set of tools that other faculty can easily implement.

Summing up

Over the last two and a half years, we’ve made great progress on curriculum reform. Some are in their early stages, including the expanded career design center, the expanded CELT services, and the new ACE course. Others are still developing, such as our efforts at continuous improvement and the growth of experiential education. Still others are just getting started, including the transition of learning assistance. I recognize that this volume of effort has many people feeling overwhelmed, yet it is necessary for us to achieve the fundamental changes in our educational paradigm that will best meet the needs of today’s students. As we get there, students will become more successful, and faculty will have more time to experiment with novel approaches and more opportunities to engage directly with students. We all came into academia so that we could spark in our students whatever our own professors instilled in us, way back when we were students. By changing the educational paradigm, we can transition from “doing a job” and return to “having a calling”, sparking in our students that lifelong passion for our discipline.

The substantial effort has been achieved through the dedicated support of many faculty and has allowed us to be a great University at which to learn, delivering excellence for our students. We change our students’ lives, and the continuing evolution in which we are engaged will allow us to be more effective in making a difference for them.

I appreciate all that you have already done on behalf of our students and thank you for giving me the chance to share this vision for a quality 21st century post-secondary education. I am planning additional sessions before the end of the semester that will allow us to have a further robust discussion on these ideas. Thank you.