September 4, 2012:  Inside the HEAD (Day One)

Today is the first day of classes at many institutions of higher education across the country, and so I have decided to start a Higher Education Administrator Diary (HEAD) to capture some of the daily fun for us administrators.  I don’t particularly want to focus on the daily activities and interactions I have at SMC, but to use those kinds of interactions to discuss some of the cyclical and non-cyclical issues that come up to an administrator through the year.

I couldn’t decide between calling this “Inside the HEAD” or “Hit the HEAD.”  I suspect many of you are surprised I went with the less profane choice.

On the first day of the semester, your faithful administrator is consumed primarily by one issue:  final enrollment numbers.  In the weeks leading up to the semester, a large number of students have verbally committed to coming, but not necessarily paid.  By the first day of classes, it has basically become a “put up or shut up” scenario with these students.  We all sit by nervously as non-payment drops institutional enrollment by whole percentage points.  High school graduating classes have dwindled; no worker left behind legislation has taken care of a majority of out of work adults.  More colleges and universities pop up daily, especially in the for-profit world, and there is simply a smaller pie from which all of us can get our share.  Our budgets were built on projected enrollment numbers.  Fewer students mean adjusted budgets.

So, your loyal administrator, wanting to feel better, decides to walk around campus to feel the energy of the new student body.  Walking through halls we see full classrooms and half empty classrooms.  Full classrooms are very nice (provided the fire marshal isn’t with us and perhaps skeptical about the number of chairs in that classroom). Half empty classrooms represent one of several possibilities, none of them very good: upper level classes for which a smaller population of students, accounting for attrition, can sign up (in higher education, this attrition is called the dreaded “retention rate.”); discipline-specific classes in small programs; early morning class times; unpopular faculty. 

All of these are troubling to your administrator.   Student attrition means lost revenue, for which to compensate requires a lot more cost in recruiting a student.  Furthermore, retention rate is a buzzword thrown out carelessly by every clueless politician in the country, so you feel the target getting bigger on your back.  Small programs mean you have to gauge the cost of running the program versus the revenue generated.  At some point, you may have to eliminate that program and find teach out plans for current students.  Few students in early morning class times may mean that students are not taking full loads and/or are not staying on their projected degree path because they want classes at times that fit better with their sleep patterns.  Both of those scenarios are predictors for, yes, you guessed it, lower retention rates. And an unpopular faculty member could mean all sorts of unfair or fair perceptions that can’t be ignored.  Your loyal administrator makes a note to talk to that faculty member’s dean. 

Inevitably, your loyal administrator encounters some kind of first-day crisis.  Was the technology not working in a classroom?  Was the microwave removed from the student lounge when renovated and not put back in?  Was there a lost student not directed to where he or she needed to go by a staff or faculty member?  Was the air conditioning working in all buildings?  None of these may seem particularly significant, but that depends upon how quickly that news gets to your president or board member.  You can see how the semester might go:  douse and spin.  Douse the fires and spin the problems into manageable situations.  Douse and spin.

Your loyal administrator has probably gone home and doused his or her spinning head with an adult beverage. 

September 5, 2012: Inside the HEAD (Day Two)

Despite my promise in yesterday's posting to not make this about an SMC administrator's diary, I am forced to veer from that promise for at least a day.  Crossing across the commons to the Student Activity Center today, I stepped in a hole and twisted my ankle.  The irony, of course, is that I was going to the SAC to check my locker in anticipation of playing some racquetball.  I won't be doing that for a couple of days.

So, as I stretch on the couch with my ankle raised, I think about the two truths for higher education administration that my injury illustrates.  One is that we have a student activity center.  It is almost impossible these days to go to a college campus and not find a student activity center.  Even more than libraries, dorms or laboratories, the most essential building or building complex on campuses these days is the student activity center, home of elliptical machines, stationary bikes, rowing machines, climbing walls, squash courts, treadmills, pool tables, big-screen t.v.'s, soloflexes (is that the correct plural?) and coffee bars. A library, even with all of its books, is probably cheaper.

The second truth concerned my immediate attention to my injury.  I jokingly went to my school of nursing to see if I could get some ibuprofin.  The truth is that for every campus that has nursing or health care programs, there is a clear line between those departments as academic centers versus service centers.  The legal implications, let alone the practical logistics, of having your academic nurses serve in that function are tremendous.

Bigger schools, of course, can have drop in health care centers for students and staff, but SMC isn't that large in that regard.  I have no doubt, by the way, that if I had asked, someone would have had me hop up on an examination table and would take a look at my ankle.  No administrator wants to be in that vulnerable a position, though. I have images of first year nursing students (heck, first week nursing students) being brought through to see the live dummy lying there next to the simulation dummies.  I imagine myself as a live version of the patient from the game "Operation."

