I work for a very large and complex technical college district called Madison Area Technical College (MATC). MATC is one of 16 districts throughout the state of Wisconsin. MATC covers all or parts of 12 counties in south central Wisconsin with 5 campuses scattered in different counties. The largest and main campus call Truax is located in Madison, this is where I work. There are three other small campuses in Madison and there are outreach adult education centers in about forty local school districts. Altogether the college serves about 50,000 students.
The college offers over 90 one and two year technical and associate degree programs and over 20 apprenticeship programs. Another very important component of the college is the college transfer program. In effect the college transfer program is a sort of junior college or two year college, students can take courses at MATC and transfer the credits to the University of Wisconsin or elsewhere. Students in the programs can and do take college transfer classes.
The college is so large and so complex that in some cases I only have a limited knowledge as to what is happening elsewhere in the college and I have been here for nearly 24 years. I do however belong to a committee that determines how funding is distributed among the various education centers of the college. This gives me a unique perspective on how the college operates.
The survey:
Responding accurately to the MILE Guide Online Survey was a little tricky for me. The survey is clearly designed for K-12 and often talked about parents working with the school district administrators and teachers. Well here many of our students are parents! So I tried to answer the questions based on my knowledge of the area of the college I work and also my experience working on the budget committee. Even so some of my answers are on the guesswork side.
Here are the results of the survey:
"In the 21st Century stage - you have successfully integrated 21st Century Skills into you school and are working towards continual implementation. The roles of your stakeholders are constantly changing to meet local and ongoing needs of you school. You have a vision for you school and students, teachers, administrators, parents and the community work towards this common vision."
Next steps:
Two of the next steps as recommended by the survey are as follows:
*Collaborate with outside partners.
*Plan collectively and strategically for the future.
Collaboration comments:
Collaboration with outside partners occurs in every program. The faculty and appropriate administrators of a program meet on a regular basis with an "advisory committee" to review and assess all aspects of a program. The advisory committee is composed of members of the community who are directly involved in the program in some way. For example the dental assistant program"advisory committee" would consist of dentists, dental assistants with work experience and others connected with dentistry in some way. Everyone has direct experience and they understand the expectations of dental assistants when they enter the work force. The advisory committee guides the structure of the program to ensure the students obtaining the proper education.
Planning comments:
Planning collectively and strategically for the future is ongoing. For an institution so large and complex as the college, it could be very easy for the needs of a single teacher to get lost or run over by the needs of so many others. but amazingly this does not happen. The key to success in hearing the needs of everyone is a clearly defined process. We do have a process at MATC that allows for each voice to be heard. It starts with small units. For example I teach physics in the physical science department composed of 6 full-time faculty and 2 - 3 part time faculty. Each year our department develops a plan that includes a budget for equipment as well as any activity associated with teaching and learning such as developing a new course, or new curriculum, or updating a lab manual. The department plan moves to the next level and is incorporated with other plans from other departments that comprise a learning center called Arts and Sciences. There are several learning centers at the college. Funding requests and other needs for each learning center are combined and considered by appropriate inclusive committees. Not all requests can be funded as expected and thus request for funding must be prioritized and the higher priority requests are funded. If components of a department plan are not funded, there is a good chance of funding in the future as long as the request remains in the department plan from one year to the next.
All important decisions are made by committees. All committees are inclusive, that is, they are composed of administrators, faculty, and other units of the college such as information technology and facilities. This ensures that all stakeholders have a voice in decision making. Faculty are an important voice in this process.
