In Florida, they definitely seem to be mostly going for that mile. And it's not primarily competition with 4-year colleges that worry many, it's a concern that community college 4-year programs might dilute the original community college mission. 

“There are a lot of different types of students who knock at the door of community colleges,” said Hagedorn, who before moving to Iowa State was a longtime educational policy researcher at the University of Florida. “I just worry that they’re not going to be able to serve all those different types if they’re bringing in more four-year program students. There will be less room for remediation and truly vocational programs. Some are not going to be as well-served as others. We have to remember the reason community colleges were established in the first place.”

Still, Hagedorn conceded that scholars do not know enough about these community college baccalaureate programs to say whether they have adversely affected existing two-year programs. As to why the furor in Florida over these degrees had died down, she said the answer was simple.

"The cry that ‘oh my god, the community colleges are going to be taking away our students’ didn’t happen,” Hagedorn said. “There’s no shortage of students going to the University of Florida or the University of Central Florida or to any of Florida’s other universities right now.”

There is a brief video embedded, below.

Our round table focused on academic planning at baccalaureate and comprehensive institutions.  Our group included representatives from both public and private institutions from the USA and Canada.  We had a nice balance of new and experienced planners.  We opened our conversation with introductions and a short description of what each participant hoped to learn at our discussion.

Several themes emerged in our discussion: change management, working with planning committees, growing report and survey fatigue on our campuses, and fostering a culture of integrated planning on campus.  In moments, it became clear that we all faced similar challenges in our work.  

Some common examples included what might be called "leading from the middle."  All of us find ourselves working with senior leaders as well as individuals within the faculty and staff.  Our location in the middle of the institution requires a particular set of skills, notably interpersonal and problem solving strategies that allow us to be successful in garnering support for integrated planning, assessment and budget management.  We found similar challenges in fostering a climate of collaboration for our tasks mostly due to the misunderstood nature of integrated planning on our campuses.  We generally agreed that while planning may be valued on campus, that value was difficult to translate into action due to campus culture or an uneven commitment to implementation of planning processes or procedures.

Our conversation concluded with a discussion of how SCUP may support the work of planners, focusing mostly on the value of the planning institute as a professional development opportunity for planners and others on campus involved in the planning function.

There was considerable interest in the newly developed on-campus offering of the planning institute and participants wondered if SCUP might consider developing modules delivered in a webinar format.

Nicholas R. Santilli, Ph.D.
Associate Academic Vice President for Planning, Assessment, and Institutional Effectiveness
Associate Professor of Psychology
John Carroll University

P.S. from Terry Calhoun: Below is a brief YouTube video I took walking through the SCUP Planning Institute Step I, which was offered at SCUP–45 as a preconference workshop. You may never have seen as active a workshop session before!