I'm sure there are many faculty across the country who bemoan not knowing where their administrator "stands."  I can safely say I have learned of one place now that I never plan to stand again.  And building and grounds won't have to yell at me to get off the grass.

September 6, 2012:  Inside the HEAD (Day Three)

So, during the first week of classes in the Fall, your calm and collected administrator frequently gets a slew of faculty requests to go to conferences.  Now that they are back from their summer vacations, they are probably assessing their professional development responsibilities and needs, and realizing that deadlines for conference registrations and/or institutional development money are looming.

I spent a large part of this third day of the semester finalizing a conference that I am actually attending alongside a few faculty members.  All told, including some initial investigation into hotels, flights and other things I have probably spent 5-6 hours trying to get the logistics solidified for this trip. Across the country. Which means major costs and ugly flight schedules to and from South Bend, Indiana.

Many institutions have cut professional development budgets over the last few years (when enrollments shrink, money gets cut from all sorts of things that you believe in but simply can't support). I am happy to say that SMC has not reduced the professional development budget in several years (if ever), but we also have not raised the amount, meaning that our support is not keeping pace with the economic realities of conference registrations, air fares, and hotel rates.

Conference registration fees run the gamut from insanely cheap to ridiculously expensive.  In October, you could go to Tucson for the Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and pay only about $60 for registration, unless you are a student or an unemployed mathematician (I wonder how you prove that) and can register for $5.  Yes, $5. I didn't miss a zero or two. The Society for College and University Planning's "Innovative Leadership: Examples of Excellence," in Raleigh, North Carolina, runs around $400. You would think 'innovative leadership' would have found some ways to reduce that cost for their own people.  The Association of American Colleges and Universities want around $450 for you to register for "Next Generation STEM learning" in Kansas City.  For those who don't know, STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math.  Obviously science, technology and engineering demand about $400 of that cost, seeing how cheap the math conference registration above was. The SLOAN conference for online learning, held in Orlando, Florida, (the default city for about a 1/3 of academic conferences, apparently) runs around $550.  That's just to get in the building, so to speak.  The College and University Science Facilities conference in San Diego runs about $1400--per person.  Yes, per person (there are different rates in all of these instances, especially when one brings a group, but all the costs I cite are basically about the average cost). 

Once you register, then you have the joy of choosing a conference-rate at the local hotels surrounding the conference.  $269 a night for single occupancy if you are going to San Diego.  Orlando's resort is asking $177 a night.  Kansas City is a much more reasonable $139. Raleigh is $135.  Of course, every one of these hotels is likely to charge its guests for the things that your Holiday Inn Express will give you for free: breakfast and internet access.

I think everyone is familiar enough with the joys of airline fares that I don't need to highlight (or lowlight) those.  To get anywhere farther than a car drive is probably around $500 minimally, economy class, no extra weight in those checked bags, please professor.

There is frankly no way a fiscally responsible administrator can fairly spread out maybe $1000, maybe even $2000, of professional development money per full-time faculty member with the way most of these conferences add up.  That is, unless we hire nothing but unemployed mathematicians.   

September 7, 2012: Inside the HEAD (day four)

Thanks to Labor Day, day four does at least mean the end of the week.  Many of us administrators have no football game to look forward to this weekend. No expectation of schmoozing in a luxury box. Or, in the case of University of Pittsburgh, lamenting a miserable showing by their football team the night before.  The first week is generally so tiring that Friday afternoon we all look forward to going home and not having to make a decision regarding canceling a class, reinstating a student, expelling a student, adjusting a faculty load, changing a classroom, or scrutinizing an enrollment report.

For enrollment, all of us look forward to next week when "add/drop" procedures reveal a new enrollment number.  Generally, we all pray that a bunch of students who went up the road to that big state school, or that glitzy private school, or that over-advertised for-profit school got smart and decided to enroll with us.  However, in many cases, new students who come in after classes have started are the kind of students who are perpetually late for everything in life, a sign that will not bode well for their student success . . . and which will be verified by their academic standing--or falling--at the end of the semester.

The down side of the first week ending is that a charged energy will dissolve and come week two the campus won't seem quite as alive.  That will come from a number of reasons:  students starting to miss classes, students not filling the halls trying to take care of administrative business, students generally falling into a more "been there, done that" mode, and frankly a lot less faculty, administrators and staff roaming the halls looking to help lost students. 

Here at SMC, this year, a number of staff members meant to be visible as help during this first week wore "Run-SMC" shirts, perhaps the most brilliant, if perhaps anachronistic for our students, idea I have seen here.  I can only imagine the number of times staff members delighted in hearing, "How do I get to the ____?"  "That's easy, Walk This Way!"

Far be it that your polite ambassador ever pulls his/her weight, but I did request one of those Run-SMC shirts-- extra large, of course.